The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 687: The Elven Demon (1)

Mist clung to the roots like old sorrow, curling slow and reluctant as if the Grove itself were grieving. Draven inhaled the resin-heavy air, then released it in a measured stream. It wasn't relief—relief belonged to soldiers who believed the last arrow had flown. This was assessment, timing how long the forest would stay quiet before the next blade fell.

Golden sap no longer spurted from ruptured veins; instead it oozed in thick beads, pausing on the bark as if uncertain it should continue. Each drop caught the faint glimmer of witch-light, trembling before it finally slid to the soil below. The Grove was silent—not healed, merely bracing.

Sylvanna wobbled to a halt beside him, her lungs still hitching in uneven bursts. Frost crusted her right glove where the final arrow's backlash had flash-frozen her grip. Strands of auburn hair fell loose from her braid, sticking to her cheek in damp crescent arcs.

"It… stopped screaming," she managed. The words rasped out of a throat rubbed raw by battle-shouts and sulfur smoke. In the hush that followed, the sentence sounded too loud, like a stone dropped down a well.

Draven's gaze never left the trembling sap. "No," he corrected, voice knife-flat. "It's holding its breath."

She opened her mouth to press for meaning, then closed it. Questions could wait; the forest might not.

He knelt, fingertips finding a thick root that pulsed beneath the mulch like a sluggish artery. The heartbeat was there, but wrong—two pulses, slightly out of sync. One healthy thrum, one malignant flutter. His brow tightened. "Still hemorrhaging," he muttered, more to the Grove than to her.

Bark cracked overhead. Memory-echoes slid from the trunks in pale sheets of light, then coalesced into figures with weight and presence. Elven guardians emerged first, shoulders squared beneath barksteel greaves that gleamed green-silver. Scholars followed, their robes stitched with runic filaments that glowed softly even now. Priests closed the procession, palms up, bearing orbs of living flame that reflected mournful eyes.

Sylvanna's breath hitched again, but this time it was awe, not fatigue. "They're… beautiful," she whispered.

Draven studied the flickering tableaux. The elves moved with effortless poise, their motions synchronized like a ritual dance. Branches overhead curved to spell words in ancient script—blessings, historical epics, laments for fallen kings. The cathedral they formed needed no stone; walls were woven from living timber, each leaf humming a note in a thousand-part harmony. For a heartbeat, the scene was so luminous Sylvanna felt tears burn the corners of her eyes.

Then the light dimmed.

An elf stepped forward—slender, sharp-eyed, curiosity burning hotter than caution. His colleagues leaned in, worried smiles, gentle admonishments. He ignored them. Sylvanna saw restless fingers sketch sigils in empty air, searching for shapes that shouldn't exist.

Draven's eyes narrowed. Ambition, untethered and absolute—he recognized the silhouette of that hunger.

Around the visionary, color stripped away: greens desaturated, golds dulled to tarnish. The harmony faltered, voices in the canopy sliding off-key. A hush fell as the ambitious elf traced a final circle and pressed his bleeding palm to its center.

The air— fabric of the Grove—split.

A rift tore across reality, fraying edges sparking with violet light. A claw like black glass pushed through, nails dragging splinters of space. Behind it, teeth flashed in a grin that was all appetite and no joy. Shrill keening rose, thin as needles under the skin.

Sylvanna's hand jerked reflexively to her quiver, but Draven lifted two fingers—the smallest gesture, absolute command. She froze.

The visionary didn't retreat. He beckoned the abomination closer, eyes luminous with triumph. Demon ichor splashed across his face. It burned into rune-dark veins that pulsed just beneath the skin. His iris split, pupils multiplying. His scream was half pain, half ecstasy.

The Grove answered with shock. Memory-trees recoiled; leaves flashed silver like shields raised too late. Scholars ran, guardians tried to cut the claw before it fully entered—but their swords passed through the corruption without bite. Roots writhed as though trying to strangle the rift closed, but the wound only widened.

"He didn't close the gate," Draven said, voice as cold as the frost still clinging to Sylvanna's glove. "He welcomed it."

They watched his metamorphosis in silence. Eyes liquefied to tar. Blood blackened. Ligaments snapped, re-knit with sinew not born of any mortal forest. Voices spilled from his throat—three, four, many at once—singing discordant hymns. The elves' sanctuary twisted to echo that wrong chord; towers bowed inward, bark blistered into pustules.

At last, the vision's screams cut to silence. The new creature—elf-shaped but no longer elven—turned hollow sockets toward Draven and Sylvanna. Even knowing it was only memory, Sylvanna felt ice creep up her spine.

Then the cathedral shattered into shards of light, raining feathers of splintered history that vanished before they hit the earth.

The clearing was dark again. Only the slow drip of sap marked time.

Draven stood. He wiped residual ichor from his knuckles onto the edge of his coat. The stain refused to fade from the ground where the visions had played. His blades hung at either hip, both still smeared with filmy demon blood from the prior fight, but already that residue felt old—merely prologue to a deeper rot.

"No wonder the Grove can't heal," Sylvanna murmured. Her gaze lingered on the empty space where the cathedral had once glowed. "Its first wound never closed."

Draven's sharp eyes flicked to her, then back to the pulse in the root. "We find the heart of that wound and excise it."

"Even if it means cutting away what's left of him?"

"If there's anything left worth saving," he said, tone making it clear he doubted it. "We cut anyway."

A tremor rolled through the soil. Bark pulled apart near the fallen Heart Tree, roots yawning until a rough stair descended into black. Warm air—thick, humid, redolent of old parchment and dusted ash—poured out.

The Grove didn't invite; it surrendered, showing them the infection's seat.

Draven didn't waste a heartbeat. He drew one blade, tested its edge with a thumb—still keen—and stepped onto the first root stair. Sylvanna exhaled once, exchanging bow for a knife to light their path. Her shoulders squared in determination that looked like defiance of her own fear.

They descended together, steps echoing against living wood. The ancient sentience of the forest pressed close, expectant, fearful, hopeful all at once. Sap-lights blinked out as they passed, shrinking the world to a tunnel of ragged breathing bark. freewёbnoνel.com

Behind them, the clearing remained silent, waiting to learn if its final breath would be relief—or eulogy.

Draven straightened, twin blades still dripping demon ichor. The crystalline gore clung to the steel in sluggish beads, refusing to slide free. Across the glade, the last ghost-lights guttered out, but the taint they had revealed remained—a bruise on living bark that even sap could not wash away.

"That was it," he said, voice low, measured. "The Grove's first betrayal."

Sylvanna shifted her weight, boots squelching in damp moss. Unease pinched her brows. "What happens now?"

Before Draven could answer, the ground spoke for him. Roots groaned, twisting apart with the reluctance of scar tissue. A seam opened beneath the Heart Tree, peeling back in slow, painful layers. The raw wood underneath bled pale light that smelled of damp parchment and oxidized magic.

Neither adventurer wasted words. Draven stepped forward; Sylvanna fell in beside him. They descended.

The Memory Catacombs swallowed them like a closing throat. Air thickened, cool yet oppressive, as though each breath must push aside centuries of dust-heavy recollection. Walls weren't stone; they were strata of compacted memories—root rings pressed flat, crystalline inclusions gleaming like half-forgotten thoughts. Overhead, trunks thick as siege towers arched into a ribbed ceiling, every growth pulse slow and deliberate.

Draven paused, letting the hush settle around his shoulders. He felt the Grove's pulse—one steady beat, one faltering echo. His jaw flexed. "Still bleeding," he murmured.

Sylvanna crouched to touch a patch of mist slithering across the floor. The vapor parted, revealing the image of a young elf bent over a weather-worn tome, laughter bright in every line of his face. She inhaled, surprise softening her features—then the vision warped. Ink bled down the pages. The elf's grin sagged, eyes emptying into shadow.

She jerked her hand back. "Joy doesn't last here."

"Nothing untainted lasts," Draven replied. His gaze swept alcoves lined with half-incinerated books. Some covers yawned open and shut like broken jaws; others wept resin tears that hissed on contact with the mist.

One heavy volume slammed closed as he passed. Another exhaled a puff of pale sparks that settled on his cloak before dying. He counted spines, cataloging titles he half-recognized from Tower archives—Treatise on Dreambinding, Hymns for Root-Weaving, Banished Theorems. Knowledge once cherished, now gutted.

"How many of these were real?" Sylvanna whispered, voice thin in the cold.

"All of them," Draven answered, eyes tracing scorch patterns. "Once."

The Phantoms arrived without warning—faint silhouettes stepping out of fissures in the mist. The first wore scholar's robes turned to cinders, jaw locked in a silent scream. It paced a tight oval, feet never quite touching earth, doomed to repeat the same four paces. Draven slid aside, boots whisper-quiet. Sylvanna's hand twitched toward the apparition, pity bright in her eyes, but she froze when Draven's fingers flicked a warning.

"Echoes, not souls," he muttered. "Touch and they'll knot around you."

The second Phantom was a child. Ash clung to her tunic, and a shattered stave dragged in her wake. When she met their eyes, her lips curved upward—too wide, too slow. Words slithered out, soft as cobwebs: "Stay… stay…"

The sound crawled along Draven's nerves. He raised his left blade and drew a clean vertical cut through air. Steel never touched flesh—only the psychic thread anchoring the loop. Reality shivered; the child unraveled into sparkling dust.

"You're not killing them," Sylvanna noted, relief and curiosity mingling.

"They're already dead," Draven said. "I'm killing the anchor."

A corridor forked. They chose left—wrong. Instantly the passage stretched, walls folding inward like pages of a cursed codex. Faces pressed from beneath bark-skin, whispering would-be comforts: a feast table laid for two, a tavern warm with reckless laughter, a lover's arms promising forgetfulness. Air turned syrup-thick; footsteps dragged as if regret were molasses.

Draven halted, eyes half-lidded. He listened—not to voices, but to heartbeat, to the Grove's deeper drum. He let its rhythm map the space beneath the illusions: pillars unseen, true hallways misaligned by deception. When certainty clicked into place, he pivoted and strode straight through a false bookshelf. The illusion shattered into shards of song, revealing the real tunnel bending right.

Sylvanna followed, loosing a frost arrow back into the dissolving mirage. Ice crackled outward, freezing lingering temptation mid-note until it shattered.

More phantoms pursued—an elderly tutor gripping charred lecture scrolls, a patrol captain missing half a face. Sylvanna's arrows burst each one into brittle frost-statues; Draven's shorter blade etched quick sigils through smoke-flesh, severing loops before they could solidify.

Once they passed an open folio propped on a lectern of gnarled roots. Silver script morphed across its pages, rearranging itself as they watched. Only one word remained constant: Vaerentis. The letters oozed like black sap.

Sylvanna exhaled a curse. "He signed their history with his own ruin."