The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 688: The Elven Demon (2)

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

Draven's expression sharpened. "The Grove remembers its traitor." He touched the page; ink recoiled, sizzling as if scalded. "And wants him excised."

The tunnels tightened, ceiling pressing low. Cold deepened. Draven's breath fogged in short bursts. Each inhalation tasted of cedar and distant smoke. Between steps he evaluated: mist density rising, memory distortions escalating, corruption threads thicker toward the heart. He eased his blade angle, preparing for closer quarters.

Sylvanna fell silent, focus narrowing. Her ears tracked every creak; her eyes flicked from root-seam to crystalline bloom to the faint silhouettes lurking beyond lamplight. One arrow rested nocked, tip glowing faint blue—the first of her dwindling frost-quiver.

The floor dipped. A basin of clear water sprawled across the path, surface mirror-still. No current, yet ripples traced concentric circles from an invisible center. Draven crouched, studying reflections. They showed no ceiling, no travelers—only stars wheeling over a ruined elven city, spires split by void fire. He sheathed one sword, pressed a gloved finger to the pool. The vision shattered, water clouding with black motes that sank like burned paper.

"Shortcut," he decided, rising. "Or snare. Either way, forward."

They skirted the basin, edge-walking on roots slick with condensation. Mist clung to ankles, trying to shape itself into pleading hands. Sylvanna's next arrow snapped those tendrils with a web of hoarfrost, buying them ten feet of clarity.

At last the tunnel widened into a vault lit by chill phosphorescence. Draven swept a glance over corpses of stone benches, toppled lecterns, shattered memory crystals. All angled toward a far wall where a mural sprawled, half-eclipsed by creeping moss.

Paint still glowed beneath grime: an elf standing tall, eyes too bright, ringed by sigils that burned even now with forbidden light. Vaerentis. Behind him, demon glyphs spiraled—unmistakable marks of binding and bargain. Scene by scene the mural told a fall: rituals drawn in bloodroot ink, gates cut into dreamspace, children weeping beneath a sky bleeding ember sparks. The final panel, choked by moss, showed his body dissolving into black vines, re-rooting into fresh earth.

"Not killed," Draven murmured, reading aloud the Grove's indictment. "Replanted."

Sylvanna hugged her arms, bow dangling. "And the tree drank him."

"He became the infection." Draven's voice sank, iron settling in water. He glanced around, sensing the forest's listening hush. No words, only a single intent pressing against his thoughts: Cut him out.

As if answering, surrounding roots convulsed, peeling back in braided layers to reveal a narrow throat of passage deeper still. Damp air sighed from below—warm, fetid, almost breathing.

Draven rolled one shoulder, loosening tension, and strode forward. The corridor widened into a chamber shaped like a colossal heart carved from living roots. Bioluminescent veins traced shifting constellations across the walls. At its exact center stood Vaerentis—or the husk that wore his name.

He turned at their arrival, every movement accompanied by the creak of stressed wood and the chime of splintering crystal. Elven features lingered only in outline; within those borders swirled faces of every victim whose memories he had devoured. Eyes flickered—emerald, then coal, then empty sockets lit by internal fire. A slow smile pulled across too many lips.

"Welcome, Dravis Granger," he purred, rolling Draven's assumed name on a tongue of cracked bark.

Draven answered not with courtesy but by crossing his blades. Metal rang, a promise sharper than speech.

Vaerentis chuckled—sound like ice fracturing, like ribs breaking. "Cling to clarity all you wish," he teased. "But you could be more. Become the scalpel that frees memory from time. Join me."

Sylvanna nocked an arrow, tension humming up her bowstring. "Offer's expired," she said.

Draven moved first.

Root-floor spiraled, gravity tilting ninety degrees. He sprinted up the new wall, cloak snapping overhead. A root-spine jutted; he pushed off, twisting midair, blades carving an X of white arcs. Vaerentis threw up a screen of smoke-faces—voices begging, cursing, pleading. Steel hissed through them, scattering sparks of stolen memory.

Sylvanna's arrow sliced past Draven, splitting into three shards of frozen light that speared phantom guardians rising behind him. Each shatter echoed like church glass breaking under storm wind.

Vaerentis roared. Body ballooned, wings of fragmented recollection unfurling—feathered with childhood lullabies, hardened by battlefield screams. His sword formed from coalesced regrets, edge dripping liquid shadow.

Draven landed, knees bending to absorb rotated gravity. He didn't flinch; he dissected. Left blade angled to deflect a downward regret-cleave, right blade darting to slice the tendon illusion binding one wing. The appendage convulsed, losing buoyancy.

Faces flashed—Clara's gentle sorrow, Roth's grim laugh, Draven's own younger features bright with naive hope. Vaerentis thrust them forward like shields. "Join me," he crooned. "Live unbroken." frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓

Draven's breath hitched—one heartbeat, raw—but he steadied. "Grief is real," he said, voice scarcely louder than a sigh. "Lies are not." With a single precision cut he shattered the tableau. Faces flew apart, freed from corruption, dissolving into violet motes.

Vaerentis screamed, but Draven was already moving again—toward the pulsing breach inside that amalgamated chest.

The last cut would come next.

We reached the chamber.

____

A mural dominated the root‑wall to their right, its pigments still luminous despite decades—or centuries—of sap‑damp darkness. Half the scene had been devoured by creeping bark, yet what remained glowed with an eerie, self‑made light.

Draven slowed, eyes narrowing. Where most paintings lay mute, this one murmured. Threads of stored memory seeped through every brushstroke, begging to be witnessed. He felt each whisper as a prickle against the runes hidden beneath his coat.

The central figure was unmistakable even beneath layers of grime. Vaerentis—once archivist, later heretic—stood tall in a robe of star‑silk, hands raised as though conducting a silent choir. His eyes were rendered with obsessive detail: emerald irises ringed by gold, bright enough to rival fresh forge‑steel. Behind him spiralled glyphs no sane elf would paint—crooked demon sigils that bent perspective toward them like hooks in wet canvas.

Sylvanna drew closer, boots scuffing moss. Every time her lampstone swept across the mural new horrors surfaced: circles of bone, altars scorched black, silhouettes of elven children cowering from an unseen blaze. She swallowed hard. "He recorded his own crime like a victory march," she whispered.

Draven's gaze tracked the story told in pigment and scorch. He saw the binding rituals—Vaerentis carving runes into living saplings while apprentices shielded their eyes from the brilliance. He watched the gate of bone and fire tear open, its maw vomiting coils of shadow across pristine groves. He noted the detail of each screaming guardian, every fallen scholar, and the precise, unrepentant tilt of Vaerentis' smile.

At the bottom edge, half‑buried in moss, a final panel lingered. Draven brushed the greenery aside with the back of his glove. Paint flaked away, revealing Vaerentis' body dissolving into black rootlets, skin unspooling like ribbon into the earth—not slain, but replanted.

The Grove groaned overhead, strands of lichen trembling. Sylvanna hugged her bow, eyes searching Draven's face for instruction.

"He didn't die," Draven stated, voice cold and iron‑sure. "He became the infection."

The roots under their feet shivered, as if the forest itself nodded. No words formed, but an imperative pressed against his thoughts—Cut him out.

Bark unzipped with the sound of splitting hide. Great ribs of wood folded back, exposing a passage that pulsed like a wounded artery. Humid breath billowed from below, smelling of compost and antique incense.

Draven stepped forward. Sylvanna hesitated just long enough to draw a fresh frost arrow, then followed. The corridor plunged into a chamber shaped like a colossal heart. Every wall throbbed with slow light, veins mapping constellations in living amber.

At the chamber's core stood Vaerentis.

The being turned with deliberate grace, as though savoring their arrival. His torso remained vaguely elven—long limbs, narrow waist—but crystal bones jutted through bark‑flesh, and where skin should have been there hung drapes of desiccated memories: the faces of scholars, soldiers, infants, all sewn together in an ever‑moving tapestry. Each visage wept silver tears that sizzled to steam on the floor.

His own face flickered, shifting from one mask to the next. A grieving father, a laughing child, a snarling beast. Finally it settled on something like his original features—but stretched thin, too many teeth behind a too‑wide smile.

"Welcome, Dravis Granger," Vaerentis crooned, the name sliding out honey‑sweet and venom‑laced. "A borrowed shell wearing borrowed courage."

Sylvanna's arrowhead blazed cerulean. "Say another word," she warned, "and you'll be wearing frost."

Draven ignored the taunt and let his answer ring in steel. Both blades slipped free, edges catching the room's sour light. The sound—one note, pure and final—cut Vaerentis' chuckle in half.

The creature's laughter re‑emerged, brittle as winter bark. "Clarity, always clarity. You could be so much more, little knife. Help me sever the Garden from time. We'll prune away decay, leave only perfect moments."

Draven's reply was motion. He sprinted, cloak snapping. The floor twisted in defense, flipping end over end, but he flowed with the inversion, feet finding traction on a wall that became a ramp. A jutting root‑spine offered leverage; he vaulted, spinning blade‑first.

Vaerentis met the strike with a fan of smoke‑masks—every stolen face layered over the next. Metal hissed through sorrow and hope alike, slicing illusions into ember sparks. Fragments rained down, each whispering a name as it died.

Sylvanna loosed her arrow. Mid‑flight it fractured into three crystalline shards, each homing on a different spectral soldier forming behind Draven. The constructs shattered like stained glass, shards melting into puddles of forgotten lullabies.

Vaerentis roared, torso swelling. Wings unfurled—vast, skeletal frameworks laced with pages torn from diaries and combat logs. A sword congealed in his fist, forged from vows never kept. It dripped ink‑black promises that sizzled on the root floor.

Draven landed in a low crouch, eyes never leaving the core—a bright, ulcerous glow pulsing at Vaerentis' sternum. He adjusted his grip. One blade to parry lies, one to carve truth.

Faces cascaded toward him—Clara's gentle wonder, Roth's rough camaraderie, even his own younger features lit by naïve ambition. Each visage carried a plea, a bargain: Stop fighting, turn back, relive what was lost.

"Join me," Vaerentis breathed, voice echoing down a hundred stolen throats. "No more pain."

For one heartbeat Draven hesitated, pain flickering behind his eyes. That single pulse felt like a lifetime—long enough for Sylvanna to see the shadow of the boy he once was.

Then his jaw tightened. "Grief is real," he whispered, the words cutting like whetted silver. "Lies are not." One decisive slash ripped through the parade of faces, unmaking them. Clara's smile dissolved to motes of violet. Roth's laugh cracked, echo fading. The younger Draven watched himself vanish with silent acceptance.

Vaerentis screamed—sound rupturing in layers as each memory peeled away. But Draven was already inside his guard, blades crossing to shear through the tapestry‑skin, marching toward that bleeding core.

Every step triggered a convulsion in the chamber. Roots writhed, gravity spasmed, but Draven's balance held—cold calculation mapping vectors faster than the room could warp them. Sylvanna flanked, loosing arrow after arrow into nodes of twisting magic. Each impact unclipped another thread in Vaerentis' loom of stolen lives, until the wings sagged, sword trembling.

Draven drove forward. The breach ahead pulsed like a second heart, vomiting sickly green light. One cut, his mind said. End it.

The last cut would come next.