The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 663: Tales of The Long Ears (5)

"Sylara."

The single word struck like a thrown dagger, clean and sharp.

Sound rushed back into her ears—the rasp of Vyrik's uneasy breathing, the mournful creak of branches high above, the far‑off hiss of mana weaving through roots. She staggered upright, hand flying to steady herself on the gnarled bark at her back.

"What in all voids was that?" Her voice cracked, thin as parchment. The lullaby was gone, but its aftertaste lingered: copper on the tongue, starlight behind her eyes.

Draven strode forward, boots whisper‑silent over the rune‑lit moss. Even in the half‑gloom his presence radiated edges: crisp collar, immaculate coat, blades sheathed but never harmless. He stopped a pace away, pupils contracting as they snapped from Laethiel to her.

"You felt it." Not a question—an assessment.

Sylara scraped a sleeve across her damp forehead. "It was like being dropped into someone else's memory. Sweet at first, then—" She shook her head, searching for words. "Then it wanted more of me than I was willing to give."

"High‑mana empathy net." Draven's gaze flicked to Laethiel, still nestled in the crook of roots, silver lashes resting against bloodless cheeks. "Even dormant, his aura tugs at unshielded minds. You're susceptible—shallow anchors, no formal null seals."

A flare of indignation got her breathing again. "My anchors are solid enough for a dozen chimeras!" She jabbed a finger at him, accusation and plea mingling. "We can't just leave him. He saved our hides back in the corridor—whatever he is."

"He is a keystone." Draven spoke with the cool certainty of someone reciting the color of the sky. "Keystones exist for the structure, not the travelers. Our task is the structure."

Sylara followed his stare to the boy—no, the not‑boy—and back. "Your task, maybe. Mine usually includes 'don't abandon allies'."

"A sentiment," he replied evenly, "that will impress grave moss but little else." That should have ended it. But his expression softened—imperceptibly. A microscopic tilt of brow, a breath drawn just short of dismissal. "If he remains stable, we'll retrieve him on extraction. If he destabilizes, you'll be grateful the grove keeps him rooted."

Before she could retort, he turned, one gloved hand slicing through the heavy air as if conducting an unseen orchestra. The gesture drew her eyes to the thing he'd noticed—the thing she'd been too dazzled to see.

It crouched deeper in the grove, half‑hidden behind curtains of moss and ghost‑orchids: a titanic tree warped into grotesquery. What once might have soared skyward with elegant grace now bowed inward, as though crushed by its own heartbeat. The trunk split wide along a jagged seam, exposing raw cambium that pulsed crimson. Bark peeled away in curling scrolls the color of charred bone; thick sap oozed like tar mixed with molten ember, each drop hissing where it landed on rune‑laced roots. Veins of rot pulsed through the wood—dark, throbbing, ugly.

The stench hit them a beat later.

Burnt copper and spoiled cedar. Sulfur married to wet earth. The smell of something holy violated.

Sylara gagged, a hand over her nose. Vyrik's hackles rose, ears flattening. The chimera whined, backing a step until her thigh stopped him.

Draven's lips thinned. Not fear—never fear. Revulsion. "The scent of demons," he murmured, voicing the grove's crime like a verdict.

A breeze wafted from the ruptured trunk, carrying flecks of black ash that fizzed with malevolent sparks. They disintegrated midair, leaving pinpricks of darkness on Sylara's vision. She blinked them away, heart hammering.

Draven advanced, every step deliberate, as though counting beats in a ritual dance. "Look at the signature," he said quietly. "See the color layering? Crimson core, sable filaments, violet corona. That spiral frequency is classic infernal graft—spliced onto elven leywood to mimic a Heart‑Seed's rhythm."

Sylara squinted. To her, the veins looked like a chaotic mess of angry red and tarry black. "I'll take your word for it."

"Don't," he replied. "Take the evidence's." He crouched, scooped a drop of leaking sap with the point of a throwing blade. The fluid clung, writhing up the metal in oily tendrils. He flicked, and it hissed to steam before reaching his glove. "It's not just rot. It's an infection rewriting the tree's identity. Demons favor erasure through imitation."

A memory flickered behind his eyes—an older battlefield, citadels drowned in shadows. He dismissed it.

"Your family dabbled in this?" she asked, softer now.

"Certain ancestors toyed with void magics." His voice edged colder. "They called it 'research'. I call it vandalism with delusions of grandeur."

Sylara watched him carefully. No flicker of self‑pity, only disgust—at bloodlines, at weakness. "You hate it because it chooses chaos over craft."

"Exactly." His gaze bored into the wounded trunk. "Corruption is lazy. Anyone can break a window. Real skill repairs the glass without losing the view."

He straightened, inhaled deeply despite the stench, and let it out slow. Then—finally—he rolled his sleeves to the forearms, exposing satiny black runic tattoos that gleamed like inked mercury. Each line curved with anatomical precision, mapping veins, bone, mana channels. Living geometry.

Sylara felt the pulse of those sigils from three paces away. Storms, she thought, an involuntary shiver tracing her spine. She'd seen him fight, but channeling was different—too intimate, like glimpsing his heartbeat.

"Draven," she warned, though she didn't know what she was warning him of.

He ignored her. The last of the twilight beams bled from the canopy, leaving only the glow of fevered bark and the faint shimmer of his tattoos. Night birds fell silent; even the grove's ghost‑voices paused, sensing a predator greater than demons.

His hand rose, calm as a priest's blessing, every finger aligned, the palm hovering in front of his heart like the silent pivot of a scale.

Time seemed to hesitate—one lingering, fragile heartbeat—before sliding sideways.

A faint gasp whisked through the clearing, the forest exhaling in recognition. Leaves overhead fluttered without wind, their undersides flashing silver like startled fish. Even the pollen motes hanging in the still air responded, drifting in slow spirals toward Draven's outstretched arm as if magnetized.

Almost ritualistic.

Draven's eyes narrowed a fraction. Under the waning glimmer of rune‑light, the black‑metal band cinched around his wrist shimmered, its etched sigils turning translucent, then invisible. The air dimpled, folding around his fingers the way hot glass bends beneath a breath. Sylara felt a pressure—subtle, but certain—shove against the hollows behind her ears, like a storm front arriving in miniature.

Fingers poised together—a conductor at the final bar.

The hush deepened. Somewhere in the canopy a nightbird chattered, then cut off mid‑note. Below, the moss beneath Draven's boots grew brighter, runes inside each tendril snapping awake, flaring silver‑green. The ground knew whose command was about to be given.

The air bent.

A warped reflection shimmered in front of Draven, rippling as though a pane of water were being stretched into a blade's shape. Sylara's breath stalled. She'd watched him draw steel plenty of times—sleek, brutal, efficient. But never like this. Never without touching the hilts. Never by simply willing the impossible to manifest.

The air shimmered.

With a brittle crack, as though an enormous knuckle had popped in the bones of reality, two blades slid into existence—neither forged nor summoned but clarified from the potential of raw mana. They hovered before him, tips pointed toward the earth, humming in low, resonant dissonance. Pale gold runes crawled along their length like veins of living fire, the inscriptions updating themselves—one glyph fading, another emerging—as if the swords were still deciding what language best expressed their appetite.

Sylara's pulse hammered. She could almost taste iron on her tongue, though she hadn't bitten herself. Her senses fluttered wide; the world seemed to tilt. He wasn't just drawing weapons—he was unveiling a truth.

He wasn't wielding them.

He was channeling them.

Blades as extensions of will, no different from speech or breath.

Like conduits.

Windless tremors rattled the grove. Cracked lantern crystals chimed against bark. A flurry of distant whispers—some elven, some best left untranslated—rustled through the leaves. Sylara felt Vyrik press against her thigh, every muscle in the chimera knotted, hackles bristling as primal instinct screamed predator.

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"Devour,"