The Villain Professor's Second Chance

One moment, it was a statue of stillness. The next, it was upon them.

The sheer speed was impossible. Not just fast—wrong. Like the space between its movements folded in on itself, reducing the time between steps to something unnatural. The glaive cut through the air in a wide, merciless arc, shrieking as metal met stone.

Kael's instincts screamed at him, and he barely twisted out of the way in time. The blade missed his skull by a fraction, carving deep into the stone where he had stood only heartbeats before. Shards of rock and dust exploded outward from the impact, stinging his face, filling the air with the acrid scent of burning magic.

Liora was already moving. He was fast—Kael had seen him take down men in the blink of an eye, his daggers striking with pinpoint precision before his enemies even realized they were dead. He struck now, a blur of movement, his blades flashing as he lunged for the figure's side, aiming for the gaps in the armor.

The blades hit.

They didn't cut.

The armor absorbed the blows, the metal rippling as if it were breathing. The impact barely made the thing flinch, and in an instant, it turned, bringing its glaive around in a brutal, wide sweep.

Kael yanked Liora back just in time.

The glaive roared through the space where Liora had been standing, its power slicing through the very air, leaving behind a trail of crackling energy. A second slower, and Liora wouldn't have had time to dodge.

They both staggered back, feet scraping against the stone floor as they tried to put space between them and the creature.

Liora exhaled sharply, adjusting his grip on his daggers. "That's not normal armor," he muttered. "I felt it. It—" He hesitated, his eyes narrowing. "It absorbed the strike."

Kael's mind raced. This wasn't an ordinary guardian. It wasn't just a construct, some mindless thing left to ward off intruders. It moved too deliberately, too efficiently. Its strikes weren't wild or reckless—they were precise, measured, each one cutting off their escape routes with terrifying accuracy.

"This thing isn't just guarding," Liora snapped, shifting into a ready stance. His daggers gleamed under the pulsing glow of the sigils. "It's holding position."

Kael's mind raced. If it wasn't attacking to kill, what was it waiting for?

His pulse hammered against his ribs as his gaze darted between the towering figure and the shifting sigils on the walls. The symbols—once separate—had begun to weave together, twisting into an intricate spiral that pulsed in a slow, deliberate rhythm. The air in the chamber thickened, humming with unseen energy, pressing down on Kael's skin like an invisible force.

A doorway.

Not just a sigil, not just magic—it was a passage being carved into reality itself.

Kael felt something cold crawl up his spine, something primal, something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. The weight of the moment pressed against his skull, a heavy, suffocating dread that rooted him to the spot.

And then, a voice—ancient, guttural, wrong—slithered into his mind.

He is coming.

It wasn't a whisper. It wasn't a warning.

It was a promise.

Kael staggered back a step, his breath shuddering out of him. It wasn't just in his head—he could feel it in his bones, in the marrow itself, vibrating like a death knell. Whatever was beyond that door was waking up.

And they were running out of time.

Liora was already in motion, his blade flashing as he darted toward the sigil. His voice rang sharp through the thickening tension. "We need to break it!"

The Raven-Hooded Guardian reacted instantly.

The glaive swung down in a brutal arc, cleaving through the space Liora had occupied a fraction of a second before. Stone shattered where the blade struck, the impact sending jagged splinters skittering across the chamber floor. Liora twisted mid-air, his momentum carrying him just beyond the reach of the attack, landing with feline grace.

Kael moved, instinct taking over. He lunged, his dagger flashing as he aimed for the sigil.

The Guardian moved faster.

Its free hand shot out with impossible speed, fingers closing around Kael's wrist in an iron grip. The force of it was staggering—like being caught in the jaws of a beast, bones groaning under the pressure. Kael grit his teeth, straining against the hold, his entire arm feeling like it was about to snap.

The Guardian's helm tilted slightly, as if studying him. Then, without a word, it began to squeeze.

Pain flared up Kael's arm, white-hot and immediate. His vision blurred for half a second, his fingers involuntarily loosening around the hilt of his blade. The pressure was relentless, crushing—his joints screamed in protest, and his breath came out in a strangled gasp.

Liora saw his opening.

A flicker of movement, a shift of weight. A heartbeat of hesitation from the Guardian was all he needed.

With a swift, fluid motion, Liora reversed his grip on his blade and drove it into the center of the sigil.

The reaction was immediate.

A deafening crack split the air.

A shockwave ripped through the chamber, an explosion of raw, uncontrolled energy that sent Kael hurtling backward. The Guardian released him as the force tore through the vault, slamming him against the stone floor. His vision blurred with impact, the air knocked clean from his lungs.

The sigils erupted in a cascade of violent, blinding light.

The intricate patterns—so carefully carved, so impossibly precise—fractured like glass, splintering into chaos. The walls trembled, an ominous groan echoing through the underground chamber as cracks spiderwebbed outward, splintering the foundation itself.

The vault was collapsing.

The Guardian staggered, its form flickering like a flame caught in the wind. The runes on its armor pulsed erratically, struggling to maintain their form against the force of the collapsing chamber. Kael expected it to attack again, to lunge at them with the same relentless fury, but instead, the creature turned away.

It faced the sigil.

Then, slowly, deliberately, it knelt before it.

The shift was so unnatural, so reverent, that Kael felt a cold shiver crawl down his spine. The Guardian's glaive remained planted firmly in the ground, the runes along its length dimming as the sigil on the chamber wall flickered like a dying ember. It wasn't just guarding the sigil—it was waiting.

Waiting for something.

Kael didn't have time to figure out what.

The entire vault trembled violently, a deep, guttural groan rolling through the stone, like the earth itself was trying to swallow the place whole. Cracks splintered outward from the center of the sigil, racing across the walls like black veins. Loose stones rained down from above, some the size of Kael's head, others mere slivers of debris, but all of it part of a bigger collapse.

"Move!" Kael shouted, the urgency in his voice cutting through the thickening dust.

Liora was already ahead of him, weaving through the chaos with a rogue's grace, dodging a falling support beam as he made for the tunnel exit. Kael sprinted after him, boots pounding against the trembling ground. The air grew thick with dust, the chamber filling with the sound of splitting stone and the furious wails of something unseen. The whispers were no longer murmurs—they were shrieks, raw and full of rage, a thousand voices crying out in fury as the chamber was torn apart.

The vault was collapsing. They had seconds.

Kael's breath burned in his chest as he pushed harder, dodging a massive chunk of the ceiling that came crashing down where he'd been a heartbeat ago. The tunnel entrance was just ahead, half-obscured by falling rubble. Liora reached it first, spinning to make sure Kael wasn't about to be crushed under the debris.

The ground beneath Kael cracked.

A jagged fracture split open right beneath his feet, and for a terrifying moment, he felt himself falling—his stomach twisting as the world dropped out from under him. His fingers scrambled for purchase, nails scraping against rough stone as the gap widened, threatening to swallow him whole.

Then Liora was there.

A firm grip locked around Kael's wrist, yanking him forward with a strength that belied Liora's lean frame. With one powerful pull, Kael was back on solid ground, momentum carrying him forward just as another slab of rock crashed into the abyss behind him.

They didn't slow.

They ran, sprinting into the narrow tunnel as the vault collapsed behind them, the roaring destruction chasing their heels. The walls trembled, dust and debris clouding their vision. The shrieking voices faded into the distance, muffled by the tons of stone burying whatever nightmare they had just escaped.

Then, finally—

Air.

Kael hit the ground hard, skidding across the dirt as he tumbled into the open. The night air hit his lungs like a slap, cold and sharp, cutting through the choking dust that still clung to his throat. He coughed, spitting out grit, his arms trembling as he pushed himself upright.

Liora collapsed beside him, rolling onto his back with a long, breathless laugh, though it was more exhaustion than amusement. "Hells," he muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. "That was close."

Kael's entire body was shaking, the adrenaline still flooding his veins, refusing to let go. His vision swam for a moment before settling, the world coming back into focus.

Silence.

Too much silence.

The streets of Halewick stretched before them, eerily still beneath the pale glow of the moon. The city should have been alive with movement—guards rushing to the scene, people drawn out by the chaos—but there was nothing.

No onlookers. No alarm bells. Not even the usual distant hum of the marketplace at night.

Just emptiness.
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Kael's heart pounded in his chest. He forced himself to his feet, scanning the deserted streets. The only sign of life was the distant flickering of lanterns in shuttered windows, like frightened eyes watching from behind closed curtains.

No one had come.

No one had seen.

Or worse—no one dared.

Liora pushed himself up onto his elbows, wincing as he rubbed his shoulder. "Well," he said, voice hoarse. "That's not ominous at all."

Kael barely heard him. His mind was still back in that vault, in the final moments before everything collapsed.

The sigil. The whispers.

The Guardian kneeling before it, waiting.

Waiting for what?

His throat felt tight. He turned to Liora, his voice raw, the question clawing its way out before he could stop it.

"What the hell was that?"

Liora didn't answer immediately. He was staring at something.

Not just staring—frozen, his usual smirk absent, his sharp eyes locked on a point beyond the chaos they had just escaped. His fingers twitched slightly near his belt, a rare tell that something had unsettled him.

Kael followed his gaze.

A sigil had been burned into the stone wall of a nearby building. Fresh. Still smoldering from the heat of its creation. Thin tendrils of smoke curled into the night air, the edges of the mark glowing faintly with dying embers. It wasn't like the crude glyphs Seyrik had left behind in the underground vault—this was different. More refined. More deliberate.

And it wasn't just a mark.

It was a message.

Kael stepped forward, his boots crunching against the dirt and debris littering the street. The air smelled of charred stone and something acrid beneath it—something wrong. He traced the shape of the sigil with his eyes, recognizing pieces of the magic they had seen before but arranged in a way that felt… purposeful.

Liora exhaled through his nose, a quiet, measured sound. "That's not Seyrik's work."

Kael's throat was dry. He already knew it. He didn't need confirmation.

The words beneath the sigil were seared deep into the stone, jagged and uneven as though the magic had carved them into existence rather than by any human hand.

You cannot stop what is already in motion.

Kael's pulse drummed in his ears. The message wasn't just ominous—it was final. A statement, not a warning. Whoever left this wasn't gloating or taunting.

They were telling the truth.

He could still feel the weight of the underground vault pressing against his bones, the whispers that had slithered through the corpses' lips, the way the sigils had pulsed—alive, sentient, reaching. And the final, echoing words spoken in that chamber:

He is coming.

Kael clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms. They had barely crawled out of that nightmare with their lives, and already, the next piece had fallen into place. They hadn't stopped anything.

They had only seen the beginning.

"We need to find Rellios." His voice came out steadier than he expected, but the weight in his chest only grew heavier.

Liora nodded, brushing dust from his coat like it was just another job, another contract. But Kael could see the tension in his posture, the way his usually fluid movements were just a little too stiff.

"Yeah," Liora muttered, but for once, he didn't have anything clever to say.

Kael exhaled slowly, his breath visible in the cold night air. The ruins of Halewick loomed around them—empty streets, abandoned homes, the eerie silence of a city that had already surrendered to its fate.

A slow, deliberate sound broke the quiet.

The soft rustle of wings.

Kael turned his head.

A raven sat perched on the rooftop of the building, its feathers dark as ink against the moonlight. Its glowing eyes locked onto his, unblinking, unyielding. Watching.

Always watching.

The same way the figure at the fire had watched.

The same way the presence in the vault had whispered.

Kael didn't look away.

Not this time.

This time, he did not look away.