The Villain Professor's Second Chance

Asterion straightened, his exhaustion momentarily forgotten in the wake of this discovery. He was waiting for me to call it. Waiting for me to decide what came next.

I took one last look at the runes carved into the Harbinger's ribs, at the undeniable proof that this wasn't over. That we weren't just dealing with a fragmented cult or a city-wide disaster.

We were chasing something far more deliberate.

The wind howled through the ruins, carrying the faint, acrid scent of leyline burn. The silence that followed was heavier than before, no longer the quiet of an ended battle, but the waiting hush before something far worse.

Asterion's jaw tightened, his voice grim.

"Then who the hell are we really fighting?"

The implications were vast.

The Magic Council held dominion over leyline regulation. Their scholars dissected its nature, their enforcers stamped out unstable anomalies before they could spiral into disasters. Their entire doctrine revolved around control, containment, and the prevention of precisely what had happened here.

And yet, here we stood. Among the wreckage of a leyline collapse that should have been impossible.

I ran my fingers over the exposed runes carved into the Harbinger's ribs. They were deep, precise—not the crude etchings of zealots who barely understood the magic they invoked. These were deliberate. Purposeful. The strokes followed ancient leyline script, but not the kind used in common spellwork. This was sanctioned magic, belonging to scholars and wardens who had spent their lives studying the fundamental laws of magic.

My stomach coiled with something cold and sharp.

If these runes belonged to the Council, it meant one of two things.

A rogue operative had gone against their mandate. Or someone within the Council had authorized this.

Asterion let out a quiet curse. "Which means we're not hunting scattered cultists. We're hunting someone with actual influence."

I didn't answer immediately. My mind had already shifted gears, reconstructing the sequence of events, sorting through the impossibilities.

The meltdown should have taken months, years, to reach this stage. Even the most unstable leyline fractures didn't spiral out of control this quickly. Natural meltdowns ebbed and surged, but they followed a pattern. They weren't erratic. They didn't unravel into chaos overnight.

This hadn't been a leyline failure.

It had been fed.

Forced.

Manipulated.

Someone had accelerated its collapse.

Asterion was watching me carefully. He knew the signs, the way my mind moved when I was close to an answer. "Draven."

I ignored him for a moment, dragging my fingers over the ruined stone beneath us. The leyline had calmed since Belisarius's unraveling, but its scars remained. The ground was warm, not from heat, but from raw, lingering energy that hadn't yet dispersed. The pulse beneath my palm was unnatural—like something was still echoing through the currents of magic, just out of reach. I could feel it in the back of my skull, like a presence that had already left but not fully faded.

The leyline hadn't just been broken.

It had been guided.

I stood slowly, exhaling through my nose. "Someone engineered this," I muttered. "Not for destruction. For testing."

Asterion's eyes flicked toward me. He adjusted his grip on his dagger, as if expecting another fight. "Testing what?"

I exhaled.

"Resurrection."

Asterion's breath caught. Not an audible gasp, but a slight hesitation. Enough for me to know he understood the weight of what I'd just said.

I turned my head slightly, catching his expression—guarded, tense, waiting for me to elaborate.

The leyline hadn't simply collapsed on its own. It had been prodded, manipulated into unraveling at an unnatural speed. And at its peak, at the moment of its greatest instability, someone had introduced Belisarius into the equation.

And the leyline had accepted him.

It had pulled him from the void, given him form, allowed him to walk this world again.

Belisarius had been the test subject.

And it had worked.

For the briefest moment, my uncle had stood there, his presence woven back into the world by forces that shouldn't have existed. The leyline had answered a call—one it should never have acknowledged, let alone obeyed. It had cradled his form in its fractured embrace, shaping his body from unraveling magic and raw intent. The meltdown had been a tool—a means to an end, not the objective itself.

If someone had successfully revived a man I had already put in the ground… they wouldn't stop here.

A slow chill curled through my chest, not fear, but something worse—recognition. This wasn't an isolated event. It wasn't some reckless cult clawing at forbidden power without understanding what they'd unleashed. No, this had been structured. Coordinated. Designed.

And that meant it had a purpose.

Asterion muttered another curse, raking a hand through his blood-matted hair. His breathing was steady, but I could hear the tightness beneath it—the same pressure I felt settling over my thoughts like a vice. He understood the weight of this moment. He understood me.

"So what now?" His voice was gruff, worn, but edged with something grimly expectant. "Start gutting every last cultist we can find?"

I shook my head. "They're irrelevant now. They were pawns, nothing more."

I turned back to the corpse, fingers tracing the carved runes with a slow, calculated gaze. The grooves were still warm, faintly humming with residual power. Even in death, the Harbinger's body was a conduit, a lingering testament to whoever had orchestrated this. The symbols weren't just marks of control. They were a signature.

The Magic Council had many branches, but only a few dealt with leyline stabilization at this level. The scholars who monitored its fluctuations. The enforcers who executed those who tampered with it. The archivists who stored records of every sanctioned—and unsanctioned—interaction with its raw energy.

The Council despised interference in leyline affairs. Their doctrine had been ironclad for centuries.

And yet, here was proof that someone had allowed this.

The meltdown had not been a random catastrophe. It had been primed. Fed. Shaped.

The implications clawed at my mind, forcing me to rearrange the timeline of events. The leyline should never have unraveled this quickly—not without outside intervention. Someone had prepared it to fail at the exact moment Belisarius was meant to return.

I exhaled sharply, pushing aside the last lingering fog of exhaustion. There was no room for it now.

"The real battle isn't here." My voice was steady, even as the weight of my own words settled into place. "It's at the source."

Asterion raised an eyebrow. "Which is where?"

I met his gaze. "Aetherion."

Silence.

Asterion's expression didn't change immediately, but I saw the shift in his stance. The slight tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers flexed against the hilt of his dagger. It wasn't hesitation. It was calculation. The same kind I had done a hundred times before stepping onto a battlefield. The knowledge that what came next wasn't just dangerous—it was deliberate.

Aetherion.

The Magic Council's stronghold.

A fortress buried in the heart of arcane governance, the epicenter of leyline control. A place where knowledge was hoarded, power was regulated, and men played with reality itself behind layers of bureaucracy and security that made most warlords look like children.

Asterion let out a slow breath, shifting his weight onto his uninjured leg. "So let me get this straight. The meltdown, the cult, the corpse with Council sigils carved into his ribs—none of that was the main event?"

"No," I said, glancing at the leyline's residual energy, still pulsing faintly, almost waiting. "This wasn't about destruction. It was about proof."

Asterion scoffed. "Proof of what? That people are insane? We didn't need a meltdown for that."

I shook my head. "Proof that resurrection through a leyline is possible."

Asterion went still. I watched as the realization settled into him, deep and slow, like poison working its way through a body.

"… That's what this was about," he muttered.

I nodded. "Belisarius was a test subject. Someone engineered this to see if the leyline could bring him back, and it worked."

And that was the part that bothered me the most.

Whoever had set this into motion had chosen Belisarius Drakhan for their experiment—a man I had already killed. Out of all the dead men, out of all the histories buried within the Tapestry, they had resurrected him.

Why?

Asterion ran a hand over his face. "And if it worked once…"

"It'll work again," I finished.

He exhaled sharply. "Shit."

That was the only word for it.

Resurrection—true, uncontested, leyline-backed resurrection—was not a power anyone should hold. It defied balance. It mocked the laws of existence. And whoever had done this had not simply stumbled upon it.

They had planned for it.

That meant they were already looking for the next subject.

I turned my attention back to the Harbinger's remains. His body had decayed rapidly, as if the meltdown had sucked the last remnants of life from his bones the moment its work was finished. But the runes—those were different. They weren't ordinary leyline inscriptions. They didn't belong to the cult. They were old. Older than the Council itself.

But I had seen them before.

The realization slid into place, smooth and cold, like the last piece of a blade locking into its hilt.

I knew who used these.

Asterion saw the shift in my expression. "You recognize it."

"I do," I said quietly. "These aren't just leyline runes. They're Council-made."

His brow furrowed. "The Council outlaws meltdown interference. You said it yourself. Why the hell would they be carving their own runes onto a corpse?"

I studied the markings again. The lines were deliberate, not haphazard. Controlled.

"This wasn't a rogue cult," I murmured. "It wasn't a failed experiment. Someone within the Council authorized this."

Silence stretched between us.

Asterion let out a slow, measured breath. His fingers curled slightly at his sides, his body still tense from the battle. He had fought enough wars to know what this meant.

We weren't just dealing with a scattered group of zealots anymore.

We were dealing with an institution.

"So let me guess," he muttered, rubbing a hand down his face. "We're not hunting the last of the cultists."

I shook my head.

He let out a dry laugh. "Which means we're going to Aetherion."

"We don't have a choice."

A pause.

Then Asterion's gaze flicked to me, sharp and knowing. "You want to walk into Aetherion and start asking questions?"

His voice was careful now, but not out of fear—out of understanding. Because he already knew my answer. Because he already knew me.

I smirked faintly. "Then we won't ask."

Aetherion was locked behind layers of authority, guarded by men who believed in their own absolute control over reality itself. It was a place where questions led to burials. Where answers were locked behind chains of influence and power. Experience exclusive tales on My Virtual Library Empire

But I didn't need to ask for permission.

I only needed a way in.

The leyline had been twisted once. It would be twisted again. And whoever thought they could control it, manipulate it, use it—

They were about to learn that not all dead men stayed dead.

And neither did their secrets.