The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 706: The Call From The Elven Council (4)

The path into the Hollow of Origins coiled downward in soft half-circles, each bend swallowing a little more daylight until greens faded to cool, watery blues. Sylvanna's footfalls kept an even rhythm, but every few steps she felt the ground's living pulse answer— thump, thump— as though the forest were counting the intruder's heartbeats.

A wardancer dropped back to close the line, leaf-motif cloak brushing her shoulder just long enough to steer her away from a dangling rope of night-bloom ivy. The gesture was wordless courtesy, yet the warrior's other hand never strayed far from the curved dagger at his hip. Trust, she noted, was still a negotiation.

Above, through a slotted arch of braided roots, the Guardian crouched on a watchers' ledge carved for spirits, not beasts. Raëdrithar's chest rose in slow tidal swells, silver eye tracking her every step. Lightning quivered under its pelt—tiny white threads trying to decide whether to hiss or to rest.

Easy, she whispered along the bond. A single answering pulse rolled through her collarbone rune—calm enough, but edged with the impatience of a storm held on a leash.

Wind funneled through the downward shaft, carrying the undergrove's chill. It smelled of wet loam, crushed fern, and the faint metallic sweetness of sap freshly bled for ward-ink. The air kissed sweat across her upper lip and cooled the heat still lingering in her arms from last night's bonding surge. She flexed her fingers; faint blue motes nipped at her nails, then winked out.

At the first landing the wardancers paused, communicating with the barest tilt of brows. The lead—tall, hair bound in serpent-tight coils—unhooked a polished seed from his belt and pressed it to the wall. Green runes flared and a curtain of vines unlatched, revealing the true entrance: a gaping tunnel that breathed pale phosphor.

"Last chance to turn back," he said, Elharn accent clipping the Trade-tongue like shears on cloth. Not threat; ritual.

Sylvanna met his gaze. "If I wanted easy paths, I'd still be selling beast parts in night markets."

A spark of respect—or perhaps amusement—flickered in the soldier's eyes. He stepped aside.

The tunnel narrowed, swallowing sound. With each descent-step, floor-roots fattened underfoot, their bark a deep iron-brown veined with dull cobalt light. That light throbbed—faster now, syncing to her breathing instead of her heart. She felt as if the Hollow were tasting the cadence of her lungs, memorizing the measure.

Her escort's footsteps faded behind her; they would advance no farther. When she glanced back, the wardancers stood sentinel at the threshold, palms crossed in formal salute, faces an even blend of caution and wonder. One offered a brief nod—good luck, or perhaps farewell—before the vine curtain sealed shut, knitting leaf to leaf with a faint click like a lock sliding home.

Alone, Sylvanna exhaled. Her breath fogged in the cool glow, drifting up to vanish among root-ribs arching overhead. She listened: distant water dripped hollowly, five slow beats apart. The timing felt deliberate, as if the chamber itself marked moments.

Raëdrithar? She pushed the thought outward, testing range. A distant rumble in her sternum—I wait.—then the sensation withdrew, leaving her strangely lighter.

The corridor opened without warning, roots peeling aside like stage curtains to reveal the Hollow of Origins. Even prepared, she stopped short.

The space resembled a giant lung, every wall a tapestry of interwoven roots, thick as ship masts where they anchored, fine as harp strings where they crisscrossed upward. Thin membranes of glowing sap stretched between some of the thicker cords, pulsing amber whenever the forest above breathed. High overhead, a single fissure let in a blade of dawn-blue light; dust motes drifted through it like galaxies on slow spin.

At the center, a spiral dais rose knee-high. It reminded her of a seashell turned inside-out, each coil a ridge of glossy dark wood. Where the ridges met, bluish sap beaded and fell in viscous droplets, sizzling when they struck the inlaid symbols etched into the floor. Those symbols shone a muted gold, sleepy now yet hinting they could blaze bright enough to blind.

For a breath she simply watched the rhythm: drop, sizzle, pulse. The Hollow felt less like a room than the aorta of something ancient, pumping memory instead of blood.

She forced her legs to move. Boots whispered over living grain, the soles warming as wood recognized her weight. At three paces from the dais an invisible tension pressed against her shins—one last unspoken question. She stepped through, and the pressure broke like thin ice.

Close now, she could see the spiral's beginning: a single root no thicker than her wrist, driven point-first into the floor so long ago that the tree had grown around it. It hummed, note so low she heard it only through bones.

She knelt. The motion felt ceremonial though no one had coached her. Fingers hovered, trembling, then settled on bark warm as sun-baked stone.

The pulse that leapt into her skin stole breath from her lungs. Hot, cold, familiar, alien—contradictions braided tight. Under her palms the spiral brightened, blue deepening to indigo. Tiny sparks popped where sap met air, filling the chamber with the smell of rain striking hot granite. Her rune answered—one hard thump, two quick flutters—before stabilizing to a steady drum.

Her vision blurred; she blinked and saw the spiral turning beneath her hands though her fingers no longer moved. No, she realized, it's the world that's moving. The dais revolved in slow silence, carrying her downward without a single jolt. Light funneled toward her eyes, brightening to brilliant white.

Her last conscious thought: Trust the roots. They remember.

Light dragged her down.

_____

She stood—no, existed—in a forest woven from living constellations, each star a bead of bright memory strung on threads of ink‑black space. The trunks around her were pillars of frozen dawn, their bark rippling with slow galaxies that turned like thoughts inside a sleeping god. When cosmic wind stirred those impossible branches the leaves—vast thunderheads the colour of wet slate—rubbed together and birthed white spears of lightning that lanced upward instead of down, stitching new constellations overhead.

She took a breath. It tasted of rain on hot metal, of cedar smoke drifting over winter rivers, of every scent the Guardian had ever carried in its fur. The air slid into her chest with silky weight and settled in her ribs like a second set of lungs. A single exhale fogged into faint runes before vanishing. She realised even her breath could write here.

Movement: not her own. Steps guided her forward although her knees never bent. The ground, formed of interlaced roots glowing faint sea‑green, conveyed her the way deep tide conveys a drifting boat. Where those roots overlapped she glimpsed pinwheels of starlight turning beneath, as though the whole world rode upon a mirror of sky.

An almost‑voice pressed around her. It was not heard but felt—soft as lullaby, old as thunder, carrying welcome and warning braided tight. The roots under her boots thrummed in duet with that pressure, each vibration a syllable. Together they said Remember.

She wanted to ask what exactly she must remember, but her mouth would not form sound. It did not feel like silencing; it felt like language here required a different gate than lips. So she listened instead, letting the rhythm guide her.

The living path split open into a glade wide as a cathedral, its dome a wheeling map of meteors. At its heart lay a lake that mirrored nothing yet reflected everything: black glass shot through with veins of argent storm‑light. Forked flashes crawled across its surface, anchoring briefly before sinking, like fish of pure electricity.

On the far shore a silhouette waited—tall, lupine, limned in mist that churned with quiet voltage. The sight pulled a gasp from her throat, and the air of this realm captured the sound, turning the gasp into a spiral of pale glyphs that drifted toward the water and vanished with a soft sizzle.

Twin moons opened in the creature's face—eyes round and mournfully bright, carrying histories by the thousand. Lightning ticked across its outline, not violent now but curious, the way fireflies test a summer field. Each spark left the after‑smell of wet stone and new beginnings.

Her heart recognised before her mind did. Guardian. Yet she sensed the word was too small. This was not the beast who prowled beneath Verenthal's bridges; this was the thought of that beast, the blueprint the world had drafted before fur, before bone.

Her knees bent of their own accord. The descent felt less like kneeling to power and more like meeting an equal across differing altitudes. Cool root‑fillaments rose to cushion her shins, humming welcome.

Wind that was not wind whipped her braid loose, strands of copper hair flaring around her face as though gravity had forgotten its script. Still she did not flinch. The being padded forward, each step skimming the lake without ripple. When it halted, the mist parted enough for her to see that its body was not flesh at all but layered storm‑light: overlapping plates of cloud, ribs of aurora, a spine stitched from spears of dawn.

It lowered its colossal head until a muzzle of swirling haze nearly touched her brow. Static built in the inches between. She smelled eucalyptus, charred oak, the memory of summer rain on childhood rooftops. Sparks the size of grains of sand danced in the space, forming micro‑runes that spelled nothing she knew—yet their pattern felt like gentle laughter.

The creature considered her. She felt it rummage through her spirit as a healer palpates bruised muscle: clinical yet kind, testing where her scars lay, how deep the new runes had rooted. She offered no resistance, spreading her palms on her thighs in silent permission. Let it see everything—her ambition that once warped into cruelty, her guilt heavy as chain, her wonder that refused to die. The inspection burned, but it burned clean.

A sound formed—inside her eardrums yet outside her mind. It carried the crisp pop of splitting ice and the basso hush of a waterfall heard from miles away. The dual note compressed into a single impression that slid behind her eyes: Raëdrithar.

The name was not a label; it was a map. She saw lightning rerouted through ancient treetops, felt monsoon winds funnelled into harvest rain, tasted ozone tempered into medicine by druidic hands. This being had carried storms for eons, bearing thunder through silence so younger species could dream beneath calm skies. He Who Bears Thunder Through Silence.

Her own name fluttered inside her chest, small as moth wings beside that history. Tears, unasked for, welled and slid warm down chilled cheeks.

The entity watched one tear fall. Where it struck the auroral mist, a sapphire petal bloomed, then dissipated. A pact was being written, stroke by stroke, in language older than gods.

Her lips parted—she felt them move without conscious will—and the name rolled out, syllables tasting of crackling pine and midnight surf:

"Raëdrithar."