The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 565: The Anchor’s Awakening

With a sudden, violent shudder, fissures tore open around me, forming jagged maws of emptiness. From these cracks spilled shapes, moaning, hissing, their eyes a luminous yellow that matched the sky. Each creature moved as if it were formed of molten shadow, limbs shifting and overlapping with no clear boundary of flesh. A dozen of them, maybe more, each one eager to tear me apart. A test, indeed.

They were illusions given flesh, or perhaps twisted denizens of this realm. I had no way of knowing which. Nor did it matter. My blade rasped against its sheath as I drew it in a single, fluid motion. My heart thudded once, releasing a cool flood of adrenaline through my veins, clearing the haze from my mind. If these creatures wanted to stop me, they’d learn quickly how stubborn I could be.

The first one lunged, mouth opening in a silent snarl that revealed rows of glinting fangs. I pivoted, letting it snap at empty air while I drove my sword through its flank. The sensation was like cutting through liquid shadow, neither solid nor gaseous. It screeched, the sound warping as though heard underwater, sending a shiver through my body. Another creature swooped in from above, its limbs splayed out like insect legs, each tipped with a curved talon. I ducked, slicing upward, and felt the blade catch something momentarily real before it unraveled in a swirl of black mist.

A third shape, bulkier than the others, scuttled forward. Too many eyes blinked across its featureless face, each orb glowing with malignant intent. It darted in a zigzag pattern, forcing me to shift my stance constantly. My boots scraped the brittle ground as I struggled to keep from losing balance near the gaping chasms. With each step, the anchor runes pulsed, feeding off the conflict, or perhaps reacting to the raw magic in the air.

I refused to yield. My movements were direct, merciless. A slash severed tendrils that reached for my leg, a swift kick sent one monstrosity tumbling back into a crack where it vanished in a puff of sparks. The largest of them lunged for my throat, but I rammed my shoulder into its twisting mass, feeling an icy burn against my skin where it touched me. I hissed in pain, ignoring the dull shock that lanced through my arm. The creature’s hiss faltered, and I drove my blade straight through the center of its mass. It convulsed, dissolving into a cold vapor that stunk of ozone and regret.

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The anchor runes glowed brighter now, responding to each wave of violence. The swirling illusions felt more frantic, as though the realm knew I was close to escaping. My mana flickered inside me, a paltry flame, but still enough to impose my will on these final obstacles. My mind worked at a fevered pace, half of me fending off the creatures, half weaving together a makeshift incantation. Words I’d read in hidden texts tumbled through my memory, forming a chain of syllables that drew arcs of faint power around my hands.

The creatures hissed and recoiled, their luminous eyes flicking to the runes as well. It was as if they knew the anchor spelled their end, or perhaps it promised freedom from this cursed domain. Either way, they redoubled their efforts, lunging in pairs or clusters, each strike more desperate. I parried with an economy of motion, refusing to waste an inch of movement. Even so, bruises formed where their too-solid limbs collided with me. My pulse hammered in my ears, a constant reminder that if I misstepped, I’d tumble into the hungry cracks that encircled me.

A savage grin curled my lips. I’d been in worse scrapes. I’d lived through abominations of necromancy, illusions that toyed with the senses, betrayals that left entire towers in ruin. This was just another battlefield, and I knew how to carve out a victory. The runes at my feet flared in time with my heartbeat, a staccato rhythm building toward a crescendo. My breath came in ragged pulls, but my gaze stayed cold and resolute.

The illusions pressed in, forming a ring of shadowy shapes that slithered and chittered among themselves. They were waiting for me to exhaust myself, to slip up just once. But I had no intention of giving them that satisfaction. I slammed a boot into the nearest monster, sending it crashing against two others, then spun and slashed through yet another cluster. Their forms parted like cloth beneath a sharp blade, unraveling into wisps of colorless smoke.

Now. It had to be now.

I placed one hand on the trunk, the other still gripping my sword. My mana flared, threads of it weaving into the runes. The swirling illusions shrieked, converging as if they felt the final wave coming. Pain etched lines of fire along my arms as I forced energy into the anchor, compelling it to awaken. The stone under my palm heated rapidly, almost searing my glove, but I held fast. No turning back. My surroundings blurred, edges folding in like the corners of a crumpled page. The illusions screeched in dissonant unison, clawing at the air where I stood.

A single, decisive push. I ground my teeth, funneling the last scraps of arcane power from within me. The anchor responded with a brilliant surge of light, lines of runic script igniting across the spire and trunk, linking together in a lattice that extended into the sky. The entire area trembled. The illusions spasmed, some disintegrating on the spot while others fled shrieking into the cracks. The glow spiraled upward, a twisting column of luminescence that yanked at my body like a vortex.

Everything collapsed at once. The realm folded inward, colors and shapes blending into a single tunnel of radiance. My body felt weightless, my senses overloaded by the onslaught of impossible sensations. Heat and cold waged war beneath my skin, and my vision sparked with afterimages that threatened to blind me. Pain hammered through my temples, and I let out a voiceless gasp. But I held on, refusing to relinquish the incantation, refusing to be swallowed by illusions.

Somewhere, deep in the swirling chaos, I thought I glimpsed Belisarius’s face again—a half-formed visage caught in the same current, but it winked out before I could register if it was truly him or just one last trick of the Tapestry. My breath hitched. If he was here, or half-here, I had no time to confront him. My only goal was escape.

I felt the tear opening. The place I’d carved out with raw will and fragile mana. My mind reeled as the unstoppable force of the anchor’s awakened power wrenched me through an impossible gap in reality. I sensed the realm behind me collapsing, cracks devouring illusions, the ground spiraling into its own emptiness. The thunderous roar of a dying dimension filled my ears, but no sound could match the roar within me—my heartbeat pounding a singular message: survive.

Then the entire world folded inward, a final, blinding cascade of light and sound—

—and then I was gone.

_________________

House Valemore stood in eerie silence. The once-thrashing energies had settled, though the air still crackled with residual magic, like faint sparks drifting across a scorched battlefield long after the main onslaught has ended. The courtyard bore the scars of a conflict that had teetered on the edge of cosmic disaster—fallen bodies strewn about in haphazard clusters, shattered stone littering what used to be regal walkways, and the faint shimmer of a rift that refused to fully close. Even in its subdued form, that rift pulsed with an unmistakable wrongness, an echo of something bigger and darker that lurked beyond mortal perception.

Lorik sat slumped against a broken column, each breath a shallow rasp that betrayed the depths of his exhaustion. The weight of his spellcasting had done more than just drain him physically; it had hollowed out his spirit, leaving him trembling in the aftermath of unimaginable forces. A sheen of sweat coated his brow, mingling with the grime and soot that had worked its way into every crease of his robes. Were it not for the slight rise and fall of his chest, one might have believed he was on the verge of death. In some ways, he felt he was—if not in body, then in spirit.

Around him, two groups loomed like wolves unsure whether to devour one another or unite against a common threat. On Lorik’s left stood the Council enforcers, men and women clad in the Tower’s dark leather and steel, their expressions hardened by years of strict discipline and unwavering loyalty. Their eyes flickered with suspicion, a cold readiness that suggested they might draw steel at the slightest provocation. On Lorik’s right, the Gravekeepers, garbed in robes the color of midnight, moved with quiet grace that belied their brutal efficiency. Their faces were obscured, some by deep hoods, others by carefully tied veils, but every one of them radiated the calm, lethal air of those who traverse forbidden paths daily.

Between these two factions, a tenuous truce held. Barely. Like a fraying rope bridging a chasm, it threatened to snap at any moment should tensions rise again. More than once, a Council enforcer or a Gravekeeper would glance at the other side with a scowl or a glare, as if remembering just how close they’d come to killing one another minutes ago. Yet the devastation that lingered in the courtyard reminded them all of why they needed this uneasy ceasefire.

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"He’s lost between worlds," Lorik murmured, the words escaping his lips as more of a sigh than a statement. His eyes fluttered with fatigue, trying and failing to maintain focus. "Exiled by the Tapestry."

A Gravekeeper commander, draped in robes embroidered with cryptic sigils, narrowed his gaze at Lorik. His voice, when it came, was a quiet hiss that seemed to slice the air. "And you’re certain of this?"

Lorik managed a wan smirk, though the exhaustion etched into his features turned it into something closer to a grimace. "Certain enough," he said, letting his head rest against the fractured column behind him. "If you interfere further, you’ll do more harm than good."

A pregnant silence followed. Thick tension pressed down on every soul in that courtyard. None of them liked Lorik’s words, but all had witnessed the chaotic power unleashed by the near-complete tear in reality. They’d seen how the rift spewed arcane fury, warping the environment and threatening to tear open a passage that no mortal was prepared to handle. Even the most stubborn among them couldn’t deny that something extraordinary—and extraordinarily dangerous—had taken place.

The Council’s envoy, a woman with iron-gray hair slicked back into a tight braid, stepped forward. Her eyes carried the sharp gleam of someone who had spent her life in rigorous study of arcane matters, but the lines at her brow indicated that recent events had pushed her far beyond her comfort zone. "Then we need to act fast," she said, each word clipped, measured. "The longer this breach lingers, the greater the risk."

"Risk?" echoed one of her subordinates, a younger enforcer whose confidence had been rattled by the swirling chaos they’d barely survived. "You saw what that place did. It almost swallowed us." He gestured at the shimmer still flickering around the edges of the rift, as if it might flare to life again at any second.

The Gravekeeper commander turned his hooded visage toward the speaking enforcer, then lifted his chin in a gesture that conveyed both disdain and urgency. "And what do you suggest?" he asked, voice cool as winter steel. "That we leave it to chance? That we pretend Belisarius isn’t stirring?"

Lorik let out a bitter laugh that devolved into a coughing fit. One of the Council enforcers reflexively took a step forward, half-reaching to help, but froze under the glare of the Gravekeepers. Regaining control of his breath, Lorik wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and fixed them all with a look that was equal parts fury and resignation. "You think you can control this?" he rasped, pressing a hand to his chest. "You think you have a choice?"

His words settled over the courtyard like a suffocating blanket. More than a few sets of eyes flicked toward the bodies that lay sprawled on the ground, casualties of a battle that had turned into a cosmic standoff. One soldier, bearing the Tower’s emblem on his shoulder, stared at the broken form of a fellow enforcer who hadn’t survived the arcane onslaught. A Gravekeeper with a bleeding gash across her side bit her lip, her expression hidden behind the darkness of her hood, yet the tension in her posture revealed grief as potent as her anger.

The Council’s envoy inhaled slowly, knuckles whitening around the staff she held. "If there’s anything left to do, we do it now," she said, her tone measured but firm. "We can’t allow the Tapestry to fracture further. You know that as well as anyone here. Draven’s disappearance might just be the beginning."

The Gravekeeper commander’s gaze flicked to Lorik and then back to the swirling shimmer of the rift. "We have studied the Tapestry for centuries. We know its ways. We know what it demands. If Belisarius’s thread is indeed being forcibly rewoven—" He paused, letting the implication linger. "Well, we won’t stand idle. If we must find him, we will. If we must shape his emergence, we will."

Lorik offered a hollow chuckle. "You can try," he said. "But Belisarius might not be the only threat. Draven, lost in some corner of reality, is hardly the type to stay lost. If he returns…" Another coughing spasm shook him, and he tasted the tang of blood in his mouth. He forced himself to swallow. "You’ve both seen what he can do."