The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 624: The Unexpected Name (3)

The moment the leyline ruptured, reality collapsed around us, and everything I knew about the world twisted into a nightmare of contorted space and raw magic. It happened so abruptly that my mind took precious instants to catch up, as if it was trying to override its own disbelief. One heartbeat, I stood on solid ground with the world's foundations stable beneath me; the next, I found myself catapulted into a void of howling energy that devoured all sense of direction.

Everything—gravity, movement, perspective—shattered into a thousand fragments, each reflecting some warped echo of reality. In that first breathless second, my eyes refused to focus on any single shape or color. It was as if I had been dragged inside a kaleidoscope that kept spinning faster and faster. My body, or whatever was left of it in this tumult, felt like it was being stretched infinitely thin and then snapped back together in a vicious loop. Pain flared along every nerve, like electricity surging through my veins with nowhere else to go, each jolt a reminder that I was still painfully alive.

I forced myself to draw a breath—if only to prove that my lungs still functioned. The air, if I could even call it that, seared my throat with an alien burn. It tasted of ozone, like the aftershock of lightning, but there was also a faint tang of something older, almost decayed. Each ragged inhale felt like I was inhaling shards of glass. My vision blurred, dark spots swimming across my field of view, merging with the swirling currents of mana that surrounded us.

In the midst of this chaos, Kyrion's form flickered at the edge of my awareness. He was a pale silhouette against the violent tapestry of the leyline's unraveling, his necromantic aura coiling around him like an uneasy shield. At times, it seemed to vanish entirely, as if the raw magic sought to tear it away. He hovered, half-solid, half-spirit, every angle of his body distorted by the savage waves of power. I could see the tension etched into his features—his jaw clenched, lips peeled back in an agonized snarl. Although the cacophony swallowed most sound, I could still pick out fragments of his breathless curses, carried like echoes into the swirling void.

He fought back with the tenacity of a cornered beast. The necromancy he wielded—usually so chillingly effective—was devoured before it could take shape. From the corner of my eye, I watched a coil of black energy lash out from his hands, only to disintegrate into sparkling motes of mana. It was like watching water poured into a voracious fire. The friction between the leyline's pure, brutal magic and Kyrion's darker spells produced sparks that danced madly in every direction, each short-lived flare bringing a momentary strobe of searing brightness.

My own predicament was no better. The Devil's Pen, that volatile instrument of curses and brimstone, vibrated so violently it threatened to escape my grip. It felt hot enough to burn a hole right through my palm. Each heartbeat carried a dull, pulsing ache up my arm, like the Pen itself was furious at being contained within forces more primal than its own darkness. There were times when I felt its hunger, that craving for more power, almost overshadow my rational thought. But the chaos around us was so overwhelming that even the Devil's Pen seemed momentarily cowed by it.

My mind, trained in logic and honed by countless battles, screamed at me to take control. Calculations flickered across my consciousness, attempts to bend these frantic energies to my will. But everything was too wild, too massive. The vortex of mana refused to submit to reason. It was a raw force of creation and destruction both, indifferent to mortal intellect.

The environment morphed relentlessly—jagged edges of shattered space forming and collapsing in moments. The swirling arcs of color sometimes resembled shattered glass catching the light, other times rivers of molten energy. All the while, I felt myself come unmoored from any stable identity. I was Draven, yes, but also something else, some scattered series of instincts and recollections. My sense of self fragmented, tested by the raw fury of the leyline. If I relaxed my mental grip for a moment, I feared I would dissolve into that swirling insanity, reduced to a memory.

Then the visions came.

They slipped in through the cracks of my consciousness like thieves in the night, images that were both intimately familiar and utterly foreign. I saw a towering spire of obsidian rising against an endless night sky. The spire hummed with such concentrated magic that the surrounding air shimmered and bent around it as if caught in a constant heat haze. Within that spire, a council of robed mages gathered around a circular table. They were locked in debate—some standing, some tapping their fingers, others simply closing their eyes in silent contemplation. At the center of the table rested a single tome, its cover glowing with faint, shifting symbols that changed as if aware of the conversation. I watched, transfixed, as the pages turned by themselves, arcane script slithering across the paper.

Although I had never physically stepped into that place, a bizarre sense of recognition knotted in my chest. This council. That obsidian spire. Something about them felt… right, yet horrifying. Like recalling a nightmare you half-convinced yourself was only a dream. My instincts whispered that this was not just an illusion conjured by the leyline; it was a fragment of real history, a memory forcibly replayed by the roiling energies that now consumed us.

I struggled to cling to the fleeting glimpses. Through it all, Kyrion's pained gasps anchored me to the present. His eyes, flicking open in irregular bursts, still held that glimmer of defiance. I forced myself to respond in kind, summoning a surge of willpower to keep myself intact. If I lost my grip here, we would be lost to the void, our bodies and minds shredded into raw magic.

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We couldn't let that happen.

Still, the illusions continued. More voices—some urgent, some resigned—swam around us, their words layering into a symphony of despair and warning. Some invoked catastrophic prophecies, speaking of cyclical apocalypses and a "Cycle of Decay." Others argued about lesser evils, the possibility of sealing forbidden powers away rather than eradicating them. And behind all these half-formed murmurs loomed a single, unspoken presence—some intangible entity whose mere suggestion made the illusions recoil as though fearful to name it.

Suddenly, with no warning, the tempest stilled.

It wasn't a gradual lull. One moment, the chaos was about to swallow us whole; the next, we stood in absolute silence, as if the swirling energy had been paused mid-motion. Vivid arcs of magic froze in place like droplets of paint on an invisible canvas. My heart thundered in my ears, still reeling from the abrupt shift. For several seconds, I couldn't fully register that I was once again upright, my feet on what felt like a smooth, polished floor.

Blinking away the spots in my vision, I saw we were in a massive chamber of obsidian. Walls curved gracefully upward, meeting in a vaulted ceiling that shimmered with hidden runes. Dim veins of arcane light snaked through the glossy stone, pulsating with a heartbeat all their own. The atmosphere felt charged, thick with memory, heavy enough that each breath tasted of old spells and time-lost secrets.

Kyrion stood close by, his posture unsteady. He pressed a hand to his temple as though nursing a migraine, his eyes flicking from side to side, taking in the newly revealed space. His breathing rasped in the sudden stillness. I could practically feel the tension radiating from him—an undercurrent of anger, fear, and awe. He had no more answers than I did.

I recognized this place before I consciously remembered its name. It matched the vision from only moments ago. The black stone, the swirling runes, the sense of age and gravity… This was the Council Chamber. Or rather, an echo of it. My lips thinned. We had glimpsed the edges of something that should not exist anymore, and yet here we were, trespassers in a memory older than any living scholar.

Kyrion let out a shaky breath, trying to force steadiness into his voice. "Where the hell are we?"