The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 713: Sylara’s Inner Turmoil (3)

Sylvanna hovered at the boundary where lantern-light surrendered to fog, arms folded tight across her ribs as though she could cage the jagged flutter of her pulse. Damp air licked her face, tasting of woodsmoke and nerves. Inside the ring of tents, cook fires guttered in shallow pits, their embers pulsing like watchful eyes. Every snap of burning resin punctuated another whisper.

"She's like Virellionn," a sentry muttered, voice pitched just above the creak of leather straps.

"Storm-bearer… or storm-bringer?" answered another, words dissolving as soon as they left his mouth.

The comments weren't loud, yet they seemed to multiply, overlapping in a hush that grew heavier than rain-soaked cloaks. She felt them skim her skin—shy glances, quick aversions, the practiced angle of shoulders pretending indifference. Even the half-elves, usually boisterous after ration call, busied themselves with meaningless tasks: polishing buckles already gleaming, counting fletchings they'd tallied twice before. Their avoidance stung worse than open scorn.

Raëdrithar sensed her tension. The great guardian pressed his flank to her side, fur alive with quiet sparks that winked out against her sleeve. His bulk cut the damp like a wall, offering shelter yet amplifying distance. Anyone looking her way saw not a woman, but a storm walking on four thunderous paws.

Boots crunched frost-stiff moss. Vaelira Greenbark emerged from the haze, armored silhouette scalpel-sharp against the lantern glow. Her moss-iron plates were streaked with dried sap and soot, testament to hours spent hauling wounded rather than holding court. She stopped a spear's length away—close enough for warmth to pass between them, far enough to honor boundaries.

"The camp fears you, Sylvanna." Vaelira's tone managed courtesy and blunt honesty in the same breath. "They see the storm, but not the anchor."

Sylvanna's fingers tightened on her bow grip. She kept her voice low, mindful of eavesdropping shadows. "I didn't choose the storm."

"No," Vaelira allowed, silver eyes narrowing, "but you chose to wield it. They don't understand the cost." A beat of silence. "Teach them."

Sylvanna looked past the princess at rows of dark shapes—soldiers, healers, scribes—each one carrying their own ledger of loss. Teach them? How, when lightning was the only language she spoke fluently? She opened her mouth, found no answer, closed it again. Raëdrithar rumbled, lending her backbone when her own felt thin.

Wind stirred the camp flags, carrying the resin scent of burning pine. Footsteps approached—measured, inevitable. Draven arrived flanked by the hush that always preceded him, cloak drifting like spilled ink around his boots. Pollen dusted his shoulders, tiny sparks of gold catching torchlight before sliding away. His eyes, pale and cutting, swept the assembly as if sorting components on a workbench.

"Listen closely," he said, and conversations died as though snipped. "Whisperroot is our target. Sylvanna leads the vanguard—her storm cuts through corruption." No flourish, no preamble; only the crisp clack of decision. Markers clicked in the air with every word. "Vaelira's Vanguard follows for support. Should the primary asset deviate from operational tolerance—"

He left the sentence hanging like a blade suspended by fraying twine.

Vaelira's voice completed it, firm enough to still a shiver. "We maintain containment." She didn't look at Sylvanna, perhaps unwilling to share the hurt she felt honoring that clause.

The words hollowed Sylvanna's chest, yet she dipped her chin. Accept the burden, or let fear define her. Raëdrithar's low hum vibrated through the bond: You stand, so stand tall.

Draven pivoted, cloak stirring a ring of mist. "Gear check in two minutes. We move on the third." Then he was gone, absorbed by tent shadows.

A corporal lingered nearby, helmet clutched to his chest. His knuckles were bloodless. "Storm-bearer," he blurted, unable to hold the question. "You won't… lose yourself out there, will you?" His youth showed in the crack of his voice.

Sylvanna softened her stance. "I've spent my life finding who I am. I won't misplace her tonight." It was half reassurance, half plea—but the corporal straightened, exhaled, and strode back to his squad with a fraction less dread in his shoulders.

The column formed beyond the supply wagons, torches hooded to dull orange eyes. Mist eddied around shins, swirled up whenever a soldier shifted weight. Draven took the rear, his presence a dark spear buttressing the formation. Vaelira threaded her vanguard along the flanks—silent shadows, shields wrapped in burlap to mute the clang of steel.

They stepped into the forest's waiting throat. Moist air thickened, turning breath into fleeting ghosts. Pale light filtered through ragged canopy gaps, mottling the path with bruised emerald. Boots plunged into spongy moss that sighed at every tread, releasing earthy breath like graves giving up secrets.

Scouts ghosted ahead, returning in pairs to relay uneasy tidings: birds spotted with ember eyes circling in erratic spirals; tangles of ivy exuding black sap that hissed where it met living bark. The rot felt omnipresent, a foul perfume saturating every fern frond. Sylvanna catalogued each sign, the analyst in her noting toxin bloom patterns, the tamer mourning twisted instincts.

Raëdrithar padded beside her, shoulders tense beneath crackling fur. Static popped at random, tiny flares illuminating droplets clinging to his coat. Each spark gave him the look of a walking constellation—beautiful, fearsome, lonely. freeωebnovēl.c૦m

A twig snapped ahead. From the bank of shadow a figure lurched—dryad once, now a marionette of corrupted root. Eyes blazed molten amber; fingers elongated into spear-thin claws. It launched. Sylvanna reacted before thought: bow up, string singing, arrow loosed with a hiss of ionized air. Lightning chased the shaft, detonated on impact. Splinters and cinders spiraled; the thing was gone.

The silence that followed was thicker than the mist. A soldier near the rear stumbled back, bile in his voice. "Did you see her face? The storm—she's like Virellionn." His fear sprayed contagion; others shifted, muttering.

Raëdrithar turned his head, silver eye locking onto the frightened man. A rumble rolled, not threatening, but ancient and disappointed. The soldier swallowed, gaze dropping to muddy boots.

Vaelira's command sliced through the uncertainty. "Focus. Fear won't save you." She paced the line, armor whispering authority. No one argued.

Draven watched without comment, though his eyes tracked the ripple of agitation the way one studies wind lines before a lightning strike. Sylvanna pretended not to feel his gaze gauging her volatility.

They pushed deeper. Mist swelled until even Raëdrithar's outline blurred. Somewhere above, a raven screeched—a ragged sound that ended in a wet snap. No one looked up.

Sylvanna tasted metal on her tongue, ozone mixing with dread. Each breath felt borrowed. Yet the march held, step by step, fear forging its own uneasy discipline.

Raëdrithar's fur crackled, a steady pulse of low thunder warding the gloom.

Draven walked at the rear, his dark cloak a silent shadow that seemed to sip what little light filtered through the branches. Now and again damp leaves slapped the fabric, shedding silver droplets that streaked down the rune-stitched wool. He never brushed them away—each bead simply rolled off, as if the cloak refused to carry anything that wasn't mission-relevant. His gaze, sword-keen and unblinking, never strayed from Sylvanna's back for long. It was the scrutiny of a tactician taking pulse readings from a distance: How steady is she? How bright the rune? How close to overburn?

Sometimes she felt that stare before she sensed the mist, a dry chill skimming the nape of her neck. When she risked a glance, he would already be scanning elsewhere—counting heads, measuring stride variations, noting how often a recruit's hand twitched toward a weapon. The knowledge that she was one data point among many should have angered her. Instead it anchored her. Draven's vigilance promised that if she faltered, someone would notice before catastrophe bloomed.

Vaelira's Vanguard drifted along the periphery like living wisps, shields muffled in burlap, helms wrapped in dark cloth to kill any glint. Their formation never quite entered Sylvanna's peripheral vision; the moment she tried to focus on them, they slid behind trunks or folds of fog. For the rest of the column these elves were reassurance. To her they were a reminder that trust could be revoked in half a heartbeat.

And still she walked.

Sylvanna was painfully aware of every shifting eye. The scouts ahead—lean as branch shadows—sent back subtle hand signals, but whenever she passed one of them the flicker of apprehension was unmistakable: pupils flaring, nostrils thinning, fingers flexing on haft or bowstring. Even the healer at midpoint shuffled a step wider whenever Raëdrithar's paw hit the ground with a crackle.

Ally, enemy—she no longer tried to sort which stare belonged to which. It all pressed the same, a weight against her lungs that each inhalation struggled to push aside. She matched her breathing to Raëdrithar's colossal rhythm: in —-hold—-out; picture lightning coiling calm instead of storming wild. The guardian's warmth bled through the back of her arm every time his fur brushed leather. It grounded her and isolated her in the same breath.

The dryad came without warning, materializing out of a veil of vine and vapor: bark limbs fissured with tar, thorns caked in rust-colored sap. A hiss—half wind, half hunger—preceded its leap. Instinct surged. Sylvanna's glove slid; bowstring kissed calloused fingers. Lightning danced, crackling along her sleeve in a web of white-blue veins. The arrow left the string like a note plucked on a storm-harp, embedded in the creature's chest, and detonated. Thunder snapped the mist apart; char and ash scattered like dark snow.

The air heaved back into silence.

Someone gasped. A young soldier—bronze scale too big for his frame—stumbled two paces, eyes round as acorn caps. "Did you see her face?" he whispered, though the whole column could hear. "The storm—she's like Virellionn."