The blue glow of the System screen faded, leaving Raziel alone with his thoughts and the sound of his roommate's snoring in the dark.
That night, sleep did not come, but time still kept moving forward, without mercy.
The next afternoon, when Raziel entered the dormitory, he found his roommate, Elijah, busy reading a book.
"Elijah," Raziel said to get his attention as he closed the door.
The boy looked up, frowning a little at the interruption, but he relaxed when he saw who it was.
"Raziel, I did not think you would return so soon. How was practice?"
Raziel sighed and ran a hand through his sweaty hair, feeling the tiredness in his bones.
"Hard, as always, but I am managing."
He flexed his sore arm, testing how much the muscle complained.
Elijah nodded, thoughtful, and closed his book carefully.
"It is good to hear that, you have been pushing yourself and it shows."
He paused, shifting his eyes toward the worn practice sword Raziel had just leaned against his bed.
"Although I must say, I still do not understand why you like those crude weapons so much."
Raziel shrugged, making it sound like nothing.
"You have to be ready for anything, do you not?"
That was the way of thinking that kept him alive, and especially now that the Novice Trials were getting close.
The Novice Trials were a three-part evaluation.
Priest. Bard. Scribe.
Everyone cared about the order they placed in.
Raziel cared about one thing: keeping Marius from getting a clear look at what he actually was.
The Priest trial was first.
Main cathedral.
Every novice in front of the Church faculty, asked to deliver a passage from the Book of Hymns in a way that reached the whole space.
Not just the words.
More like the meaning behind them.
Most novices memorized a crowd-pleasing passage and spoke with as much conviction as they could fake.
Raziel picked the hardest passage in the book.
The one about endurance.
He didn't do it to impress anyone, he did it because he knew that passage backwards and forwards.
He had spoken it at funerals, bedsides and in the middle of burning streets, because the best lies are the ones you can actually believe while you're telling them.
He stood at the altar.
Every eye in the hall was on him.
He felt the weight of the space, the high ceiling, the long rows of polished wood.
And then, for exactly one second, the wrong memory hit him.
The same ceiling.
Blood on the tile. The choir kids scattered.
He pushed it down. Hard. He'd done that before.
He took a breath and started talking.
Not about obedience.
Not about the fear of damnation.
He spoke about the orphans he'd known, the ones who woke up in a broken world every day and still found things to laugh about.
He spoke about what it actually felt like to believe in something when everything around you was giving you a hundred reasons not to.
He spoke every word from memory, in the right form, with the right syntax, and he meant every single one of them.
When he finished, the silence lasted about three seconds.
Brother Matthias started clapping then the rest of the room followed.
[Initiation Mission: PRIEST TRIAL — COMPLETE]
Raziel stepped off the platform.
He kept his face neutral. Gave the examiners a short nod.
He was walking toward the door when he stopped.
His neck went cold.
It wasn't anxiety.
He'd felt anxiety before and this was different, this was the instinct that had kept him working in a war zone, the one that said 'someone is looking at you with intent.'
He scanned the cathedral. Candles, stone, shadows. The back of the hall was darker.
There. Between two pillars.
A silhouette, tall and completely still.
He held eye contact with the spot for one second. The silhouette didn't move.
He turned and walked out.
Outside, in the afternoon light, his shoulders dropped exactly one inch.
'Whatever that was, it was watching the trial. Which means it was watching me.'
Problem for later, once he had more information.
"Quite the sermon."
Lucian was leaning against a column outside the cathedral entrance, his usual group arranged around him.
Gideon had his big arms folded.
Mark was looking at his shoes.
"You almost made me cry," Lucian said flatly without sarcasm, just a statement of something he hadn't expected to happen and didn't know what to do with.
"I'll add it to my list of achievements," Raziel said.
"Don't." Lucian pushed off the column and fell into step beside him.
"Brother Matthias was literally shaking. You made a grown man shake over a hymn. That's going to get attention, and not the kind you want."
Raziel looked at him.
Lucian shrugged, irritable. "I'm not doing you a favor. Marius grades the Scribe test personally and he was already watching you before you went up there. If you walk in and do whatever that was again, he will decide what you are and he won't decide 'prodigy'."
"What will he decide?"
"Something that involves a very small room and a very long interview."
Raziel processed that. It was useful information, delivered grudgingly, from someone who could have just stayed quiet.
"Why are you telling me this?"
Lucian looked annoyed, which was his default expression for things he didn't have a clean answer to.
"Because you standing next to me with a target on your back is inconvenient. Don't read into it."
"I wouldn't dare," Raziel said.
A girl appeared at Lucian's elbow, nudging him aside to get through the door.
"It was more than theatrical," she said, directed at Raziel. "What you said about the orphans, that was real. People could tell."
Raziel looked at her.
She had pink short hair and a calm expression. The specific kind of focused gaze that meant she was actually processing what she observed instead of just ranking it.
No System window.
"Lara Whitecliff," Lucian said, his tone was different on her name.
"Good sermon," Lara said, and moved on.
Lucian watched her go for a beat longer than he meant to, then cleared his throat.
"Scribe room. East Wing. Try to be unremarkable for once."