The Scribes' room smelled like old paper, stale ink, and the particular tension of people trying not to look nervous.
Long rows of wood desks, low candlelight along the walls and father Marius standing at the front when Raziel entered, black robe still, hands folded.
Marius was the kind of man who'd learned early that stillness communicated control.
He was correct about that.
Raziel was doing the same thing, and had been doing it for longer.
"One hour," Marius said.
"The text in front of you is a fragment of the Codex of Lamentations. Translate with precision. An error in the Goddess's word is blasphemy."
Scrolls unrolled across the room.
Raziel looked at his.
The characters were angular, archaic, one of the oldest variants of High Zhalyrian still in the Church's archives.
Most modern seminaries didn't even teach it anymore; it had three hundred years out of common use.
He'd read this exact variant at his desk for four years in his previous life.
'The skies will open, not with light but with fire, and the devoted will drink ash before they understand what struck them.'
He went cold.
This wasn't an initiation text.
This was a prophecy about the Invasion.
Which meant someone at this academy, or above it, had selected this passage deliberately.
He looked around.
Lucian was biting his quill.
Elijah was checking a dictionary, frowning. Half the novices hadn't managed the first line.
Two options: mediocre translation, stay under the radar, or translate it accurately and deal with the fallout.
He thought about the shadow in the cathedral. He thought about the restricted section. He thought about four years.
'To hell with the radar.'
He picked up his quill and started writing.
The headache hit around the third paragraph.
His adult knowledge running through a fifteen-year-old brain, forcing connections the neurons weren't wired for yet. He kept going.
He finished in twenty minutes.
He set the quill down.
The dry sound of it hitting the stand carried across the silent room.
Father Marius turned his head.
"Giving up, initiate?"
"Finished, Father."
A murmur ran through the room and Lucian looked up from his scroll.
Marius walked over, picked up the parchment, and held it to the candle.
He read with the expression of a man who already knew what he was going to find.
Halfway down the page, that expression changed.
He read to the bottom. Lowered the paper. His hands had gone very still.
"Brother Matthias."
Matthias, round-faced and perpetually startled, trotted over and read over Marius's shoulder. He went pale.
"It's perfect," Matthias said.
"Father, the word he used for Heaven, it's 'Aetherius', not 'Caelum'. That term hasn't been in common usage for three centuries. The syntax is Golden Era. This is..."
He trailed off.
Marius set the paper on Raziel's desk and leaned forward.
"Who taught you this, boy?"
"No one, Father." Eyes level and breathing even. "The text spoke to me. I followed the logic of faith."
"Logic." Marius hit the desk once with his knuckle controlled.
"A novice from the orphanage doesn't understand the difference between 'Divine Grace' and..." he paused, glancing at the text, "the 'Martyr's Curse', by following the logic of faith."
Sister Elena, watching from the corner, stepped forward.
"Father Marius, perhaps a gifted student. Zhalyr's grace touches who it chooses."
"Or perhaps something else has," Marius said.
The room went quiet.
Marius straightened, smoothed his robe and he picked up the parchment like evidence at a trial.
"Passed," he said.
"Unnaturally passed. And I will be noting that." His eyes moved to Raziel's face and stayed.
"Be careful, son. There is a very short distance between divine genius and something darker. I will be watching."
He walked away.
Raziel exhaled.
[Class Mission: Scribe — COMPLETE]
[Reward: +2 Intelligence / +10 Reputation (Negative)]
He looked at his hands with black ink on the tips of his fingers. It wouldn't come off and it remembered him to blood.
Behind him, he heard Lucian mutter something under his breath.
"...he wasn't even trying to hide it. Idiot."
Raziel almost smiled.
Not cheater or impossible, Just Idiot.
Lucian knew exactly what he'd just watched. He just hadn't decided what to do about it yet.