The hallway was quiet but Raziel's head wasn't.
He walked with the steady pace of a novice going to evening prayer, hands at his sides, face blank. Inside, he was doing the math.
[MENTAL STATE: Mild Anxiety]
[PROBABILITY CALCULATION: 45% chance of being flagged as Suspected of Heresy]
He looked at his hands with the black ink on the fingertips, it was still there.
'Stupid, I needed to be noticed but I didn't need to be noticed that much.'
He turned the corner toward the dorms and walked straight into Lucian.
Lucian was waiting with his arms crossed, positioned in the middle of the corridor, Gideon and Mark at his shoulders.
"There he is the prodigy."
Lucian said 'prodigy' the way you'd say 'cockroach.'
"Lucian," Raziel said.
"Twenty minutes, Celeste? Really?" Lucian's arms were still crossed but his eyes were doing something different from his mouth.
His mouth was doing the usual arrogance gesture but his eyes were trying to figure something out. "Nobody finishes a sight translation in twenty minutes. Nobody."
"I read fast."
"You read fast." Lucian repeated it, tasting the lie.
"My father donates more gold to this church in a month than your entire orphanage has ever seen. I had private tutors since I was eight but I barely got through half that text."
Raziel waited. Lucian wasn't done.
"So either you cheated, which is hard to do on a sight translation, or you're something that doesn't make sense."
Lucian leaned forward. "Which is it?"
"Option two," Raziel said. "I don't make sense. You can put that on my grave."
Gideon snorted. Mark looked confused by what was happening.
Lucian's jaw worked. He wasn't used to people not flinching but he also wasn't reaching for a shove or a threat, and that told Raziel something.
The noble stepped aside.
"Marius is going to come for you," Lucian said. "He's already writing something down. I saw him."
That was a warning. Lucian disguised it as a threat, but it was a warning.
"Thanks," Raziel said.
"I didn't do you a favor."
"I know."
He walked past and Gideon moved out of the way without being told. Mark followed Gideon. Lucian watched him go.
Only when he was around the corner did Raziel feel his hands shake.
If Lucian had pushed it to a physical confrontation, Raziel would've ended up in the infirmary.
This body couldn't back up anything his mouth was writing.
'I need power soon. Words won't keep me alive forever.'
***
The library was almost empty at that hour.
Raziel went straight to the Ecclesiastical History section and pulled Compendium of Minor Heresies off the shelf.
He needed to figure out if the Scribe test text, the Martyr's Curse, was a coincidence or if someone in the Church already knew the Invasion was coming.
He made it three pages in before something landed on the table next to his hand.
A scroll. Sealed with black wax bearing a symbol he didn't recognize.
Seraphina was standing across from him, one hand still on the scroll, the other holding a book titled Dead Dialects of Zhalyrian. She'd arrived without making a sound.
"Read that," she said.
No greeting nor small talk.
Raziel looked at the seal. "That's from the restricted section."
"Yes."
"You want me to open a restricted document in the middle of the public library."
"I want to see how fast you can read it." She pulled up a chair and sat across from him.
"The rumors say you translated a Codex fragment in twenty minutes. I want to know if that was real or if Marius is exaggerating because he's scared."
She wasn't asking for permission, she was running a test on him.
Raziel broke the seal.
The scroll was short with just eight lines. Written in the same archaic High Zhalyrian variant as the Scribe test, but older.
The ink had faded in places and whoever copied it had used a notation system that hadn't existed in the modern Church for centuries.
He started reading.
The first three lines were a fragment of the same Martyr's Curse prophecy. He skimmed past those. The last five lines were new.
His hands went still.
'The Paragon will not be given, It will be taken. The vessel will hold every flame at once, and the Church will call it corruption, because a tool that serves all masters serves none, and what serves none cannot be controlled.'
He looked up. Seraphina was watching his face.
"How long did that take you?" she asked.
"About forty seconds."
"You didn't use the glossary."
"I don't need a glossary."
Seraphina leaned back and something in her expression had shifted.
The test was over and he'd passed, and now she was recalculating what he was worth to her.
"The word you used in Marius's test," she said. "Aetherius. You know what it means in the Golden Age texts?"
"The Void. Not paradise."
She blinked.
"Most scholars take three years to learn that distinction," she said. "You already knew it when you wrote it."
Footsteps in the corridor outside, both of them went still. Seraphina's hand moved to the scroll and flipped it face-down on the table in one motion, covering it with her book.
The footsteps passed.
"I want a partner," she said, voice lower now. "Not a student. Someone who can read what I find in this archive without needing hand-holding."
'There it is.'
She needed his skill set. He needed her access.
"What are we looking for?" he asked.
"The Paragon. What the Church erased three centuries ago and why." She paused. "And what the Martyr's Curse actually predicts, which is not what Marius thinks."
Footsteps again. Closer this time.
Seraphina stood, took the scroll, and tucked it inside her book in one motion. She was already walking toward the restricted section.
"One more thing," she said without looking back. "The Invasion won't start with fire, Raziel. It will start with talented children who know things they shouldn't."
She disappeared between the stacks.
[NEW OBJECTIVE: Study the connection between the Martyr's Curse and the Paragon prophecy]
[NOTE: Seraphina Blackwood's threat level remains ???]
Raziel followed her in.
He wasn't going to study history tonight, he was going to look for weapons.