The System blinked while Raziel was still holding the lute.
[CLASS QUEST COMPLETED: The Bard of Panic]
[REWARD OBTAINED: Echo Fragment, "Throat of the Martyr"]
He had the Scribe test, the Sermon, and now the Bard performance behind him.
Three trials, three passes, and now every person who mattered at this academy was paying attention to him.
He was a Novice. Officially, he was no longer expendable.
'So why does it feel like I just walked toward the guillotine?'
He was standing in front of Father Marius's office. The solid oak door looked more like a containment barrier than an entrance.
He knocked.
"Come in."
Marius was cleaning his glasses with a velvet cloth, very slowly. A man demonstrating patience he didn't actually have.
"Father," Raziel said, bowing.
Marius put on his glasses and looked at him but not with the warm look of a mentor.
The look of someone evaluating whether something should be caged or dissected.
"Congratulations on your promotion, Novice Raziel," Marius said.
"The examiners are still disturbed. Father Thomas asked for stress leave, he says your music reminded him of the day his sister died."
Raziel's jaw tightened. "The Goddess inspires in mysterious ways, Father. I was just the instrument."
"Cut the theological bullshit, kid."
Marius hit the desk with his open palm. The sound cracked through the room.
Raziel's combat instinct fired for a microsecond before he forced himself still.
"That song," Marius leaned forward, the lamp shadow lengthening his face.
"It had no light, no hope, only truth. An ugly, dark truth that a boy your age shouldn't know."
The priest leaned back and the chair creaked.
"You passed, yes. But you aren't going home this summer."
Raziel's stomach turned. "Excuse me?"
"The Church doesn't release dogs that bite without a leash." Marius folded his hands on the desk.
"You will stay at the Academy under supervision. We've decided you need intensive spiritual guidance before we let you loose in a parish."
Raziel squeezed his fists under his robe. 'They're watching me. They know I'm an anomaly.'
"I understand," he said. Submission pushed into his voice like medication he didn't want to take. "I accept the penance with humility."
Marius watched him for a few more seconds, looking for a crack in the mask. Finding none, he waved his hand.
"Get out. Raziel, pray. Pray that whatever you have inside doesn't eat you alive."
Raziel left the office and the air hit his lungs.
'Shit. Shit. Shit.'
This changed everything.
In his past life, he went to the North that summer.
There he met his first Zhaleryan master.
That training was supposed to be the foundation for everything that came after.
Now he was trapped here, in the lion's den. The Butterfly Effect had just kicked him in the teeth.
He was recalculating when the voice came from the courtyard.
"Why the long face for someone who just got promoted?"
Lucian was leaning against his usual column. He never seemed to stand on his own two feet when real estate was available for leaning.
"What do you want, Lucian?" Raziel said. "Did you come to review my concert?"
"Review?" Lucian pushed off the column.
"Please. That was the most interesting thing that's happened in this graveyard in years." He fell into step beside Raziel, lowering his voice.
"But I heard Marius yelling. Sounds like you earned a forced vacation on campus."
"Something like that."
"Well, don't cry yet." Lucian smiled, there was something sharp in his eyes. "I'm staying too."
Raziel stopped. "What? You got a perfect score. You could go to any cathedral in the Empire. Why would you stay in this hole during the summer?"
Lucian shrugged, but his eyes went to the clock tower and stayed there a beat too long.
"Let's say I have my suspicions. There are things at St. Celeste that don't add up, Raziel."
His voice dropped. "And after hearing your song, I think you know it too."
Lucian put a hand on Raziel's shoulder. A friendly gesture that felt like a contract being signed.
"See you at dinner, cellmate."
Raziel watched him walk away.
'He's choosing to stay. Nobody with Lucian's connections stays at St. Celeste voluntarily unless they're after something. The question is what.'
He filed it. One more variable to track.
But there was something more urgent, a pressure at the back of his neck that was getting worse.
Seraphina.
She'd said she would be in the library. She was the only one who knew part of the truth, he needed to tell her about Marius.
Raziel crossed the campus with fast steps. The afternoon light was bleeding out of the sky.
He reached the library. The oak doors were ajar.
"Sister Seraphina?" he called from the doorway.
But there was only silence.
Not library silence, the comfortable hush of old books and still air.
This was the kind of silence that fills a room after something has been torn out of it.
His instinct fired before his mind caught up. He was already moving through the stacks toward the restricted section, their usual meeting spot.
"Seraphina!"
He stopped. His boots slid on the stone floor.
There was nobody.
There was only a puddle. Dark, viscous, expanding slowly under the moonlight from the stained glass window.
Blood.
A lot of blood.
A broken quill floated in the center of the puddle.
Raziel stepped back and hit a shelf.
Books fell. The sound was too loud in the dead air.
He looked up, eyes moving fast. Looking for the body, or looking for the killer.
He only found the wall.
Written there with shaking fingers, soaked in crimson, was a message in High Zhalyrian.
A message for him.
REMEMBER.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[EVENT STARTED: The Mystery of the Holy Blood]
[OBJECTIVE: Survive the night]