Raziel had been searching for Seraphina for three days.
He'd questioned every initiate he knew, cornered scribes in the cloisters, and watched the instructors' faces when he asked if anyone had seen her.
Nobody had.
The official line was that she'd been reassigned. Routine Church business.
Raziel didn't believe that for a second.
'She knew too much and I told her I was looking into things I shouldn't be. If she disappeared because of that...'
He shoved the thought down and headed for the one place in St. Celeste where lies left traces.
The Restricted Section.
***
The library was almost empty.
A few second-years were huddled near the windows, whispering over a shared text. Someone sneezed in the history aisle.
Raziel slipped past them and headed for the iron gate at the back.
The Restricted Section wasn't locked during daylight hours, not technically. Novices just weren't supposed to go in without supervision.
Raziel went in anyway.
The shelves here smelled like old leather and dust.
He ran his fingers along the spines, checking for anything related to disappearances, Church protocol, heretical investigations.
"You're wasting your time."
Raziel spun around.
Elijah was standing in the doorway, arms full of scrolls, looking at Raziel with that concerned expression he wore when he thought someone was making a mistake.
"Seraphina's gone," Elijah said, he walked in and set the scrolls down on a reading table. "You won't find her in here."
Raziel turned back to the shelves.
"She didn't just leave."
"People transfer all the time." Elijah dusted off his hands. "The Church moves personnel around. It's normal."
"Without telling anyone? Without taking her things?" Raziel pulled a book off the shelf.
Compendium of Church Doctrine, Volume VII.
He shoved it back. "That's not normal."
Elijah sighed.
"I know you two were close," he said. "But sometimes people don't say goodbye. It doesn't mean something bad happened."
Raziel clenched his jaw.
'You have no idea what bad looks like.'
"I'm not giving up," he said.
Elijah watched him for another few seconds, then nodded and left without another word.
Raziel went back to searching.
***
That night, the library was silent except for the creak of old wood and the occasional shuffle of pages.
Raziel sat alone at a corner table with a text he'd found in the back of the general theology section.
Miracles of Zhalyr: A Historical Record.
The book was dry, bureaucratic, the kind of thing assigned as punishment reading.
He flipped through chapters on blessed wells and saintly visions until he hit page 247.
A subsection titled "Corrupted Gifts: A Warning."
It described a group of priests from three centuries ago who'd tried to twist divine power for their own purposes.
The Church had called them heretics. The text used a different word.
Necromancers.
Raziel went still.
The unnatural cold in the cathedral during Zion's attack. The way the shadows had moved wrong, crawling across the floor instead of staying where light dictated.
That hadn't been elemental magic.
It had been something else, something dead.
He kept reading.
The Inquisition had hunted the necromancers to extinction, according to the official record. But the final paragraph was a warning, not a victory speech.
"The seeds of darkness are not easily destroyed. They sleep for generations, waiting for ambition to give them soil."
Raziel closed the book.
The sound echoed through the empty library.
'Seraphina's blood message. The symbol on the wall. This isn't coincidence.'
He rubbed his eyes. His head hurt and his body felt heavy.
Knowing what was coming and not being able to stop it was exhausting.
"You look like hell, Raz."
Raziel looked up.
Lucian was leaning against the bookshelf, arms crossed, wearing the kind of casual smirk that usually preceded something annoying.
"It's summer," Lucian said. "You're supposed to be relaxing. Instead you're in here looking like you're about to keel over."
Raziel leaned back in his chair.
"Seraphina's missing. Marius is watching me. I don't have time to relax."
"Seraphina's probably on some boring Church errand," Lucian said, waving it off.
"And Marius is always watching someone. Stop letting him live in your head."
He pulled out a chair and sat across from Raziel without waiting for permission.
"I have a better idea," Lucian said, lowering his voice. "Tomorrow, I'm going to the capital. You're coming with me."
Raziel stared at him.
"Did you forget the part where Marius put me under house arrest? I leave campus, I get expelled."
Lucian grinned. He reached into his robe, pulled out a folded scroll, and tossed it onto the table.
It landed with a soft thump. The red wax seal had a wolf's head pressed into it.
House Nyxian.
Raziel picked it up and unfolded it.
"By order of the Nyxian Duchy, the assistance of Novice Raziel Celeste is required as spiritual companion and auxiliary advisor for Heir Lucian Valerius on his pilgrimage to the Capital. Immediate Authorization. Signed: Duke Valerius."
Raziel read it twice.
"Auxiliary advisor?"
"My father donates more gold to this place in a month than most nobles see in a year," Lucian said.
"Marius tried to refuse. Turned red in the face, started sputtering about protocol. My father doesn't care about protocol."
He leaned forward, elbows on the table.
"So now you have a choice. Stay here, keep digging through useless books while Marius breathes down your neck. Or come with me, get access to my father's private collection, and maybe find something actually useful."
"Why?" Raziel asked. "We're not friends, Lucian. Don't pretend this is charity."
Lucian's grin shifted.
The playfulness dropped out of it and what was left was sharper, more honest.
"That song you played," he said. "The one in the Bard exam. That wasn't talent. That was something else."
He tapped the table once with his knuckle.
"I'm going to the capital to look for something specific in my father's archives. Something dangerous. Gideon and Mark are useful in a fight, but they're idiots. You..."
He paused, choosing his words.
"You know things you shouldn't. You see things coming. I don't know how, and I don't care. I just know I'd rather have you watching my back than not."
"You're using me," Raziel said.
"I'm offering you a deal." Lucian leaned back.
"You get out of Marius's cage. You get access to resources you'll never see otherwise. And I get someone who won't panic when things go sideways."
It was a trap. Obviously.
Lucian wanted a human danger detector. Someone expendable if things went wrong.
But the Nyxian Collection was real. If there were answers about the Echoes, about Seraphina, about the Invasion, a Duke's private library was the kind of place they'd be hidden.
Staying meant slow death under Marius's watch.
Leaving meant walking into the wolf's den.
But at least the wolf had books.
"If I try to run," Raziel said, "what happens?"
"I hunt you down myself," Lucian said and his grin came back.
"We leave at dawn. Don't bring your orphanage rags. I'll give you something that doesn't make me look bad."
He stood up, stretched, and walked out.
Raziel sat there for another minute, staring at the scroll.
Then he folded it, tucked it into his robe, and left the library.
He had packing to do.