The midday sun was brutal.
The market was a wall of noise. Merchants shouting, kids running between legs, the steady clang of a blacksmith somewhere close enough to feel in the teeth.
Raziel was following Lucian through the crowd, trying to keep pace while carrying a stack of bags that smelled like chemicals and bad decisions.
"Hold these for a sec, will you?"
Lucian had shoved them into his chest without slowing down. No question mark. Just an assumption that Raziel would comply.
He did, because the bags contained whatever Lucian had bought from Silas, and dropping them in the street would raise questions he didn't want to answer.
The bags were heavy.
His arms were burning.
His mind was somewhere else entirely, running calculations about the Nyxian library and what he might find there, when his foot caught a loose cobblestone.
BAM.
He went down hard. The bags scattered across the filthy street, vials rolling, boxes splitting open.
"Damn it."
He scrambled to collect the mess before someone stepped on it. When he looked up, Lucian was gone.
The crowd had swallowed him.
"Lucian?"
His voice didn't carry. Not against the roar of the market.
Raziel stood there with broken bags and a rising panic that had nothing to do with the merchandise.
Without Lucian, he had no entry to the Nyxian estate, without the estate, there was no library.
Without the library, no answers.
He remembered Lucian mentioning something about buying "Luminescent Amber" from someone called "The Serpent."
It was thin, but it was all he had.
He turned toward a narrow alley that branched off the main street. The noise dropped instantly. Shadows stretched long and the air smelled like rotten fish.
Then he heard it.
A sob. Small. Coming from a corner piled with trash.
Raziel stopped.
Every instinct from his past life fired at once. 'Don't get involved. It's a trap. Keep moving.'
His hand went to the silver cross on his neck anyway.
A little girl, pressed against the wall, shaking. Three hooded men surrounding her.
Raziel felt something ignite in his chest.
Not the System nor an Echo.
Just the part of him that had become a priest in the first place.
"Leave her alone."
His voice came out steadier than he expected.
The biggest one turned. Scarred face, thick arms, the build of someone who hurt people for a living.
"What are you gonna do, little priest?" He grinned. "Hit us with your bible?"
Raziel took a step forward.
He knew he was weak.
Fifteen years old, a body that had held a sword three times but the girl was crying and walking away wasn't something he could do.
"I said leave her."
"How cute," the second one said, cracking his knuckles. "The bird wants to fly."
WHAM.
The big one moved fast. A fist buried itself in Raziel's stomach.
He dropped to his knees, vision going white, pain exploding through his core.
"Stay down, trash."
Raziel got back up.
The skinny one pulled a curved knife. It caught the light wrong, the edge looked treated with something.
"We're gonna clip your wings, priest."
When the knife came, Raziel's body moved before his brain finished processing.
He grabbed the skinny one's wrist and squeezed. The thug yelped and dropped the blade.
Raziel lunged for it. His fingers grazed the edge.
A thin line of blood opened across his palm. The cut was shallow but it burned, a chemical heat that crawled up his arm like liquid fire.
Then the air changed.
WHOOSH.
A figure dropped into the alley with the speed of something that had been trained to kill since childhood.
CRACK. BAM.
Two seconds. Three thugs on the ground, unconscious or broken.
The newcomer landed between Raziel and the girl, back turned to him.
When she straightened and turned around, Raziel's breath stopped.
Dark Paladin armor.
Zhalyr's symbol on the chest but what hit him wasn't the armor.
It was the eyes, emerald green and intense. The kind of eyes that looked at you and decided what you were worth before you finished your first sentence.
She didn't look at his face.
She looked at the ground.
There, scattered among the alley trash, were the contents of Lucian's bags.
Broken vials, shady powders and a box with symbols that no Church novice should be carrying.
The Paladin's expression shifted to disgust, controlled but visible.
"Interesting inventory for a novice of the Church," she said. Her voice had the edge of a blade being drawn. "Care to explain, Brother?"
Raziel felt his face burn.
"They aren't mine," he said. "I swear, I was just carrying them for—"
He stopped. He couldn't give up Lucian. Not to a Paladin he didn't know.
"Maybe you should choose your friends more carefully," she said, taking a step forward. Her armor rang in the silence.
"Or did you already forget the vows you swore?"