"So? Who are we going to see?" Lucian asked, unable to hide a tremor in his voice.
Odessa didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she guided them out of the Monastery, away from the holy walls and into a maze of alleys that stank of trash.
The opulence of the Church felt a world away.
"Wait here," she ordered, stopping at a dark corner.
She disappeared into the shadows, leaving them alone.
Lucian pressed himself against the wall. "Do you think this is safe? They could rob us blind here."
Raziel wasn't even listening since his mind was racing at a thousand miles per hour.
'An informant. A snitch. Someone the Church doesn't control. That's good... and VERY bad, because if they catch us meeting someone like that, there won't be a trial. Just a cell with the Inquisitors and a lot of painful questions.'
Just when nervousness started eating at him, two figures emerged from the darkness.
One was Odessa.
The other was a woman with the same Paladin armor, but her bearing was different.
She had a scar crossing one eyebrow and a gaze that missed nothing.
"Paladin Kiera," Odessa said by way of introduction. "One of the best and most importantly, trustworthy."
The woman, Kiera, analyzed them from top to bottom. Her eyes lingered a second longer on Raziel, though she said nothing.
"Lady Odessa, you told me it was urgent," her voice was deep, direct. "And that it involved two novices?"
"It is," Odessa confirmed. "This is my cousin, Lucian Valerius Nyxian, and his friend, Raziel."
Both bowed.
"Raziel has information about the disappearance of Sister Seraphina," Odessa continued, cutting straight to the chase.
Kiera's eyes locked onto him. "What kind of information, novice?"
Raziel felt the weight of two Paladins on him.
'Calm down. You are not a regressor. You are a scared novice who found something, so act like one.'
"I... think her disappearance is connected to..." he hesitated, because the word itself was a death sentence, "to necromancy."
The silence was total.
Kiera's hand moved to her sword hilt and her face turned into a mask of ice.
"That is the gravest accusation that can be made within these walls, novice. Do you have proof?"
"I found a symbol drawn in blood at the place where she disappeared," Raziel explained, his voice trembling but firm. "And... texts in the library that spoke of forbidden rituals."
"Texts you shouldn't have been looking at," Odessa intervened, though her tone was more to keep up appearances in front of Kiera.
Kiera exchanged a look with Odessa.
"It's madness..." Kiera muttered. "But with everything happening lately... What do you suggest, novice?"
Here came the dangerous part. He had to guide them without looking like he knew the future.
"I think... the answers aren't on the surface but we have to look in the tunnels under the city. In the secret chambers."
"Absolutely not!" Lucian jumped in, pale as a ghost. "Those places are forbidden! Sealed! We can't just...!"
"Actually, we can," Odessa cut him off, looking at Kiera. "As Paladins, we have the authority to access those zones if it's an existential threat and necromancy is one."
Kiera nodded slowly, her decision made.
"I will use my authority to open the seals, but listen well, both of you," she said, looking at Raziel and Lucian.
"Those tunnels keep ancient secrets for a reason. One single mistake down there and there won't be anything left of you to bury."
***
The tunnel went deeper.
The air changed, thicker and colder.
The kind of cold that didn't come from stone but from something older than stone.
Raziel walked behind Odessa and Kiera, with Lucian at his shoulder, and tried to focus on the path instead of the weight pressing down on his skull.
He'd been in this crypt before, multiple times, different lives, same ending.
'The Crypt of the Ancients is three hundred meters ahead. There's a false wall on the left side. The altar is in the center chamber. Seraphina will be there.'
He knew the layout better than the architects who built it.
What he didn't know was why his head was splitting open.
"You're limping," Lucian said quietly.
"I'm not limping."
"Your left foot is dragging."
"I'm tired."
Lucian didn't push it, but he moved half a step closer. Raziel noticed and said nothing.
Odessa stopped at a fork in the tunnel. She held up her torch and studied both paths.
"The left passage is sealed," Kiera said, hand on her sword. "The right one goes deeper."
"We go right," Raziel said.
Both Paladins looked at him.
"How do you know?" Odessa asked.
He'd walked into this exact trap before. He'd watched Kiera take an arrow from the left passage in his third life. He'd watched Lucian break his ankle on the right path's uneven floor in his fifth.
"I don't," he said. "But the left passage smells like a dead end. Literally."
Kiera sniffed the air. Her expression shifted.
"He's right. There's rot coming from the left."
They went right.
The pain in Raziel's skull was getting worse. Not a headache. Something deeper. Like a memory trying to claw its way out through the back of his eye socket.
He'd felt this before. Right before an Echo surfaced.
'Not now. Not here.'
He pressed his fingers against his temple and kept walking.
"Raziel?" Lucian's voice, low.
"I'm fine."
"You said that already."
"Then stop asking."
The tunnel opened into a wider passage. The torchlight caught the edges of carved stone. Old script. Pre-Church era.
Odessa slowed down, reading the walls.
"This is ancient," she breathed. "These symbols predate the founding of St. Celeste by centuries."
"They're warnings," Kiera said, her voice flat. "Don't touch the altar. Don't break the seals. Don't—"
"Don't bring the dead back," Raziel finished.
Odessa turned to look at him. "How do you know what that says? That dialect hasn't been taught in the Church for two hundred years."
Raziel opened his mouth to answer.
The pain hit him like a hammer.
[WARNING: FORCED MEMORY COST APPLIED]
[SEVERE MENTAL FATIGUE DETECTED]
[SYSTEM ENTERING EMERGENCY MODE]
His legs stopped working.
The torch in Odessa's hand became a smear of orange light. Lucian's voice turned into static. The floor came up fast.
Then everything went black.