The room smelled like damp stone, old piss, and rust.
Raziel sat at a splintered table with iron cuffs on his wrists and took stock.
One door,two guards at the wall and table with something dark stained into the grain that he chose not to identify.
Lucian next to him, so pale he looked like a fresh sheet of paper, breathing in short little bursts like a man deciding between crying and passing out.
'He's going to confess,' Raziel thought. 'He's going to open his mouth and confess to things we didn't even do.'
He nudged Lucian's foot under the table. Hard.
Lucian flinched and looked at him.
Raziel's face said: do not speak.
Lucian's face said: I am going to die in this room.
The door opened.
The Inquisitor walked in. Same robe, same unhurried pace, same expression of a man who had all the time in the world and knew it.
Behind him came two guards large enough that the room got visibly smaller.
He sat across from them, set a thick book on the table, and let it drop.
The thud wasn't necessary for any practical reason.
Lucian jumped anyway.
The Inquisitor didn't look at him when it happened, which meant he'd done it for exactly that purpose and already gotten what he wanted.
'Smart,' Raziel noted, against his will.
"Novice Raziel," the Inquisitor said. His voice was calm and patient. "Let's skip the part where you lie to me and I pull out your fingernails. Sound good?"
Raziel swallowed.
He was a thirty-seven-year-old man inside a fifteen-year-old body sitting in an interrogation room with his wrists in irons.
The story he had decided on was: stupid, hormonal teenager.
This was humiliating in ways he didn't have time to process.
"I already told your men what happened, Excellency." He put a tremor into his voice. Just enough.
"We got lost. It was an accident."
The Inquisitor let out a short sigh and opened the book, turning it around to face them.
A full page of necromancy notation. Dense, precise, the kind that took years to learn.
"My men found traces of high-level magic in that crypt," he said.
"Magic that smells like death and something considerably older. The kind two novices have no business summoning."
He leaned forward.
"There were also witnesses who saw a golden light. Holy fire and you were standing in the middle of it."
'He is not guessing,' Raziel thought. 'He has a real report and he has already decided I'm the source. He's here to get a usable explanation, not discover one.'
Behind Lucian, one of the guards reached to his belt and pulled something out. Metal, hinged, designed for fingers or toes depending on the interrogator's preference.
Lucian saw it.
The color drained from his face in real time.
Raziel made a decision.
"It wasn't Lucian's fault!" He put real volume into it. All four of them looked at him.
"He didn't know anything. Let him go and I'll tell you everything."
Lucian turned to him with wide eyes. "Raziel, what are you —"
"Get him out," the Inquisitor said.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't even look at Lucian when he said it.
The guards took Lucian by the arms.
He was still saying Raziel's name, increasingly frantic, as they walked him to the door.
The door closed. The sound of him in the corridor lasted another three seconds and then stopped.
The room was very quiet.
The Inquisitor laced his fingers together on the table.
"Your friend is safe for now," he said. "Talk."
Raziel dropped his shoulders. Let his head go down.
Arranged his face into something ashamed and small and stupid.
'This is the most embarrassing thing I have done across lifetimes,' he thought, 'and I once accidentally started a theological argument at a funeral.'
"It was because of her," he said, pitching it low and wretched. "Seraphina."
The Inquisitor raised an eyebrow. "Baron Blackwood's daughter?"
"I was obsessed with her." The words came out cleanly. He had built this story brick by brick during the walk from Marius's office and he knew where every load-bearing wall was.
"I saw her go down to the crypt and I got jealous. I thought she was meeting someone so I dragged Lucian along because I didn't want to go alone."
He rubbed his cuffed hands together, slow, like a bad memory.
"When I saw what she was doing down there, those things, I felt so much fear that something just went. I don't know how to explain it, Excellency. I felt heat in my chest and then everything exploded. I've never been able to light a candle in class. I didn't know I had anything in me."
The Inquisitor drummed two fingers on the table.
Once.
Twice.
"Let me confirm what you're telling me," he said.
"The desecration of a royal tomb, broken necromantic seals, and a discharge of forbidden-level power. All of it. Because of a teenage jealousy fit."
"I know how that sounds."
"It sounds catastrophically stupid."
"Yes, Excellency."
The Inquisitor kept his eyes on Raziel's face for a long moment. Looking for the crack.
Raziel kept his pulse even and his hands still and let the [Acting] skill do what he'd been leveling it up for.
Then Raziel reached into the mana core he'd been building since the last Echo absorption, pushed a thin thread of it to his fingertip, and produced a flame.
Small, weak and guttering.
The kind that went out if you breathed near it.
Basic elemental fire.
Raw and untrained, exactly what a terrified novice might throw out involuntarily during the worst moment of his life.
The Inquisitor stopped drumming his fingers.
He looked at the flame.
Raziel let it die.
The blue text appeared in the air between them, invisible to anyone who wasn't him.
[INTERACTION EVALUATION] [Tactic: Pathetic Deception] → [CRITICAL SUCCESS] [Analysis:] Subject [Inquisitor Varrick] has accepted the false narrative. Suspicion of "Heresy" has been replaced with "Contempt."
[SOCIAL STATUS UPDATE] Previous: Commoner Trash (Disposable). New: Combat Mage (Military Asset / Cannon Fodder).
System Note: Congratulations. You've avoided the pyre in exchange for dying on the front lines.
Raziel read the last line.
'Thanks,' he thought. 'Very helpful.'
The Inquisitor leaned back in his chair and let out a short, dry laugh.
The first genuine sound the man had made since entering the room.
"A late Awakening triggered by a broken heart," he said, shaking his head slowly.
"I've seen a lot of things in nineteen years. I will give you this, I haven't seen that."
He looked at Raziel with the specific expression of someone who had found the answer they were looking for and wasn't happy about how small it was.
"You're a Fire Elementalist. Rare talent." He paused. "Wasted on a sentimental idiot."
Raziel lowered his head and put shame into the line of his back.
"Please don't tell anyone about Seraphina. It's embarrassing enough —"
"I don't give a damn about your love life," the Inquisitor said, standing.
"But the Church needs combat mages. If you have fire in your veins, we will use it. Whether you want us to or not."
He gestured and the door opened.
"Get out. Tell your friend that if either of you goes near that crypt again, I'll hang you from the walls by your thumbs."
Raziel stood and moved for the door.
"Oh, and Novice..."