Raziel stopped in the doorway.
"You did a good job in there," the Inquisitor said. "Specific story, emotionally plausible and he flame was well-timed."
Raziel waited.
"The problem," Varrick said, "is that I've been doing this for years. People who are genuinely terrified fall apart, contradict themselves, beg."
He tilted his head. "You performed. You knew exactly what you needed me to think and you gave it to me in the right order."
He said it without accusation. Just observation.
"I don't know what you are, but I know what you're not."
He waved a hand at the door. "Go."
***
Raziel stepped into the hallway and almost walked directly into Lucian.
Lucian grabbed his sleeve with both hands.
"What happened? I heard nothing for twenty minutes. I assumed you were dead and was trying to decide whether to run or wait."
He looked Raziel over. "You look terrible but you're vertical, so that's something."
"Walk," Raziel said. "Fast."
They moved through the corridor. The guards at the far end didn't follow.
Raziel noted that and filed it away.
"I'm a Fire Elementalist," he said, keeping his voice below the stone's echo.
"Stress-triggered awakening over being jealous because of the necromancer, late manifestation, so I produced a small flame and looked appropriately mortified about it."
Lucian stared at him while walking.
"You told an Inquisitor you were in love with Seraphina."
"I told him what the situation required."
"You produced fire from your hands."
"A very small amount."
"You have never shown any magic. In your entire time at St. Celeste. Not a spark."
"There are things I haven't shown."
They reached the main courtyard.
Raziel let out a breath.
"Tonight," Raziel said. " In your room, I'll explain what I can."
"You keep saying later."
"This time I mean it."
***
Lucian's room was the expensive kind of disaster.
Books stacked with no system, scrolls half-unrolled on the desk, practice weapons propped against the wall for reasons that had never been accounted for.
It smelled like candle wax and someone who had been doing a lot of anxious reading.
Lucian dropped into his armchair and tried to look relaxed. He didn't pull it off.
Raziel sat on the edge of the bed.
His bandaged hand was still aching from two nights ago. The cuffs had left marks, but he didn't look at them.
"I need you to let me finish before you respond," he said.
"Last time you said that, we ended up in an interrogation room."
"This is bigger than that."
Lucian's expression settled. "Go."
"I wasn't entirely honest with you about what I know," Raziel said. "Or how I know it."
"I assumed."
"I've already lived this life. Not a vision, not a dream. A complete life, lived to the end. I have memories from a previous timeline, Lucian. I know what happens in this kingdom because I watched it happen."
A silence.
Then Lucian laughed.
His brain had hit a wall and laughter was the only door. He shook his head, pressed his fingers to his eyes.
"Right. You survived an Inquisitor interrogation by faking a teenage crush and now you're telling me you're reincarnated."
He dropped his hand. "Sure. What else? You're secretly the Luminar? The Goddess in a very convincing disguise?"
"The next king of Phaedra isn't Aerion," Raziel said.
Lucian's laughter stopped.
"It's Ayres. He takes the throne in a coup. The Church backs it, he frames it as divine right and there are enough people with enough to gain that it holds."
Lucian looked at him for a long moment.
"Ayres," he said.
"Yes."
"That Ayres. The one who wrote a formal letter of complaint to the stablemaster when his favorite horse died and expected an apology."
"He gets help, powerful help, it was from the same thing that was in the crypt."
Lucian frowned. "And the Church? What about the next Luminar?"
Raziel hesitated for a second.
"The Church splits, while some will side with Ayres, and others will fight against him. There will be a lot of greed and corruption pulling the strings."
"And what about me, Raziel?" Lucian interrupted. "What happens to me in your future?"
"You end up in the Nyxian duchy as your father's personal priest."
The color left Lucian's face slowly like something being drained out.
"His priest," Lucian said.
"Yes."
He got up, he walked to the window and put his hands against the stone, just stood there. Raziel didn't fill the silence.
"Not a commander," Lucian said. "Not a knight, not anything with a sword or a decision. His damn personal priest?"
"Yes."
"I would rather die," Lucian said. "I would genuinely rather die than spend my life performing piety for that man."
"I know," Raziel said.
Lucian turned around, jaw set. "Then why did it happen? If you knew—"
"Because I didn't stop it," Raziel said.
"I made the same mistakes, kept my head down, survived the wrong things and let the important things burn."
He paused.
"It's worse than just you, Lucian. The coup isn't clean. Ayres doesn't just take the throne, he purges anyone with the wrong name, the wrong allegiance, the wrong family. Entire districts, the sky over Phaedra was grey for two years straight."
"Grey from what?"
"Pyres."
Lucian stared at him.
Raziel's temple throbbed, a sharp pressure behind something sealed.
[TRAUMA TRIGGER ACTIVATED]
He closed his eyes and the room was gone.
Four seconds of smell, ash, wood, burnt cloth, and underneath it the wet specific smell of mass death. Sound compressed to something beyond sound.
Thousands of voices in a frequency that wasn't hearing anymore.
He had closed dead people's eyes in the hospice at seventeen. He thought he understood what death sounded like.
He had not understood.
He opened his eyes and he was still on the edge of the bed while his hands were on his knees.
Lucian was watching him with an expression he'd never worn before.
"That wasn't a memory," Lucian said quietly. "That was something else."
"It passes." Raziel straightened. "Before I died, I was given a second chance. I don't know who made that decision or why. I intend to use it."
Lucian was quiet for a moment, then he sat back down in the armchair.
"Any other time," he said, "I'd drag you to the infirmary."
"I know."
"But I saw what happened in the crypt." He looked at his hands.
"I saw what you did, what that light was and if what you're saying about my future is real—"
He stopped. "It's real, isn't it?"
It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Raziel said.
"Then I'd rather believe the crazy story and do something about it than accept that ending."
Lucian's fists were closed on his knees. "Tell me what we need to do."
Raziel looked at him.
This was the part of his past where he'd kept people at arm's length and watched them die.
"We don't fix everything tonight," Raziel said.
"We learn, we position ourselves, we don't get killed before we're useful. Every step we take now is a step away from that future."
"Together," Lucian said. It was not a question either.
"Together."
Lucian unclenched his fists, sat back and some of the rigid panic in his shoulders came down a fraction.
"Alright," he said. "I'm in. Fully and completely in, which I want noted, because this is objectively insane."
"Noted."
"And you're teaching me something real." He pointed.
"Not theory or prayer forms. Something that would actually keep me alive in whatever disaster you've got planned."
"I'll ask Lara to help structure it. She takes the fundamentals seriously."
Lucian's expression shifted.
"Lara."
"She's capable! she'll take it seriously."
"Right," Lucian said.
"Yes, good idea. Lara? Very practical." He cleared his throat. "Don't you think it might be better, just the two of us, for security reasons—"
"You literally cannot look at her without forgetting what you were saying," Raziel said.
"I can absolutely look at her."
"You said the word 'Lara' just now and lost the thread of your own sentence."
"I am fine," Lucian said with enormous dignity. "I am a noble of House Nyxian and I can look at any person without—don't look at me like that."
"I'm not looking at you like anything."
"You have a face on."
"I don't have a face."
"You absolutely have a face." Lucian pointed at him. "No face, I don't need the commentary."
"Goodnight, Lucian."
"I want it on record that I am perfectly composed."
Raziel crossed to the door.
He coughed.
He pulled his hand away from his mouth and looked at his palm. In the low candlelight the smear between his fingers was dark.
He closed his fist before Lucian could glance up.
[SIDE EFFECT: Eco Corruption at 15%.] [WARNING: Your health is fracturing.]
He wiped his hand on the inside of his sleeve.
"Goodnight," he said, and closed the door behind him.