The sky was bleeding.
The sunset over St. Celeste had that sickly red tone, as if someone had opened an artery in the stratosphere.
Raziel looked at it from the hallway, but his attention was on the glowing blue window floating in front of his eyes.
[CLASS QUEST COMPLETED: The Bard of Panic]
[REWARD OBTAINED: Echo Fragment - "Throat of the Martyr"]
He rubbed his temples.
He passed officially, he wasn't an expendable initiate anymore.
He was a Novice.
But then, why did he feel like he just walked toward the guillotine?
He was standing in front of Father Marius's office. The solid oak door looked more like a containment barrier than an entrance.
He took a deep breath. 'Act normal. You are a devout boy who had a moment of strange inspiration. You aren't a 30-year-old regressor with PTSD.'
He knocked.
"Come in."
Marius's voice sounded heavy, like stone dragged over gravel.
Marius wasn't reading scriptures; he was cleaning his glasses with a velvet cloth, with exasperating slowness.
"Father," Raziel said, doing a perfect bow.
Marius put on his glasses and looked at him. That look. It wasn't the warm look of the mentor Raziel remembered from his first life.
"Congratulations on your promotion, Novice Raziel," Marius said. The tone was so flat it was scary. "The examiners are still... disturbed. Father Thomas asked for stress leave. He says your music reminded him of the day his sister died."
Raziel swallowed saliva, his heart beating against his ribs. "The Goddess inspires in mysterious ways, Father. I was just the instrument."
"Cut the theological bullshit, kid."
BAM!
Marius hit the desk with his open palm. Raziel blinked, his combat instinct activating for a microsecond before forcing himself to stay still.
"That song..." Marius leaned forward, the lamp shadows lengthening his features. "It had no light. It had no hope. It only had truth. An ugly and dark truth that a boy your age shouldn't know."
The priest sighed, leaning back in his chair. The leather creaked.
"You passed, yes. But you aren't going home this summer."
Raziel's stomach turned. "Excuse me?"
"The Church doesn't let go of dogs that bite without a leash," Marius sentenced. "You will stay at the Academy. Under supervision. We decided you need... 'intensive spiritual guidance' before letting you loose in a parish."
Raziel squeezed his fists under his robe. 'They are watching me. They know I'm an anomaly.'
"I understand," Raziel said, forcing submission into his voice. "I accept the penance with humility."
Marius looked at him for a few more seconds, looking for some crack in his mask. Finding none, he made a vague gesture with his hand. "Get out. And Raziel... pray. Pray that whatever you have inside doesn't eat you alive."
Raziel left the office feeling the air return to his lungs.
'Shit. Shit. Shit.'
This changed everything. In his past life, he went to the North that summer. There he met his first Zhaleryan master. Now he was trapped here, in the lion's den. The Butterfly Effect just kicked him in the teeth.
"Why the long face for someone who just got promoted?"
The voice came from a column in the courtyard. Lucian Valerius Nyxian was there, with that relaxed posture of someone who owns the place.
Raziel rolled his eyes. "What do you want, Lucian? Did you come to mock my 'concert'?"
Lucian laughed, peeling himself off the column. "Mock? Please. That was the most interesting thing that has happened in this graveyard in years." He got closer, lowering his voice. "But I heard Marius yell. Seems like you earned some forced vacation on campus, huh?"
"Something like that," Raziel admitted, cautious.
"Well, don't cry yet." Lucian smiled, and there was something sharp in that smile. Something dangerous. "I'm staying too."
Raziel stopped dead. "What? You got a perfect score. You can go to any cathedral in the Empire. Why would you stay in this hole during the summer?"
Lucian shrugged, looking toward the clock tower. "Let's say I have my suspicions. There are things in St. Celeste that don't add up, Raziel. And after hearing your song... I think you know it too."
The noble patted him on the shoulder, a friendly gesture that felt like a warning. "See you at dinner, cellmate."
Raziel watched Lucian walk away.
But something else bothered him. An uneasiness itching at the back of his neck.
Seraphina.
She promised to wait for him in the library to celebrate or console him after the meeting with Marius. She was the only one who knew part of the truth. He needed to tell her that Marius suspected.
Raziel crossed the campus with fast steps. The shadows lengthened, turning the academy gargoyles into real monsters out of the corner of his eye.
He arrived at the library. The oak doors were ajar.
"Sister Seraphina?" he called.
Silence.
But not a library silence. It was a dense, heavy silence. The kind of silence that happens after a scream.
Raziel entered. The smell of old parchment had disappeared.
In its place, there was a metallic smell. Sweet. Nauseating.
'No. No, no, no.'
His heart started pumping liquid panic. He ran toward the restricted section, where they usually met.
"Seraphina!"
He stopped dead, his boots slipping a bit on the stone floor.
There was no one.
There was only a puddle. Dark, viscous, expanding slowly under the moonlight entering through the stained glass.
Blood.
A lot of blood.
A broken quill floated in the center of the puddle, like a shipwrecked boat.
Raziel stepped back, crashing against a shelf. The books fell with a thunder that sounded like gunshots in the stillness.
His gaze went up, frantic, looking for the body, looking for the killer.
But he only found the wall.
There, written with trembling fingers soaked in crimson, was a message in High Zhalyrian. A message for him.
REMEMBER.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[EVENT STARTED: The Mystery of the Holy Blood]
[OBJECTIVE: Survive the night]