Lucian’s smile was wiped off his face as if soone had thrown a bucket of ice water on him.
His arm, which was still around Raziel’s shoulders, tensed up like a steel bar.
His protective instinct, the one that was always so loud and obvious, shot up to the max.
"Excuse ?" Lucian growled, taking a step forward to put himself between Arawn and Raziel.
"I think I didn’t hear you well. Did you just threaten my friend in front of ?"
But Arawn didn’t even bother to look at him.
His eyes remained fixed on Raziel, ignoring Lucian like he was an expensive but irrelevant piece of furniture.
"It is not a threat, noble Nyxian," Arawn said, and his voice was pure silk covering poison.
"It is an invitation. Your friend here is very interesting."
"I don’t know what you are talking about," Raziel murmured, forcing his voice to sound weak and confused. "I just... I was looking for a book."
Arawn let out a soft laugh, without a trace of humor.
"A book? Sure, and you bumped into an assassin, saw a decapitation, and your first reaction wasn’t to scream, nor run, nor vomit. Just... watch." He took a slow and deliberate step, closing the distance.
The air around him seed to beco denser, charged with an invisible pressure that made it difficult to breathe. "Tell , novice, why didn’t you scream?"
The question was a perfect trap.
Any answer was a confession.
If he said he wasn’t afraid, it was suspicious.
If he said he was in shock, it was a lie easy to detect for soone trained in reading people.
His brain was running at a thousand miles per hour, looking for an exit, a credible excuse, but everything sounded fake.
His pulse hamred in his ears, a furious drum announcing his execution.
The pressure of Arawn’s gaze was physical, as if they were crushing his skull.
And then, just when panic threatened to drown him, sothing flickered at the edge of his vision.
A ghostly blue light, familiar and saving.
PING!
A translucent window appeared in front of his eyes, visible only to him.
[WARNING: High-Level Analysis Skill detected]
[Analyzing target...]
Na: Arawn Rivers
Class: Shadow Exorcist (Undercover Grade)
Affiliation: Holy Inquisition - Internal Affairs Division
Key Passive Skill:
[Inquisitor’s Eye (Rank B)]: Allows the user to detect inconsistencies in behavior, soul fluctuations, and lies through micro-expressions and changes in the target’s mana flow. The success probability increases with the target’s emotional intensity.
The information hit him like lightning.
’Internal Affairs! He isn’t just any Exorcist, he is a fucking police of the Church! And his ability feeds on my emotions! That’s why he is provoking , he wants to get nervous so his ability works better!’
The knowledge cald him down.
The fear didn’t disappear, but now it had a purpose.
He knew the rules of the ga.
Raziel looked up, and instead of answering, his eyes filled with tears.
Not the fake and masterful tears of Arawn, but raw, clumsy tears, those of a terrified teenager. His entire body shook with a choked sob.
"Because... because if I scread... he would kill too," he said with a broken voice, pointing with a trembling finger at the decapitated corpse. "I just... I stayed still... so he wouldn’t see . I thought that if I didn’t move... he wouldn’t do anything to ..."
It was the truth.
A half-truth, taken from another life, from another ambush, but it was a human and pathetic reaction.
A consistent reaction.
Arawn’s smile wavered for a fraction of a second.
Raziel’s answer, loaded with a fear so visceral and cowardly, was so credible that even his ability seed to accept it.
It wasn’t the reaction of a hero or a monster.
It was the reaction of prey.
"Enough!" Lucian roared, sick of the psychological ga.
"Leave him alone! Can’t you see he is scared? Get out of here before I kick you out, I don’t care who you are!"
Lucian pushed Arawn in the chest.
It was a gesture more of bravado than real strength, but it was enough to break the spell.
Just at that mont, a severe and deep voice cut the tension like an axe.
"What is all this scandal?"
Captain Thorne had entered the archive again, this ti accompanied by an elderly Priest whose white tunic was embroidered with the golden threads of a high rank.
Arawn’s face turned into a mask of perfect innocence in an instant.
He straightened up, made an impeccable bow, and said:
"Father, my apologies. I was just comforting the novices. They have gone through a terrible experience."
The Priest looked at Raziel, who was still trembling, and then at Lucian, who was snorting like a furious bull. He nodded slowly.
"I see. Captain, take these boys to the infirmary. Make sure they give them a calming tonic. The Inquisition will handle the rest."
"Yes, Father," Thorne said, gesturing to the two boys.
Lucian didn’t waste ti. He grabbed Raziel by the arm and practically dragged him toward the exit, throwing Arawn one last murderous look over his shoulder.
When Raziel passed by the Exorcist, Arawn leaned in slightly, as if he was going to say sothing comforting.
But what ca out of his lips was so low that only Raziel could hear it.
"What a touching performance, novice."
***
The infirmary of St. Celeste slled like bitter herbs, a sll that always reminded Raziel of the waiting room of death.
He was sitting on the edge of a hard bed, while a Healer Sister checked his pulse.
Lucian, on the other hand, couldn’t sit still.
He walked from one side to the other in front of him, with eyes shining with an emotion that Raziel couldn’t share: adrenaline.
"So, are you telling that skinny guy, that Arawn... cut the guy’s head off?" Lucian lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, but his excitent was as loud as a scream.
"With threads! Silver threads! That’s crazy!"
"I told you to be quiet!" Raziel hissed, throwing him a furious look. "Do you want them to hear us?"
"Hear what? That an Exorcist did his job?" Lucian shrugged.
"It must have been amazing! Seeing how they rip his head off..."
Raziel stopped listening to him.
The calming tonic they had forced him to drink only numbed his body, but his brain, forged in seven apocalypses, was still working at full machine.
’This idiot is going to get us killed,’ he thought, while Lucian kept describing the decapitation with an almost childish enthusiasm.
Nothing made sense.
Absolutely nothing.
An assassin appears out of nowhere in a secret archive of the Academy.
How did he enter? Why attack him, a simple novice?
And the most suspicious thing of all: an Exorcist of the Inquisition, one with power clearly off the scale, was conveniently close to "save him".
Convenience was the first symptom of a trap.
Raziel clenched his fists under the blanket until his knuckles turned white.
The pieces didn’t fit. Unless...
’What if they weren’t enemies? What if they were working together?’
The revelation hit him with the force of a punch in the stomach.
’This wasn’t an attack but it was a test. The assassin was the bait. Arawn was the observer. The Inquisition wanted to see what I was capable of doing in a life or death situation. They wanted panic to make show my cards, for to use the golden power to defend myself.’
And his performance of a terrified coward... had been the only correct move.
"Do you think I can learn to do that?" Lucian asked, interrupting his thoughts. "Imagine, silver Nyxian threads! I would be unstoppable."
Raziel didn’t answer.
He just fixed his eyes on the stone wall, feeling the cold of the invisible cell closing around him.
The Inquisition didn’t just suspect him.
They were already playing with him.
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