Chapter 113: His Academy Speaks

The ancient runes carved into the foundation of St. Celeste reacted to the Umbral energy Raziel had poured.

He received the information from the glowing walls as physical sensations hitting his brain.

It belonged to a master Inscriptor standing in this exact room five hundred years ago.

A spike of terror slammed into his chest next, bringing the panic of a young novice hiding during the violent fall of the Ancient Pantheon.

Finally, a surge of divine rage flooded his senses, projecting the fury of a forgotten god watching their sacred temple being profaned and built over.

Raziel staggered backward and grabbed the edge of the table to keep his balance while the foreign emotions ripped through his head.

St. Celeste had a memory, and the runes functioned as its literal language.

[SYSTEM ALERT: ANCIENT DATA NODE ACCESSED]

[ANALYSIS: THE ACADEMY OF ST. CELESTE IS BUILT UPON A PRIMARY NODE OF THE PRIMORDIAL PANTHEON.]

[WARNING: RUNIC INSCRIPTION FUNCTIONS AS THE COMMAND LANGUAGE OF PHAEDRA.]

The Gift of Inscription meant communicating directly with the magical architecture of the physical world.

The runes dictated the rules of reality, and the academy possessed an ancient foundation built to receive those exact commands.

That explained the anomalies he had noticed since his first life.

The doors locking themselves during curfew, the bells ringing without anyone pulling the ropes, and the sudden drops in temperature in the empty cloisters all happened because the building reacted to ambient magical stimuli.

The academy had a dormant mechanism waiting for input and Raziel had just learned how to write the commands.

He lacked the control to do it properly right now.

Zorya stood frozen near the center of the room, her large eyes reflecting the silver light of the walls.

She dropped her wooden ruler on the floor and walked slowly toward the nearest glowing stone.

She extended her ink-stained fingers and touched a large, intricate symbol carved into the brickwork.

The ancient runes responded to her physical touch with a welcoming pulse of silver light.

Tears welled up in Zorya’s eyes.

“Zorya?” Raziel asked.

“I have been at this academy for three years,” Zorya whispered, her perpetual raspy voice trembling with raw emotion.

“I studied Runes every single day. I believed I was drawing functional seals and useful tools.”

She trailed her fingers down the stone, tracing the curve of another symbol.

“This is not a seal,” Zorya said, her voice breaking completely.

“This is a prayer. Someone wrote this centuries ago as a letter to someone who never read it.”

She pulled her hand back and turned to look at Raziel, studying his gold and black eyes with intense fascination.

“What are you?” Zorya asked.

Raziel calculated how much truth he could afford to spend.

He withheld the information about the Umbral Paragon, the time loops, and the Shadow Parasite to avoid sounding completely insane.

“I have an unusual affinity with ancient runes,” Raziel said. “My mana resonates with the old architecture.”

Zorya stared at him, clearly doubted the simplified explanation, but her fascination heavily outweighed her suspicion.

She wiped her tears away with her ink-stained sleeve, smudging black pigment across her cheek.

“I do not care,” Zorya stated firmly. “Whatever you are… I want to learn.”

Raziel nodded and accepted the alliance.

“We have eighteen days until the tournament. We need to map the syntax of these ancient runes and adapt them for combat.”

Zorya grabbed a fresh notebook and a charcoal pencil from her satchel.

“We start with the primary containment sequences. You need to channel your dense mana into a sustained geometric loop to trap an opponent’s spell before it detonates.”

They worked for another hour, analyzing the glowing walls and copying the structural logic of the ancient symbols into Zorya’s notebook.

Raziel’s empathy dropped to seventy-eight percent while he continuously channeled his Umbral energy to keep the node active.

He ignored the numbness spreading through his chest and focused entirely on the mathematical precision of the task.

He drew twenty different variations of the containment loop, forcing his aggressive mana to conform to the ancient geometric rules.

The parasite in his chest throbbed with every successful drawing, feeding on the intense focus and the residual ancient magic bleeding from the walls.

The morning bell rang at six o’clock, signaling the start of the daily prayers.

Raziel wiped the sweat from his forehead and cut the mana flow to the slate.

The silver light on the walls dimmed immediately and faded back into the dull, dusty gray of the basement bricks.

The heavy, vibrating pressure in the room vanished, leaving only the smell of iron gall ink and old paper.

“We stop here,” Raziel said, grabbing his tunic from the back of a chair.

“If we miss morning prayers, the instructors will start asking questions.”

Zorya shoved her notebook into her bag, completely ignoring the ink smudged on her face.

“Tomorrow at four in the morning. We have eighteen days.”

Raziel unlocked the iron bolt and they left the workshop, heading toward the main stairs to blend in with the other novices waking up for the day

***

The activation of the ancient chamber did not go unnoticed.

Three floors above the East Basement, Father Marius sat behind his large mahogany desk in the director’s office.

He reviewed the supply reports for the upcoming tournament when a sudden vibration shook the floorboards beneath his boots.

His dark wooden cane rattled against the edge of the desk.

Marius froze.

His left eye squeezed shut involuntarily.

That specific tic always happened when he sensed immediate, lethal danger.

He felt the heavy, suffocating pressure of ancient mana rising through the academy’s foundation.

He recognized the signature instantly, having felt it decades ago when he first discovered the catacombs under the city.

Marius stood up, grabbed his cane, and limped out of his office.

He ignored the novices rushing to the chapel and headed straight for the East Basement, his face pale and tight with severe anxiety.

He reached the Inscription workshop and pushed the heavy door open.

The room was completely empty.

Raziel and Zorya had already left.

The ancient runes carved into the walls were still glowing with a faint, residual silver light, humming softly while the last traces of Umbral energy dissipated from the stone.

Marius walked to the center of the room and read the activated symbols, recognizing the specific syntax of the Primordial Pantheon.

His face drained of all color and turned a sickly, ashen gray.

“No,” Marius whispered, his voice trembling with genuine terror. “Not now.”

He turned around and practically ran back up the stairs, ignoring the sharp pain radiating from his injured leg.

He rushed into his office, slammed the door shut, and locked the heavy iron bolt.

He walked to the bookshelf behind his desk, pulled a specific hollowed-out theological text, and retrieved a small, jagged black crystal.

It was a high-grade, encrypted communication stone linked directly to his superior in the capital.

Marius squeezed the black crystal tightly and channeled his mana into the jagged edges.

The crystal hummed and pulsed with a dark, blood-red light.

“Eminence,” Marius said, his voice shaking while he spoke into the stone. “The node of St. Celeste has been activated.”

A long, heavy silence stretched from the other side of the connection, filled only by the faint crackle of magical interference.

“Who?” Elector Mordecai asked.

Marius closed his eyes and leaned heavily against his desk, feeling the reality of the situation crush him.

“The novice Raziel.”

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