Chapter 135: His Sinking Floor

Three days passed since the Ascension Tournament.

Raziel stood in the East Basement and pulled the heavy bronze map from his tunic.

The first mark glowed solid silver as he owned Architectural Inscription, he looked at the second mark indicating the Soul Resonance chamber beneath the Main Chapel.

The mark did not blink anymore.

It moved.

Raziel rubbed his eyes and looked again.

The silver dot sat a full inch lower on the bronze plate.

The layout of the underground tunnels shifted on the metal surface.

The Academy altered its own physical foundation.

The building pushed the second chamber deeper into the earth. It moved the room away from the surface and away from any known stairs or hidden doors.

“What are you doing?” Raziel muttered.

He dropped to his knees.

He placed the bronze plate on the ground and pressed his bare hands against the brickwork.

He channeled his Umbral Paragon core.

He pushed the dark mana into the ancient silver runes carved into the room.

He needed to use his new Architectural Inscription to carve a tunnel. He needed to force the stone to open a path downward.

VMMMM!

The floor pushed back.

The silver runes flared with blinding light and rejected his dark mana.

The kinetic feedback traveled up Raziel’s arms and hit his chest.

Raziel coughed hard and his ribs ached.

The Academy resisted him.

Raziel frowned. He pushed harder.

The Shadow Parasite inside his core woke up. The entity fed on his frustration and pulsed against his lungs.

“Open the door,” Raziel commanded the stone.

He visualized the geometric shape for an excavation sequence. He dragged his glowing index finger across the floor to draw the lines.

FZZT!

The silver runes sparked and shattered his drawing before he could finish the second angle.

Raziel pulled his hands back.

The stones vibrated. The silver runes emitted chaotic geometric patterns.

Raziel watched the patterns flash across the walls.

He remembered the syntax he learned over the last month. The building screamed short and panicked concepts.

Danger above.

Hide.

Hide.

Deep.

Safe.

The building buried its chambers, St. Celeste preferred to lose Raziel as a student and lock him out of the rooms. The structure wanted to hide the Forbidden Gifts from the predator walking above them.

Elector Mordecai.

Mordecai triggered the Silence Protocol.

The Inquisition planned to march here in two months with boiling consecrated lead to murder the ancient magic.

The Academy heard the threat and decided to sink its own heart into the abyss to survive.

Zorya sat in the corner of the workshop.

She watched the chaotic silver light bouncing off the walls.

“The syntax is breaking,” Zorya whispered. “The foundation is panicking.”

Raziel placed his hands flat on the floor again.

He let his palms rest on the cold stone without forcing any magic into the bricks.

“I need to go down.”

The silver runes pulsed with refusal.

BZZT!

The light formed a harsh and rigid geometric block.

Raziel kept his hands on the floor. He leaned forward and lowered his head.

“I know you are scared.”

The runes flickered. The vibration in the floor softened just a fraction.

“But if you do not let me learn…”

Raziel paused and swallowed the dry lump in his throat.

He thought about Lucian getting his chest crushed in the arena. He thought about Lara crying in the dark.

“…I will not be able to protect you when they come.”

A long silence filled the East Basement.

The Academy stopped vibrating.

Then the runes on the wall across from him shifted.

The ancient magic organized itself into a clear and deliberate geometric sequence.

Raziel stared at the new symbols.

He recognized the basic shapes but the grammar eluded his current knowledge.

He turned his head to look at Zorya.

Zorya dropped her satchel and crawled across the floor.

She stopped a foot away from the wall and pulled a piece of charcoal from her pocket.

She traced the glowing silver lines in the air to translate the meaning.

She read the first symbol.

“Protect.”

She read the second symbol.

“You.”

She moved to the third shape.

“Cannot.”

Raziel tightened his jaw. The Academy doubted his power.

Zorya kept translating. She pointed at the fourth and fifth symbols.

“He.” Zorya frowned and squinted at the wall. “Big.”

She moved to the final glowing shape. It was a massive and complex rune.

“He.” Zorya swallowed hard. “Ancient.”

Raziel frowned. He looked at the wall and then at Zorya.

“Mordecai is ancient?” Raziel asked.

Zorya shook her head. Her brown eyes widened with realization.

“Not ancient like old,” Zorya explained. “Ancient like… prior.”

Raziel processed the word.

The Church of Zhalyr conquered Phaedra five hundred years ago.

They wiped out the Primordial Pantheon and built their cathedrals over the ruins.

Elector Mordecai served as the supreme commander of the Inquisition.

He enforced the will of the Goddess and hunted heretics but the Academy recognized Mordecai as something else.

“That makes zero sense,” Raziel stated. “Mordecai uses holy magic. He carries ecclesiastical artifacts, he is just human.”

Zorya pointed a shaking finger at the wall.

“The stones do not lie, Raziel. They remember everything.”

Raziel stood up from the floor. He dusted off his knees.

He needed to rethink his entire strategy.

He prepared to fight a corrupt human institution.

He prepared to fight fanatic priests and skilled Inquisitors.

Raziel reached into his tunic to grab the bronze map. He needed to check the location of the second chamber again.

He grabbed the metal plate.

HISSS!

Raziel yanked his hand out of his pocket.

The bronze plate burned his fingers. The metal heated up to an impossible temperature in one second.

Raziel pulled the map out using the edge of his sleeve to protect his skin. He dropped the heavy plate onto the wooden table.

CLANG!

The metal hit the wood.

The bronze map glowed. The silver dots marking the six Forbidden Gifts remained dark.

The seventh mark illuminated.

The mysterious glitching dot in the exact center of the plate shined with a blinding red light, it was the only mark on the entire map that did not use silver ancient magic.

Raziel stepped back from the table.

The red light pulsed.

THUMP.

THUMP.

The blue interface exploded in Raziel’s vision.

[CRITICAL ALERT TRIGGERED]

Raziel gripped his own head.

[TARGET ANALYSIS UPDATE FOR PREVIOUS ENCOUNTER]

[SUBJECT: ELECTOR MORDECAI]

Raziel kept his eyes open and read the glitching text.

[Elector Mordecai is not what he seems.]

[Ecclesiastical Classification: Elector of the Inquisition.]

The blue interface shook. The system fought to process an impossible piece of data.

[REAL Classification: ̴̢̛̱̫̝̹̪̣̎̂̍̈́̇̃̓̐̿̑̒̅̃̀̕̚͘̚█̸̻̽█̵̩█̵̰̽█̸̹̉]

The name censored itself as thick black blocks covered the true identity of the Elector.

The system deleted the message.

Raziel stood in the center of the room.

The System possessed absolute knowledge of this world.

It quantified stats and predicted the apocalypse, treated Zion and Raziel as anomalies but it still classified them.

The System just censored Mordecai because it feared him?

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