Chapter 136: His Broken Boy

In the afternoon, Raziel pushed the wooden doors of the infirmary, Brother Thomas stood by a cabinet sorting glass vials, and heavy dark circles weighed down his eyes.

Thomas looked at Raziel and sighed before pointing to the corner of the room where a white curtain separated the last bed from the rest of the ward.

“He refuses to eat,” Thomas kept his voice low.

“He refuses to drink water, so I have to force liquids down his throat with a syringe.”

Raziel asked about Marius, and Thomas scoffed with a tight grip on a glass vial.

“Marius crossed his name off the registry yesterday because Gideon lost his artificial Gift and the tournament. He has zero utility for the Exarchs now.”

Raziel nodded since he expected that exact behavior from the director.

He walked toward the curtain, but he didn’t come here for purely noble reasons.

Gideon saw him use Runic Inscription in the Founder’s Wing, and could still whisper secrets to an Inquisitor.

Raziel needed to secure his loose ends, but that was just the tactical side of his talking.

The cold numbness inside him expanded every week, but a small fraction of his humanity remained intact and he still cared.

He pulled the white curtain back.

Gideon sat on the edge of the narrow cot.

The Church purged the artificial Amplified Strength from his core weeks ago, so the massive muscles and intimidating bulk disappeared.

He was just a skinny fifteen-year-old kid wearing a loose gray hospital gown.

He stared at the blank stone wall and didn’t even turn his head when Raziel entered the space.

The anger that always fueled Gideon didn’t exist anymore because he had no noble family to return to.

Raziel pulled up a small wooden stool and sat down next to the bed.

He just rested his elbows on his knees and looked at the same stone wall.

Five minutes passed, then ten minutes went by.

The only sound in the ward came from Thomas washing metal surgical tools in a brass basin on the other side of the room.

CLINK.

CLINK.

Gideon broke the silence. “Why are you here?”

“To see how you are,” Raziel answered.

“I am dead.”

“You are not.”

Gideon gripped the white bedsheets.

“What I was died,” Gideon stated. “What I had is gone, and what they promised me was a lie.”

He stopped talking for a few seconds.

“It is the exact same thing.”

Raziel processed the words. His reduced empathy muffled the emotional impact, but it still hurt because he recognized a broken human being.

Raziel looked down at his own scarred hands. “When I was your age…”

He stopped.

He didn’t have a normal story to share because he lived an entire cycle of slaughter and carried a Shadow Parasite in his chest.

He adjusted his words.

“When I lost everything I thought I was,” Raziel kept his tone even, “someone sat next to me and didn’t say a word. They just stayed there.”

Gideon finally turned his head and looked at Raziel.

His eyes were red and swollen, but they were dry since he had zero tears left to cry.

“Did it help?” Gideon asked.

“No,” Raziel answered with total honesty. “But it meant I was not alone while it didn’t help.”

Gideon stared at him and searched his face for a trick, but he found nothing.

“Why do you care?”

Raziel considered lying to give a strategic reason. The Umbral Paragon didn’t need emotions to manipulate people, but the remaining humanity answered first.

“Because I know what it is to be a discarded piece.”

Gideon looked away and released his tight grip on the bedsheets.

Raziel stood up from the stool, pushed it back into the corner, and walked out of the infirmary.

***

The midnight bells rang over St. Celeste while Raziel sat at his desk in the old wing.

He reviewed Zorya’s translation notes under the light of a single oil lamp to memorize the geometric angles of the new architectural runes.

“Help! Somebody help!”

The scream echoed from the stone corridor outside his room, so Raziel dropped his charcoal pencil and ran to the door.

A first-year novice ran down the hallway wearing a white nightgown. He screamed at the top of his lungs and pointed toward the north stairs.

“Blood! There is so much blood!”

Raziel didn’t ask questions and sprinted past the kid.

He ran down the stone steps, bypassed the main cloister, and headed straight for the infirmary wing.

Raziel stopped in the doorway.

Gideon lay on the cold floor tiles, and a massive puddle of dark red blood covered the gray stone.

It soaked into the grout and spread toward the wooden doorframe.

Gideon held a jagged piece of glass in his right hand because he smashed the small mirror above the brass sink.

Both of his wrists displayed deep vertical cuts.

Raziel rushed forward and dropped to his knees right in the middle of the blood puddle and grabbed Gideon’s arms to apply extreme physical pressure to the open wounds with his bare hands.

“Thomas!” Raziel screamed at the top of his lungs. “Thomas!”

No one answered because the healer slept in a different building across the courtyard.

The blue interface exploded in Raziel’s vision.

[SUBJECT ANALYSIS: GIDEON]

[INJURY: SELF-INFLICTED WOUND. ARTERIAL DAMAGE.]

[STATUS: CRITICAL.]

[TIME WITHOUT TREATMENT: 8 MINUTES.]

Raziel stared at the red text.

Eight minutes.

Gideon had been bleeding out on this floor for eight minutes before the first-year novice found him.

The human brain suffered permanent damage after minutes without oxygen, and the body shut down.

Raziel pressed his hands harder against the flesh, but the blood slipped through his fingers and he couldn’t stop the flow with pressure alone.

He could scream for a healer again and wait for Thomas to run across the courtyard, but they wouldn’t make it in time.

Gideon would die on these tiles in less than sixty seconds.

“Damn it.”

Raziel channeled his core and bypassed the standard blue mana entirely.

He reached deep into the center of his chest and grabbed the Umbral Paragon.

The Shadow Parasite woke up to feed on the raw panic and the spilled blood.

Gold and black energy erupted from Raziel’s palms to illuminate the small bathroom, and he pushed the dark magic directly into Gideon’s open wrists.

The gold energy forced the torn flesh to knit together while the black veins burned the severed arteries shut.

The magic bypassed natural healing and imposed a violent, immediate physical reconstruction.

HISSS!

The wounds closed and the bleeding stopped. Gideon gasped and sucked in a massive breath of air.

He remained unconscious, but his heart rate stabilized.

Raziel pulled his hands back, and they were coated in sticky red blood.

The dark energy retreated into his skin before the blue interface flashed one more time.

[SKILL ACTIVATED: CORRUPTED HEALING]

[EMPATHY LEVEL: 75% -> 73%]

The System permanently erased another fraction of his human emotions.

He just bought a life with his own humanity.

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