Chapter 146: His Surface War

The morning bell woke the entire academy before the sun even cleared the horizon.

The novices were already exhausted.

Lucian woke the entire first-year dormitory in the middle of the night screaming about an earthquake when Lithos fell into the sinkhole.

The instructors spent three hours calming the panicked students down and checking the stone walls for cracks.

They told everyone it was just a natural tremor from the mountains and ordered them back to sleep.

Now the instructors banged their fists on the dormitory doors and ordered hundreds of tired novices out of their beds again.

The cold morning wind hit their faces in the main courtyard.

A heavy, unspoken panic hung over the crowd.

Raziel stood in the back row next to Lucian. He kept his hands hidden inside his dark cloak and watched the wooden podium.

Father Marius climbed the wooden stairs.

The director lacked his usual arrogant posture today. He had no color in his face and sweat coated his forehead.

He gripped his dark wooden cane so hard his knuckles turned white.

He unrolled a piece of parchment bearing the heavy red wax seal of the central Inquisition.

“Elector Mordecai updated the deployment schedule,” Marius announced.

“The sealing team arrives from the capital in six weeks.”

Raziel clenched his jaw.

Six weeks.

They just lost fourteen days of preparation. The Elector accelerated the march and ruined their timeline.

“I am initiating daily inspections to prepare the academy for the Elector,” Marius continued.

“Instructors will search every dormitory room and every personal workspace. We will identify and catalog any heretical materials before the Inquisition arrives. We will clear the path for their holy work.”

Marius wanted to burn a few novices to save his own neck.

He needed to hand the Elector a pile of confiscated contraband to prove his loyalty and competence.

Raziel did not care about the other novices.

He needed to secure his own assets.

He already hid the heavy bronze map deep inside the East Basement because Marius feared the ancient silver runes and refused to go down there.

The restricted books from the underground library remained safe because Raziel owned the Quintile title and possessed legal access.

But Zorya had a massive problem.

Raziel gathered Lucian, Lara, and Zorya in the empty storage room near the old armory right after the morning assembly.

Zorya paced back and forth across the dusty floor.

She rubbed her scarred arms and took short, fast breaths.

“I have three years of notes,” Zorya stated.

“I have translations of the ancient syntax and structural diagrams of the Primordial Pantheon. I hide them under the loose floorboards in my standard workspace on the second floor. If the guards pull those boards up, they will hand me straight to Mordecai for execution.”

Lucian sat on a wooden crate and crossed his arms. “Then we move the notes.”

“We cannot move them during the day,” Zorya countered.

“The halls are packed with guards and paranoid instructors.”

“We do it tonight,” Raziel decided.

“We pack the notes into three heavy crates,” Raziel explained.

“We carry them down the back stairs to the East Basement in the dark. Lara acts as the radar and Lucian provides the stealth.”

***

The midnight bell rang and the operation started.

Lara sat on the cold stone of the second-floor landing.

She closed her eyes and pushed her empathic senses outward. She used her mind to scan the building for night guards and insomniac instructors.

She kept her breathing steady and signaled the boys with hand gestures when the patrols passed their sector.

Raziel and Lucian loaded the wooden crates with Zorya’s thick stacks of parchment.

The boxes weighed a ton.

Rough splinters dug into their palms. They grabbed the iron handles and carried the first load down the narrow back stairs.

They reached the basement and dropped the cargo without making a sound.

They climbed back up and loaded the second crate.

Lara held two fingers up to signal a guard walking on the floor above them.

They waited in the dark for five minutes until Lara dropped her hand. They carried the second crate down and secured it in the workshop.

They started the third and final trip just before three in the morning.

Raziel and Lucian carried the last heavy crate covered in a dark wool blanket.

Their shoulders burned from the physical strain. They walked down the hall and turned the corner near the infirmary wing.

A figure stood right in the middle of the stone corridor.

Raziel stopped walking and planted his boots on the floor.

Lucian dropped his side of the crate with a soft thud and moved his hand to the hilt of his practice dagger.

It was Gideon.

The boy wore his gray sleep tunic.

Thick white bandages wrapped around both of his wrists to cover the deep cuts he inflicted on himself days ago.

He just walked the halls in the dark.

His eyes looked empty but wide awake.

Gideon looked at Raziel.

He looked at Lucian.

He looked at the heavy crate covered in the dark blanket.

He looked at the staircase leading down to the basement.

Raziel calculated the variables in a fraction of a second.

He healed Gideon’s wrists and saved the boy’s life, but loyalty meant nothing inside these walls.

If Gideon yelled right now, the guards would arrive in ten seconds.

The Inquisition would find the ancient runes and burn them all at the stake.

Raziel let go of the iron handle.

He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet.

He calculated the exact angle needed to snap Gideon’s neck before the boy could open his mouth to scream.

Gideon stood there for three long seconds. He stared at Raziel’s face and read the lethal intent in his eyes.

“I saw nothing,” Gideon stated.

He turned around and walked back toward the infirmary without looking over his shoulder.

He paid his debt.

Raziel and Lucian let out a breath.

They picked the crate back up and carried it down the stairs to finish the job.

The sun came up and the daily inspections began.

Instructors tore through the dormitories and confiscated minor contraband from terrified novices.

Father Marius walked into the standard Inscription workspace on the second floor with two armed guards.

He pointed his cane straight at Zorya’s desk.

He ordered the guards to tear the floorboards up.

CRACK.

The wood splintered under the guards’ iron crowbars.

Marius leaned over the gap and peered into the dark space.

They found dirt and nothing else.

Marius stood over the empty hole.

He frowned and tapped his dark wooden cane against the stone floor.

The workspace was spotless. The area lacked dust.

He saw the disturbed dirt and knew someone beat him to the prize.

He did not find any physical evidence, but he knew the novices moved the contraband before he arrived.

Marius dismissed the guards and returned to his office. He sat behind his mahogany desk and waited for night to fall over the academy.

The director walked into the main intersection of the residential wing under the cover of darkness.

He pulled a piece of specialized chalk from his robe.

He knelt on the floor and drew a tracking seal across the stone tiles.

It was a high-grade surveillance rune designed to monitor unauthorized movement and detect anomalous mana signatures.

Marius finished the geometric lines and channeled his own mana into the floor.

The chalk glowed red for a single second and faded into the stone. The mark became invisible to the naked eye.

He stood up, dusted off his knees, and walked back to his office.

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