Chapter 149: His Naked Truth

Raziel read the red system warning floating in the Founder’s room.

The text stated revealing the time loop carried extreme psychological risk to the listener.

He dismissed the screens with a thought and looked at Zorya.

She stood in the dim light of the oil lamp and waited for him to speak.

He needed the third weapon to fortify the academy against the Inquisition, and the Founder demanded absolute honesty to unlock it.

Raziel grabbed the wooden chair from the center of the cell and pushed it toward the stone desk.

“Sit down,” Raziel instructed. “I have a long story.”

Zorya sat on the old wood and folded her hands in her lap.

Raziel leaned his back against the stone wall and crossed his arms.

“I died a couple years from now,” Raziel stated.

Zorya did not blink.

He told her about the first timeline.

He described the main cathedral and the bodies of the orphans covering the floor tiles.

He explained Zion.

He described the Player and her black sword.

He detailed the exact sensation of the Void Slash cutting through his ribs.

He explained the blood filling his lungs and the mechanical voice of the System announcing his death.

He kept talking because stopping meant giving her space to run away.

He explained the Resurrection Token and the regression protocol.

He described the cold sweat of waking up in the past inside a St. Celeste classroom.

He told her about the hidden interface burning in his retinas and the ticking global clock predicting the end of the world.

He told her he lived every single day waiting for the fire to return.

He pointed at his own chest and confessed his greatest sin.

He told her about the crypt.

He explained his past self performing a blood ritual to inject the Shadow Parasite into his core to survive.

He described the agony of fusing the holy Paragon light with the absolute abyss inside the St. Sophia dungeon.

He explained Mother Celestine and the soul drain.

He admitted his empathy dropped every single time he used his power.

He told her he operated on seventy percent humanity right now and the cold numbness grew larger every day.

He felt himself turning into a monster to fight monsters.

Then he laid out the entire political board.

He explained how Prince Ayres planned a violent coup with the cult, told her the Architect manipulated the world from the shadows and used Zion.

He told her the Forge existed to reset reality if the game broke.

An hour passed.

Raziel finished the story and waited for her to scream. He waited for her to call him a heretic and run up the stairs to find the guards.

Zorya did not run and she did not call him crazy.

She sat in the wooden chair and stared at his face.

She processed the massive dump of impossible information with the exact same focus she used to decode ancient syntax.

She analyzed the structure of his trauma and found zero lies.

“Thank you for trusting me,” Zorya stated. “Now let me return the gesture.”

She reached over and rolled up her gray right sleeve.

She exposed the jagged scars and the black suppression tattoo covering her pale skin.

“The Church executed my mother for runic heresy when I was four years old,” Zorya explained.

She traced the outline of the jagged scars with her thumb.

“She was a master Inscriptor. She refused to bend to the Exarchs. She saw the Inquisition coming for her. She knew my core possessed too much raw capacity and she knew the Exarchs would kill me or turn me into a weapon.”

Zorya touched the black ink in the center of her forearm.

“She drew this seal on my arm right before they broke down our front door. She did not just lock my magic to protect me from their scanners, she also inscribed a piece of her own soul into the ink. She ripped her own consciousness apart to build the geometric anchor.”

Raziel stopped breathing and his stomach dropped. He understood the severity of the situation right then.

“My mother is in here,” Zorya said. “If you take the seal off, she dies forever.”

Raziel looked at the black tattoo.

He offered to break that seal in the East Basement.

He almost murdered the last remnant of her family out of sheer tactical ignorance.

“I will not take it off,” Raziel promised.

“What if you need me to be stronger?” Zorya asked and kept her hand over the ink.

“We will find another way.”

“You are an idiot,” Zorya stated.

“People tell me that a lot.”

“No,” Zorya corrected him. “You are an idiot because you have seventy percent empathy and you still chose to be honest. That is not intelligence, just stupid courage.”

Raziel almost smiled. The muscle in his cheek twitched but the smile did not reach his face.

“It is the only thing I have left,” Raziel answered.

The Founder’s room responded to their shared vulnerability and the magic manifested directly inside their physical bodies.

Raziel felt a sudden intense heat ignite in the center of his chest.

The warmth pushed back the cold numbness of his seventy percent empathy.

A physical tether forged itself between his core and Zorya’s mind, it was a permanent and unbreakable bridge built out of pure trust.

The magic anchored itself to their shared trauma.

[GIFT MASTERED: BOND FORGING LEVEL 1]

[DESCRIPTION: Create permanent connections between consciousnesses. The bond allows long-distance communication, shared physical sensations, and mutual Gift enhancement.]

[LIMITATION: Maximum 3 active bonds.]

[FIRST BOND ESTABLISHED: ZORYA]

[GIFTS MASTERED: 3/6]

He felt Zorya through the new connection.

He knew exactly where she stood in physical space and he knew she was alive.

Zorya gasped and grabbed the edge of the wooden desk.

The bond worked in both directions. She felt his core through the tether.

She felt the gold holy light and the black parasitic rot fighting an endless war inside his chest.

But she felt something else hidden beneath the Umbral energy.

Zorya raised her head and stared at Raziel with wide eyes.

“Raziel,” Zorya called out in the dark.

“What is it?”

“The bronze map.” Zorya breathed heavy and pointed a shaking finger at his chest. “The seventh mark.”

Raziel frowned.

The mysterious seventh mark appeared on the metal plate after he promised to protect the academy from the Inquisition.

He thought it represented a hidden chamber or a forgotten artifact.

“The seventh mark is not buried under the Academy,” Zorya stated.

Raziel felt his blood turn cold. “Where is it?”

“It is inside you.”

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