Chapter 153: His Remembered Death

VMMMM!

The physical floor of the East Basement vanished beneath him.

The cold stone air disappeared and the damp smell of the academy faded into nothing.

The magic dissolved the present world and dragged his consciousness backward.

The new world smelled like iron and burnt meat.

Raziel opened his eyes.

The first thing he felt was the sticky floor.

He did not watch a memory from a distance.

He lived it again.

He occupied his own body from the very first cycle.

He tried to get up and his hand slipped on the wet stone.

He looked at his fingers and the scream got stuck in his throat.

Thick blood covered the sacred tiles of the cathedral.

He wore a white novice robe soaked in fresh blood.

He possessed zero gold and black Umbral energy inside his chest.

He had no System interface and no Paragon light.

“Mmm… I thought the Clerics’ drop rate would be higher. What a scam!”

The voice sounded sweet and way too calm for a slaughterhouse.

Raziel looked up and his hands shook.

He remembered the book in his hands and the orphans standing in front of him. He remembered the colored stained glass shining while he delivered his sermon about Zhalyr’s kindness.

A young girl with brown hair sat on the main altar. She wore shiny black armor and she wiped a spotless sword with a silk cloth.

Raziel took a deep breath. His hands kept shaking, but a deep stubbornness settled in his chest.

He grabbed a heavy piece of chalk from his pocket.

He dragged the chalk across the broken floor tiles and used his minor perception Gift to draw the crude, ancient shapes he saw hidden in the basement walls weeks ago.

He drew the language of the Primordial Pantheon because Church magic had already failed to save the priests.

A fragile silver barrier flared into existence across the chapel entrance.

Zion stopped and looked at the fragile silver magic blocking her path.

She did not look impressed. She looked bored.

She raised her left hand and snapped her fingers.

CLICK!

The ancient silver runes shattered and fell apart.

The geometric shield dissolved into dead sparks.

Raziel grabbed a heavy iron candelabrum from the floor.

It weighed a ton, but he lifted it anyway.

He charged at her.

He did not know how to fight and he was just a cleric, but he threw the heavy iron at her head with all his strength.

Zion did not move.

A hexagon of black light appeared in front of her face.

The candelabrum slammed into the invisible barrier and broke apart into dust.

“Slow,” Zion complained. “[Void Cut].”

She moved her index finger.

SHIING!

Raziel felt the hit before he saw the weapon.

The invisible blade of compressed air punched straight through his chest and threw him backward.

He crashed into the broken wooden pews and felt his ribs crack open.

Hot blood filled his throat and he spat it onto the splintered wood.

He fell on his back and slammed into the cold floor.

The pain paralyzed his vocal cords so he could not scream.

He just stared up at the smoke-filled sky through the broken roof.

The darkness crept into the edges of his vision, and he felt his soul tearing apart.

But in that micro-second between life and total oblivion, something impossible happened.

The ancient stones of St. Celeste answered him.

The Nine dead gods woke up from their five-century sleep.

They lacked the power to fight the Player and they lacked the strength to save the burning world.

They only possessed enough energy to make one single, desperate bet.

They looked at the bleeding kid on the floor.

Raziel was not special.

He was not a chosen hero and he held no grand destiny.

But he was the only human in Phaedra who tried to use their forgotten language to build a shield.

He was the only NPC who treated their ruined temple with actual respect.

The Nine did not choose a champion.

They chose the stubborn men with the chalk.

They gathered the last remaining fragments of their divine consciousness and compressed the raw ancient magic into a single artifact.

They injected the Resurrection Token directly into Raziel’s dissolving soul.

The darkness consumed him completely.

Raziel opened his eyes.

He lay on his back on the cold floor of the East Basement.

Tears streamed down his face and soaked into his dark hair.

The sheer emotional devastation of reliving his own murder wrecked his nervous system.

He operated on forty-five percent mental stability.

A new sensation replaced the terror and settled deep in his chest.

Acceptance.

His death in the first timeline was not unfair.

It was just the brutal price of living in a broken world.

And his resurrection was not a random gift from a glitching game.

It was a calculated gamble placed by dying gods.

[GIFT MASTERED: CHRONOPERCEPTION — LEVEL 1]

[DESCRIPTION: You perceive temporal echoes in objects and locations. You can view fragments of the past and calculate probable projections of the future.]

[RANGE: Requires direct physical contact with the target.]

[FUTURE ACCURACY: ~40% (Improves with mastery).]

[GIFTS MASTERED: 4/6]

Raziel read the text and dismissed the screens.

He felt hands gripping his shoulders.

Zorya knelt on the floor next to him and held him tight.

She felt his psychological collapse through their permanent bond, and she rushed over to catch him when he fell backward.

Lucian stood in the doorway of the workshop. The noble looked completely pale and kept his hand resting on his dagger.

Lara knelt right behind Raziel’s head.

She pressed her palms against his temples and pushed pure, calming empathic energy into his mind to stabilize his erratic heart rate.

“What did you see?” Lucian asked from the door.

Raziel sat up slowly and wiped the wet tears from his face with the back of his sleeve.

He took a deep breath to steady his lungs.

“I saw my death,” Raziel answered.

Lucian tightened his jaw. “And?”

“And I saw the reason I am alive right now.”

Raziel looked at the glowing silver runes on the brick walls.

He understood the connection now.

The Runes protected him because he belonged to them from the very first cycle.

“It was not luck,” Raziel stated. “Someone bet everything they had left on me.”

He stood up from the floor and dusted off his trousers.

“I am not going to lose that bet.”

He reached out and placed his bare hand against the stone pillar to support his weight.

VMMMM!

The newly mastered Gift triggered without a conscious command.

The magic reacted to the physical contact with the ancient foundation because Raziel lacked the training to control it.

Chronoperception activated.

Raziel did not look into the past this time.

His mind calculated the residual mana echoes in the room and projected them forward.

He looked straight into a probable future.

The vision was blurry and fragmented, but the core details hit his brain with terrifying clarity.

He saw the main gates of St. Celeste.

He saw Elector Mordecai marching into the courtyard surrounded by elite Inquisitors in heavy silver armor.

But Mordecai did not arrive in six weeks.

The temporal echo placed his arrival in exactly three weeks.

The timeline shrank again.

Raziel focused on the blurry vision and pushed the Chronoperception harder to see the details of the Inquisition squad.

Mordecai did not come with just a team of sealers.

He did not just carry the black Silencer artifact to kill the runes.

Two armored guards dragged a prisoner behind the Elector.

The prisoner wore heavy iron chains around her wrists and neck.

She had short, messy hair and furious, blind eyes.

Thick layers of dried blood covered the ink stains on her hands.

Raziel stopped breathing and his stomach dropped.

He recognized the prisoner immediately.

It was Mirael.

Elector Mordecai captured the Oracle, and he brought her to St. Celeste as bait.

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