Chapter 57: His Tainted Soul

It had been barely a few hours since the attack in the Archive.

Lucian couldn’t stay still, he walked from one side to the other like a caged wolf, while Raziel watched from the stretcher, feeling the phantom echo of the killer’s hand on his neck.

“Those threads…” Lucian murmured, stopping suddenly.

“I mean, cutting a head that clean, he must be Sword Master level.”

Raziel arched an eyebrow. “Do you still think he is cool?”

The childish excitement on Lucian’s face broke, replaced by genuine terror.

“The power is cool, but the guy… no.” He slumped into a chair, running his hands through his hair.

“Did you see how he looked at us later? He smiled like a kid who just pulled the wings off a fly. That Arawn guy is a psychopath, Raz, and now he knows who we are.”

Raziel nodded slowly. “He is a weapon of the Inquisition. He isn’t here to make friends.”

“Exactly! And we have this!” Lucian took out Sister Elena’s leather diary, the one they had taken days ago. Now it looked like a cursed artifact.

“If he finds it on us, he will accuse us of heresy. We are trapped between the cult crazies and the Church executioners.”

A heavy silence fell in the room. They were cornered.

Then, Raziel’s Regressor mind found the only possible exit. A crazy exit. Suicidal.

“No,” Raziel said, his voice a frozen whisper.

“We aren’t trapped. We have a weapon.”

Lucian looked at him without understanding.

“The enemy of my enemy is my tool, Lucian.” Raziel stood up, his gaze fixed on the diary.

“We can’t fight against Marius and his cult alone. We need a hunting dog that bites harder than them.”

The color left Lucian’s face.

“No… you don’t mean Arawn. He’s going to eat us too!”

“Not if we give him a juicier bone,” Raziel sentenced, and his eyes shone with a dangerous light.

“We are going to give him Sister Elena.”

They found Arawn under the moon, in the empty training courtyard.

He wasn’t sweating with a sword. He was sitting on a beam, moving his fingers lazily. Thirty feet away, several straw dummies were being dismembered in a creepy silence, cut by invisible mana threads.

Lucian stayed back, swallowing saliva. Raziel advanced alone.

“You should be in bed, novice,” Arawn said without turning, his voice was pure mockery.

“Captain Thorne’s orders.”

“Cut the act, Arawn,” Raziel replied, stopping at a distance he considered safe.

The Exorcist turned, and that smug smile Raziel hated appeared on his lips.

“My, my. The little lamb has claws. What do you want?”

Raziel threw Elena’s diary at him.

Arawn caught it in the air with a thread of energy and pulled it to his hand. He skimmed through it, and his eyebrows rose with an almost academic interest.

“Saint Sophia… ’Necessary sacrifices’… Wow, Sister Elena is a naughty girl.”

“She and Father Marius are behind everything,” Raziel said, getting to the point.

“They want to do something during the Night of the Lightless Moon. Tomorrow. We will hand them to you on a silver platter. In exchange, we want protection. For us and for Lara.”

Arawn let out a dry laugh.

“Protection?” He got closer, invading Raziel’s personal space, his presence was a physical pressure.

“I’m not a bodyguard. I am an exterminator. But… it bores me to just arrest them. I want a show. I want proof that no one can deny.”

He stopped inches from Raziel, his breath cold.

“So we will put on a play. And you guys will be the bait.”

“Bait?” Lucian’s voice trembled from the back.

“You, noisy noble,” Arawn pointed at Lucian without looking at him.

“You will go to Father Marius. You will tell him you are afraid, that you feel ’a call’ from the darkness. Play the victim. He needs a noble blood sacrifice for his ritual, right? Offer yourself.”

“He’s going to kill me!”

“Not if I’m there to cut off his hands,” Arawn said with casual cruelty. Then, his gray eyes locked onto Raziel.

“And you… you will go to the Chapel. Make noise. Attract his guard dogs. If Marius thinks his ’Paragon’ is busy or dead, he will lower his guard with your friend.”

It was a shitty plan. A plan where they were the bait.

But it was the only one they had.

“Done,” Raziel said.

The St. Celeste Chapel was a tomb, Raziel advanced down the central aisle, each step an echo in the darkness. He knelt before the altar, pretending to pray, but his mind was a radar searching for threats.

Then, he felt it.

A cold that wasn’t from the stone. A weight in the air that crushed the soul.

[SYSTEM ALERT][HOSTILE PRESENCE OF UNKNOWN RANK DETECTED][WARNING: THE ENTITY IS NOT FROM THIS PLANE]

He didn’t have time to turn around.

“I warned you, error.”

The voice was a raspy whisper that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The Shadow. The same entity from Marius’s vision.

Raziel rolled to the side just as a tendril of pure darkness crashed against the floor, pulverizing the tiles.

He stood up, panting, and extended his hands, calling the power that was his only trump card.

’Come on! Come out now!’

He concentrated, looking for the golden light inside him.

A pathetic spark sprouted from his palms and extinguished. A sharp pain, like poison, ran through his arms.

[SYSTEM FAILURE][MANA CORRUPTION DETECTED: 22%][ACCESS TO SKILL [PARAGON LIGHT] DENIED][REASON: HOLY POWER CANNOT BE CHANNELED THROUGH A TAINTED VESSEL]

Raziel looked at his empty hands with a panic he hadn’t felt in any of his previous lives.

“What…?”

The hooded figure of the Shadow materialized over the altar, its red eyes burning with triumph.

“Trying to use a light that doesn’t belong to you anymore?” the entity mocked.

“Your soul is dirty, Paragon.”

A blow of invisible force impacted Raziel in the chest.

CRACK!

He went flying, crashing against the wooden benches, which turned into splinters. The air escaped his lungs and he coughed blood.

The Shadow floated to him and grabbed him by the neck, lifting him as if he weighed nothing.

“I won’t kill you. Not yet,” the entity hissed, squeezing. “You aren’t the main dish tonight.”

Raziel fought to breathe, his feet dangling in the air. The truth hit him with the force of a hammer.

Arawn’s plan. The distraction.

“Lucian…” he gasped.

“Exactly,” the Shadow confirmed, enjoying his despair.

“While you play hero here, your noble-blooded friend is walking straight to Marius’s slaughterhouse.”

Raziel’s vision darkened.

It was a trap. Everything had been a trap.

And he, powerless and trapped by a monster, couldn’t do absolutely anything to save him.

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