Chapter 71: His Fractured Truth

The dust took several minutes to settle.

Raziel was still sitting against the alley wall and his eyes nailed on the empty space where the red notification had been floating.

It wasn’t there anymore.

The System had closed it, or he had closed it without realizing.

Why? What version of him was so stupid, so desperate, so broken, to plant a parasite in his own body?

What did he gain from that?

The question spun in his head and found no bottom.

“Raziel.”

Lucian was in front of him.

He had gray dust in his hair and a cut on his eyebrow that bled down to his jaw.

He offered him a hand. “Get up, We can’t stay here.”

Raziel took the hand and got up.

His legs trembled and a sharp prick crossed his chest, right where the encapsulated parasite beat with that new rhythm it had acquired in the chamber.

He didn’t say anything about that.

He wasn’t going to say anything about that.

Fifteen steps away, Odessa was holding Aerion against the wall.

The prince had his gaze fixed on the rubble of the building, as if he could still see the shadow portal closing.

As if his brother was going to walk out from among the stones.

“Aerion,” Odessa said with a firm voice. “I need you to walk.”

Aerion didn’t answer.

“Your Highness.”

The title shook something in him.

Aerion blinked, looked at Odessa and nodded once, then he separated from the wall on his own.

Kiera appeared from the other end of the alley, limping.

She had her left arm glued to her body and the shoulder armor was dented inward, pressing against the collarbone.

Every step cost her, but her expression showed no pain.

“Martin and Darren are up top,” she reported. “The distraction worked but we lost Darren.”

Odessa closed her eyes for a second.

“How?”

“Acolyte with a ritual knife, he opened his throat before Martin could cover him.”

Odessa opened her eyes.

“The body?”

“Martin took it out and it’s on the roof across the street, covered with a tarp.”

“Good, we will recover it later.”

Odessa’s voice didn’t tremble.

But Raziel saw how she clenched her jaw until the neck muscles marked under her skin.

A dead paladin.

A broken prince.

A wounded subordinate.

Two novices that shouldn’t be there.

While Seraphina had escaped, Again.

“We need to move,” Kiera said. “Half a dozen neighbors already saw the collapse, the night patrol is going to be here in minutes.”

Odessa nodded.

“Let’s go to the Dock District. The Order’s safe house.”

They moved.

Odessa and Kiera at the front, with Aerion between them. Lucian and Raziel behind.

Raziel walked because his legs moved, that was all he could say about his state.

The blue interface floated in the corner of his vision, dim.

[MENTAL STABILITY: 45%]

[WARNING: Critical threshold near. Immediate rest is recommended.]

’Forty-five percent,’ Raziel thought.

He had started the night at sixty-two.

The combat, the resonance with Ayres, the revelation of the System.

Everything had cost him.

The worst part was that he couldn’t even process the most important information because they were running through alleys that stank of rotten fish and urine.

Lucian walked by his side without speaking.

He looked at him sideways every few seconds, checking if he might collapse at any moment.

Raziel noticed it. “I’m fine.”

“You have black blood on your chin.”

“I wiped it off.”

“No, You didn’t.”

Raziel passed the back of his sleeve over his face and The fabric stained a dark gray.

Lucian didn’t insist, but he didn’t stop looking at him either.

***

The safe house was an abandoned warehouse near the north dock, with the windows boarded up and a door that Kiera opened with a rusty key.

Inside there were military cots against the walls, a water barrel in the corner and a basic first aid kit on a table.

The prince sat on a cot with his hands between his knees and his gaze on the floor.

He hadn’t said a single word since the alley.

Kiera dropped into a chair and started taking off the armor pieces from the wounded shoulder with one hand, teeth clenched.

Lucian went straight to the water barrel.

Odessa took bandages from the kit and went toward Raziel.

“Sit.”

Raziel sat on the edge of a cot.

Odessa took his left arm without asking.

It had a long cut from the elbow to the wrist that Raziel hadn’t even registered.

The adrenaline had eaten it whole.

Now that the Paladin touched it, it burned.

Odessa cleaned the wound with a damp cloth and started bandaging it with precise movements.

“How many times have they saved your life this week?”

Raziel thought. “Three?”

“Then stop risking it.”

Raziel looked toward the boarded window, a thread of moonlight sneaked through a crack between the planks.

“I can’t,” he said. “Because every time I don’t, more die.”

Odessa finished the bandage and tightened the knot with more force than necessary.

Raziel didn’t complain.

She looked him in the eyes, Emerald green against pale blue. “That doesn’t make you a hero, novice. It makes you a problem.”

She got up and went toward Kiera.

Raziel stayed alone on the cot.

The parasite pulsed again.

He closed his eyes.

’I did it to myself. Another version of me chose this. Was it a mistake? A plan? A last resort?’

He lay down on the cot and closed his eyes.

He didn’t sleep, but he let the exhaustion crush his thoughts until they stopped screaming.

Two hours later, Odessa called them.

“We’re leaving! The Dock patrol already passed and we have a forty-minute window to cross the Merchant’s Bridge before the guard change.”

They moved in silence through the empty streets.

They crossed the bridge without incidents.

The river water ran black and silent beneath them.

They entered the Commercial District through a side street and Raziel saw it.

Stuck on the wall of a closed bakery.

A poster.

Thick paper, black ink, the seal of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal stamped on the top right corner.

BY ORDER OF HIGH INQUISITOR ALDRIC

WANTED

RAZIEL CELESTE

SUSPECT OF MAJOR HERESY

REWARD: 500 SOLARIS

ALIVE.

Lucian saw it at the same time. “Shit.”

Raziel looked to the right.

Another poster on a post.

To the left, another on the door of a smithy.

Further ahead, three more on the facade of an inn.

They were everywhere.

Odessa stopped and Kiera pulled out her knife by instinct.

Aerion raised his head for the first time in hours then, looked at the poster, looked at Raziel, and something changed in his eyes.

Raziel ripped off the nearest poster.

He looked at it.

His name with his face drawn with enough detail so that any merchant, guard or any citizen with desire to earn five hundred gold coins would recognize him instantly.

The System blinked.

[NEW STATUS ACQUIRED: WANTED HERETIC]

[All ecclesiastical factions are now HOSTILE]

[Access to St. Celeste: DENIED]

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep