Chapter 89: His Borrowed Madness

[ALLOW PARTIAL ACCESS TO PARASITE?]

[YES / NO]

Raziel didn’t answer.

The Parasite didn’t wait for a response.

CRACK!

The first crack on the Chalice was so fine that Celestine didn’t see it.

A line as thin as a hair that ran down the black metal from top to bottom, and from that crack, a thread of violet light came out and bent inward, toward him, as if something was pulling it from his chest.

Celestine moved the chalice another inch closer.

“Breathe,” she said. “The process is painless if you relax.”

Raziel did not relax.

Because what he felt in his sternum was a hunger that wasn’t his, hot and completely out of control.

The Parasite twisted inside its magic capsule.

Raziel gritted his teeth.

’No. Stop. Stop, stop, stop…’

CRAAAACK!

It simply split in half and the violet light that filled it shot out like steam, straight into Raziel’s chest.

ZMMM!

Raziel felt the impact like a punch from the inside.

His ribs creaked against the leather straps.

His eyes went completely black for a second, just one, before returning to their normal blue.

The Sister holding the Chalice took three steps back.

The two halves of the object fell to the floor with a metallic thud.

CLANG! CLANG!

“That…” The Sister looked at the broken pieces on the floor, then at Raziel, then back at the floor. “That’s never happened before.”

Celestine didn’t move, she just watched Raziel with narrowed eyes, calculating.

Raziel assessed the situation in less than a second.

’Two Sisters.’

’One Celestine.’

’No mana, no weapons.’

’I just broke their most important relic with my parasite.’

’If Celestine figures out what happened, I’m dead before they find me.’

He made his decision.

Raziel started to tremble.

“I’m sorry!” he shouted, and his voice came out broken, hysterical, perfectly calibrated. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, the voices, the voices told me to take, to take it—!”

“Hold him down!” Celestine ordered.

The two Sisters lunged at him.

One grabbed his head, the other pressed his shoulders against the chair.

Raziel kept trembling, kept shouting nonsense about voices and light and a made-up name that he repeated three times until it sounded like a broken prayer.

“He’s having an episode!” one of the Sisters said.

“I can see that,” said Celestine.

Her tone didn’t change.

Raziel, between faked convulsions, glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

Celestine wasn’t looking at the broken Chalice.

Celestine was looking at him.

’Shit.’

“Take him to his cell,” Celestine ordered. “And pick that up.”

The straps came loose.

The Sisters grabbed him by the arms and dragged him toward the door.

Raziel let his legs give way, let his weight be a problem for them, let his murmurs of “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” fill the silence of the hallway.

The door to his cell closed.

CLANK!

Silence.

Raziel stopped trembling.

He stayed on the cold floor for a moment, on his back, staring at the stone ceiling.

Then he looked at his hands.

They were pulsing.

They weren’t glowing, or burning, or doing anything anyone could see from the outside.

But he felt them.

A silver and black current intertwined, running through his veins, beating to the rhythm of his heart but slightly out of sync.

[SYSTEM UPDATE]

[SHADOW PARASITE: EVOLUTION DETECTED]

[LEVEL 2 → LEVEL 3]

[NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: DEVOUR MINOR ARTIFACTS]

[DESCRIPTION: The Parasite can absorb and break down items of power lower than Sacred Rank. The absorbed energy is converted into temporary sustenance for the Parasite. Side effect: the host receives a fraction of the energy as overflow.]

[SOUL CORRUPTION: +3%]

[MENTAL STABILITY: -4%]

Raziel sat up slowly.

He read the notification twice.

He didn’t expect this, but he would take it.

He brought his hands to his chest and felt the Parasite there, more satisfied than an hour ago, coiled around his spiritual core like something that had just eaten and was now dozing off.

“Gross,” Raziel muttered.

From the cell next door came a hoarse whisper.

“You’re back?”

“Still alive,” Raziel answered.

“They never come back this fast.”

“I broke their favorite toy.”

Silence from the other side of the wall.

“That’s…” The neighbor took a moment to find the word. “That’s a very serious problem, kid.”

“I know.”

Raziel leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

He had to calculate how much time he had left before Celestine connected the dots, how much time before Lucian and Lara found him, how much time before the Parasite decided the next artifact on the menu was him.

He fell asleep without meaning to.

The cell was completely dark when the door opened.

No sound of keys, or orders, and definitely no footsteps from an escort.

Just the door moving on its own, and a figure who entered and sat on the floor in front of him.

Raziel’s eyes snapped open and he pressed himself against the wall.

Celestine.

Alone.

Without her staff or the Sisters.

Without the formal habit of a Mother Superior or the embroidered robes with the Order’s seals, just a simple gray tunic, unadorned, without any insignia, which made her look older and smaller than she appeared during the day.

As if the woman under the title was a completely different person.

She said nothing for a full minute.

Neither did Raziel.

The silence between them was the kind that settles in when two people know that the first word spoken will define everything that comes after.

It was Celestine who broke it.

“What are you?”

Raziel didn’t answer.

He kept his back against the wall, his hands still on his knees, his breathing controlled with nothing that could be read as defiance.

Celestine tilted her head to the side, studying him with a calmness that was all self-control.

Her eyes scanned his face as if looking for something specific that would confirm which category to put him in.

“I’ve seen necromancers,” she said, like someone reciting a list she had been building for decades.

“I’ve seen prophets, I’ve seen Awakened who lost their minds by touching too much power too fast, and the Fallen who found something worse than death on their way back.”

She took a long pause. “You’re not any of those.”

Her eyes shone in the darkness of the cell, catching some remnant of light that shouldn’t exist in there. “You’re something new.”

Raziel looked at her without moving or speaking.

He let the silence do the work because anything he said right now could be used against him.

And Celestine knew it, that’s why she had come alone with no witnesses.

Whatever happened in this cell didn’t officially exist…

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