Reborn As A Useless Mage, But I'm Already The Angel Of Death

04

Adrian pressed his back against the balcony wall and yanked his sleeve down, smothering the golden glow beneath two layers of fabric. The Holy Mark had calmed slightly but still throbbed with a residual warmth that made his skin itch.

He had run three quiet tests in the last ten minutes. Shadow Art triggered nothing. Curse Art triggered nothing. Soul Art, Weapon Art, nothing and nothing. But the moment he channeled even a thread of Necromancy, the mark erupted like a bonfire in a dry forest.

"Specifically necromancy. Only necromancy." He flexed his fingers, watching the faint golden shimmer fade from his knuckles. "Why would a Holy Mark react exclusively to the one branch of Dark Arts that deals with death?"

No answer came. Jenna was not here to explain, and she would not exist for several more years in this timeline.

His mana reserves were dangerously low. Casting Grade 10 level magic repeatedly since his return had drained him faster than expected in this younger body. But Adrian was not concerned, because he carried a solution he had invented himself.

Gluttony. An original Grade 5 technique he had developed in his previous life after spending six months studying the corpse of the Demon Lord of Gluttony. The spell worked like an invisible siphon, drawing microscopic amounts of mana from every living thing within a fifty meter radius. So little from each source that nobody would ever notice, but collectively enough to refill his reserves within minutes when surrounded by a large crowd.

And right now, three hundred wealthy nobles packed into a banquet hall generated more ambient mana than a small forest.

Adrian straightened his coat and walked back into the celebration, letting Gluttony work silently as he moved through the crowd.

"There you are." Maya Sinclair appeared at his elbow, holding a glass of sparkling wine she clearly was not old enough to be drinking. "Your sister sent me to retrieve you. Her words, not mine."

"Retrieve me. Like a lost dog."

"Her comparison was less flattering. She said something about a stray cat that keeps disappearing whenever you stop watching it."

"Delightful."

"I also came because I wanted to tell you something." Maya reached into her coat pocket and produced a folded letter bearing an ornate blue seal. "I received my Ashgate Academy invitation this morning."

Adrian's eyes sharpened. "You are attending?"

"Despite everything, yes. The war between the empires is getting worse every month, and the academy is technically neutral ground. My father thinks it is foolish. My mother thinks it is dangerous. I think it is the only place where I might actually learn something useful instead of practicing the same curse variations for another three years."

"Your father is not wrong about the danger."

"Neither is my mother. But I did not ask for their opinions and I am not asking for yours." Maya sipped her wine with the calm defiance of someone who had made up her mind long before this conversation started. "Are you going?"

"Yes."

"Then we will be classmates. Try not to reanimate anything in the dormitory. I hear the faculty frowns on that."

Adrian almost laughed. In his previous life, Maya had said something remarkably similar the first time they met at the academy. Some things, apparently, were destined to repeat regardless of timelines.

"Nobody has asked me to dance all evening." Maya said it casually, but Adrian caught the slight downward flicker of her gaze toward her gloved hands. The scars she hid beneath them. The scars that every noble in this room knew about and whispered about behind her back.

"Nobody has asked me either." Adrian turned to face her and extended his hand. "So we might as well suffer together."

Maya stared at his outstretched hand like he had offered her a live snake. "You are joking."

"I never joke about suffering."

She took his hand.

The reaction was immediate. Lilly spotted them from across the hall and her jaw literally dropped. Julia choked on her appetizer. A wave of murmured shock rippled through the surrounding nobles as Adrian Blackwood, the boy who once told the Empress to leave him alone, voluntarily stepped onto a dance floor with a girl.

"They are all staring." Maya's voice tightened. Her free hand instinctively pulled at the edge of her glove, making sure it covered everything.

"Let them stare. Half these people cannot tell the difference between a waltz and a funeral march. Their opinions are worth less than the dirt on your shoes."

"That is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me."

"It was not meant to be romantic."

"I know. That is why it worked."

They moved through the dance with surprising ease, Adrian leading with the practiced grace of a man who had attended a hundred military galas in another lifetime. Around them, fans fluttered and eyebrows rose and lips moved behind cupped hands.

Then it hit him. A flash of images slammed into his mind through the telepathic link with his undead sparrows. Hooded figures. Six of them. Crouched around a crystalline device that pulsed with a sickly green light roughly three hundred meters north of the hall. The device was an isolation ward, designed to cut this entire venue off from outside communication and intervention.

House Ravenshaw.

Adrian's expression did not change. His feet did not miss a step. But behind his eyes, a cold fury ignited that had been waiting for this moment since the second he woke up in his old bedroom.

In his previous timeline, those hooded figures had completed their ritual uninterrupted. The isolation ward had gone up. The demon horde had poured through a tear in reality that House Ravenshaw ripped open right in the middle of the celebration. Lilly had died. Dozens had died. And House Ravenshaw had nearly gotten away with the entire thing.

Not tonight.

Adrian sent a single command through his link to the sparrows. Kill them. All of them. Leave nothing.

Simultaneously, he extended his necromantic awareness toward the Ravenshaw estate miles across Ironhaven, reaching through the dozens of household servants he had already covertly converted into undead sleeper agents over the past several hours. Through their eyes, he watched Lord Daniel Ravenshaw sitting in his private study, surrounded by guards, advisors, and family members. All of them puppets. All of them already dead and reanimated without anyone noticing. Daniel was talking to a hooded figure about the glorious new era that would begin tonight when both empires fell into chaos.

Adrian watched through dead eyes and felt nothing but cold satisfaction.

"Adrian?" Maya's voice pulled him back. She was looking at his face with a slight frown. "You have a strange expression. Is something wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong." He smiled at her, and the smile looked perfectly natural. "I was just thinking about how much I am enjoying this dance."

"Now I know something is wrong. You do not enjoy things."

"Perhaps I am learning."

On the outskirts of the estate, six hooded figures died silently in the dark, torn apart by undead sparrows that descended on them like a swarm of knives. The isolation crystal shattered. The ritual collapsed before it ever completed.

And deep inside the Ravenshaw estate, every servant, every guard, every converted undead agent waited motionless for their master's next command, ready to tear the entire household apart from within.

Adrian's checkmate had begun before his enemies even realized they were playing.