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

07

Adrian leaned against a marble pillar near the edge of the banquet hall, watching the oblivious nobility laugh and drink and gossip their way through an evening that was about to become the most significant night in the Dark Empire's recent history. None of them knew it yet. In a few hours, maybe less, word would reach this room that House Ravenshaw had been wiped from existence, and the five Great Houses would become four overnight.

He almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

"Adrian! Come over here, we saved you a spot!" Lilly waved at him from a round table near the center of the hall where she sat sandwiched between Maya and Julia.

He pushed off the pillar and walked over, noting with quiet amusement how the atmosphere around him had shifted since his dance with Maya. Nobles who had spent years crossing the street to avoid the Blackwood lunatic were now gravitating toward him, smiling, nodding, offering congratulations he had not asked for.

"Young Lord Blackwood! Congratulations on your Ashgate Academy invitation. What wonderful news!" A portly baron with a red nose and wine stained cravat clasped Adrian's hand enthusiastically as he passed.

"Thank you." Adrian extracted his hand and kept walking.

"Lord Blackwood, we simply must discuss your prospects at the academy over dinner sometime!" A countess with too much perfume and not enough self awareness inserted herself into his path.

"Perhaps another time." He sidestepped her without slowing down.

It was incredible, really. A single dance and suddenly the boy who had once told the Empress to mind her own business was being treated like a reformed man. As if the ability to waltz was somehow proof of good character.

Jenna had always misunderstood this part of his life. In her version of events, Adrian had been a lonely outcast at Ashgate Academy, friendless and bitter. The truth was far simpler. He had not been friendless because people rejected him. He had been friendless because the standard curriculum bored him so completely that the academy's headmaster eventually gave him unrestricted access to the restricted library just to keep him from disrupting classes with unsolicited corrections.

He sat down at the table beside Lilly, who immediately pulled him into a conversation he had no interest in joining.

"So Lord Ashworth's third wife apparently left him for his own horse master." Lilly leaned forward with the gleeful expression of someone delivering premium gossip. "Can you imagine? The man owns half the northern territories and she ran off with someone who shovels manure for a living."

"Good for her." Maya sipped her wine. "At least the horse master probably bathes more than once a month."

"Maya!" Julia covered her mouth, horrified and delighted in equal measure.

"What? Have you ever been downwind of Lord Ashworth? The man smells like a wet dog rolled in cheese."

"That is oddly specific." Adrian raised an eyebrow.

"I sat next to him at last year's Harvest Gala. It is not a memory I will ever recover from."

Lilly grabbed Adrian's arm and pulled him closer to the table. "Tell them about the time Lord Devereaux tried to bribe father into an alliance by sending us twelve crates of imported wine and every single bottle turned out to be vinegar."

"Why would I tell that story?"

"Because it is funny! Father made the servants pour it all out in the courtyard and the entire estate smelled like a pickle factory for a week."

"I do not see how that reflects well on anyone involved."

"It does not. That is why it is funny."

Adrian shook his head but did not pull away from the conversation. In truth, there was something oddly comforting about sitting here listening to these three girls tear apart the reputations of half the empire's nobility with surgical precision. They were sharper than anyone in this room gave them credit for.

"Why do you three always cluster around me?" Adrian looked between them with genuine curiosity. "There are a hundred people in this room you could be talking to."

"Because you are the safest person in this room." Lilly said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Safe? I am the person everyone in this room actively avoids."

"Exactly. Nobody approaches you, which means nobody approaches us while we are sitting with you. You are basically a human scarecrow."

"Wonderful. I have been reduced to a decorative deterrent."

Maya set down her glass and straightened in her chair. "On a more practical note, Lilly and I were discussing the academy earlier. I want to propose that we travel together to Ashgate before the term officially begins. Arrive a few days early, familiarize ourselves with the campus and the surrounding city."

"That is actually sensible." Adrian nodded. "The academy sits in neutral territory between both empires. Knowing the layout before classes start would give us an advantage over students who arrive on the first day and spend a week lost in the corridors."

"Then we agree. Three days from now?" Maya looked between the twins.

"Three days works for me." Lilly turned to Adrian. "Does three days work for our resident scarecrow?"

"Stop calling me that."

"Answer the question."

"Three days is fine."

Julia had been quiet throughout this exchange, and now she looked down at her hands with an expression that made the laughter fade from her face. "I will not be joining you. At the academy, I mean."

Lilly's smile dropped. "What? Why not?"

"I received an offer from Lady Sharon Vex. A private apprenticeship. She personally requested me as her student."

The table went quiet. Lady Sharon Vex. The Witch of Calamity. A mage so powerful and so feared that her name was spoken in whispers even in the upper circles of the Great Houses. She had been active during the worst years of the empire's conflict with the Holy Empire, and the stories about what she could do with a single word and a flick of her wrist were the kind of stories that kept children awake at night.

Adrian knew her reputation from more than just stories. In his previous life, he had worked alongside Lady Sharon during the final campaign against the Demon Lord of Lust. She was everything the rumors said and worse. Brilliant, terrifying, and possessed of a moral compass that pointed in directions no sane person could follow.

"She sought you out personally?" Adrian studied Julia with fresh eyes. In his original timeline, he had no memory of Julia West playing any significant role in the war. But if Lady Sharon Vex had handpicked her as a student, the girl was hiding potential that nobody, including Adrian, had recognized.

Unless she had changed her name. Students who entered Lady Sharon's service often abandoned their old identities entirely. It was possible that Julia West had become someone else entirely by the time the war began, someone Adrian had known under a completely different name.

"That is a tremendous opportunity, Julia." Maya placed her hand over Julia's. "Lady Sharon does not take students lightly. If she chose you, it means she sees something exceptional."

"I know." Julia's voice was small but steady. "I just wish it did not mean leaving all of you behind."

"You are not leaving us behind." Lilly squeezed Julia's other hand. "You are going to become terrifyingly powerful and then come visit us at Ashgate and scare all the other students half to death."

"That is not comforting."

"It was not meant to be comforting. It was meant to be accurate."

The girls laughed, and even Adrian allowed himself a faint smile. Some things in this timeline would change. Others, apparently, would not. The warmth between these three girls was one of those constants that even a regressor could not alter.

Their conversation continued for several more minutes, touching on travel plans, academy rumors, and increasingly elaborate theories about which noble families were secretly broke, before a sudden change in the room's atmosphere cut through everything like a blade.

The string quartet stopped playing. Conversations died mid sentence. Heads turned. Every pair of eyes in the banquet hall shifted toward the grand staircase at the far end of the room.

Adrian turned with them.

Two figures descended the staircase side by side. On the left, a woman with golden blonde hair swept into an elegant updo, wearing a flowing white corset gown that caught the candlelight like fresh snow. On the right, a man with dark hair combed sharply back from a face that could have been carved from granite, wearing a tailored black coat with silver embroidery and possessing a pair of piercing blue eyes that seemed to evaluate everything they touched.

Adrian's chest locked up. His lungs forgot how to work. His fingers gripped the edge of the table so hard the wood creaked beneath them.

Ten years. In his memories, it had been ten years since he last saw these two faces. Ten years since his mother's body went cold in his arms on a burning battlefield. Ten years since his father's corpse stood up at his command and walked back into a war it had already lost.

Archduchess Bianca Blackwood. Archduke Gideon Blackwood.

His parents. Alive. Whole. Walking toward him with no idea that their son had already watched them both die.

Adrian's breath caught in his chest and refused to release.