Home / Urban / Reborn As A Useless Mage, But I'm Already The Angel Of Death / 33

2026-10-19 23:27:25

The Paladin looked at her, then at Adrian, then at the line of carriages behind them that had grown out of the gate and halfway down the road. He clearly didn't believe any of it. He waved them through anyway, because the line was too long to argue with.

The yard inside was muddy from rain the night before. A small crowd of early students was gathered there, and Adrian saw Roland Vane in the middle of them before he saw anything else. Roland was talking loudly to a group of Dark Empire students

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"It is a build record," Sister said.She had stopped in front of the lit cradle with her hands at her sides, and she read the plate on it standing very straight. There were six lines of Sera's script cut into the metal, small and neat, and it was the same hand as the warning on the first archway. Adrian walked up behind her and didn't look at the plate, because he couldn't read it anyway. He looked at the side of her face. Her halo was flickering faster than he had ever seen it, and the cracks across it looked deeper in this light, and he didn't know how much longer it was going to hold."Whose build record?" Maya asked."The third daughter's.""Third daughter of who?""Of Sera.""You're one of them," Jenna said slowly. "One of the daughters. That's what you meant back at the door.""Yes."Adrian had already heard it once, in the cellar, when she told him what the man with the glove had called her. It was different seeing it on a plate. He felt worried about her, and he didn't say so.
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There was no way Thalia was lying to him. She stood in front of the open door with the sleeve of her uniform still held in one hand, and she didn't move. The plate had gone white, and a faint light came out of the doorway behind it. Thalia was standing right in the middle of that light, and she hadn't taken a single step in either direction. Adrian had known her for a whole life and part of another one, and in all that time he had never once caught her in a lie. He didn't think she knew how."Thalia," he said."Yes, my lord.""Do you know this place?""No, my lord." She said it politely, in her usual flat voice, and there was no shake in it anymore. "I have never been here before. I have no idea why it knows my name.""Are you sure? Even a little?""I am quite sure. I would remember.""I believe you," Adrian told her."Thank you, my lord."He did believe her, and that was the worst part of it. If she was telling the truth, then it was the door that was wrong, and he didn't know what c
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Was she angry at him? Was she hurt? Was she both, and was one of them worse than the other? Adrian couldn't tell, because Jenna hadn't said a word since the Library, and she was walking three steps ahead of him down the long stair on purpose.They had left with the page torn out of Sera's notes and folded inside his coat, right next to Lilly's scarf. He hadn't wanted to leave it behind, even though he had said no to using it, and he didn't know what that said about him. Jenna had watched him tear it out. She hadn't said anything then either. She just turned around and started down the stair with her jaw set, and he had followed her, and for over an hour now the only sound between them was their boots.Rhode's voice was still in his head too. ‘He's spending something that doesn't belong to him. Three days to decide whose it is.’ Whose was what? The memories? The strand? Jenna's flame that he took in the vault without asking her? He kept trying to work it out, and every time he got clos
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Maya stood up. She went across the aisle in the same sideways motion as the shelf beside her, fast and level, with her feet barely touching the floor. The Archivist looked up from her ledger, and the pen stopped. Maya reached the desk. With a stolen movement she hit the Archivist's wrist so hard that the pen flew out of her hand and spun across the floor.The shelves paused, all at the same time, in the middle of their rails.Adrian ran. He went straight down the gap Maya had left and he didn't look at anything but the back of the Archivist's neck. She was already turning to reach for the pen, and her hand was almost to the floor. The Blade went through the panel before she could pick it up.The shelves stopped. The grinding went down into a long groan and ended, and the room was very quiet.The Archivist didn't fall. She stayed where she was, bent over the desk, and she looked at Sister, who had come out from behind a shelf and was standing in the aisle with her halo flickering. Adri
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The second floor was a library. Adrian knew it before the door finished opening, because of the smell of old paper, and for one stupid second he forgot he was in a death trap and almost smiled. The shelves went up in tiers into the dark, with spiral stairs between them and a thin brass rail running along the floor of every aisle. The books were bound in grey metal, not leather, and there were rows and rows of them. They were Sera's books. In the first life he would have given an arm for one shelf of these, and this time around he was standing in the middle of all of them and couldn't even stop to read a title.A woman in a white apron sat behind a desk at the center of the room. She didn't get up, and she was pointing a long silver pen at them."Stop where you are," she said.Adrian stopped in the doorway, and the others stopped behind him. He felt scared, and then he felt confused, because her face was Sister's face. It was the same shape and the same flat expression, only older by a
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"Please drink it while it's hot, my lord," Thalia said.She held the cup out in both hands and didn't move until he took it. Adrian had stopped them in a side niche an hour into the second day by Sister's count, because Maya couldn't keep her eyes open anymore and he didn't want anybody falling asleep on their feet. There was a small bone lamp in the middle of the floor and a ration of dried meat that nobody was eating. And there was Thalia's travel stove, which hadn't left her pack since the Hollow. She had brewed cherry blossom tea in a dented pot, and she wasn't looking at the pot. She was looking at his face.He drank it. It tasted like tea.It was a good tea, a little sweet and a little bitter, and it was warm all the way down, and that was all it was. Adrian waited to feel for something, because it was clear from the way she was watching him that he was supposed to. He didn't understand what he was supposed to feel. Was it supposed to remind him of something? Was there something

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