The Demon Emperor's System: I Rose From a Dead Body

Chapter 9: The System's Warning

Ceiling. Wooden beams. A faint smell of lavender and mildew.

Adrian lay in a bed that was far too big for one person, under a quilt that was far too heavy, and tried to remember how he'd gotten there.

The courtyard. The torch. His knees.

He turned his head.

Seraphina sat in a chair by the window with her boots up on the sill and her sword across her lap. The same pose as in the study, hours ago, down to the way her thumb rested on the hilt. Thin moonlight leaked in around the shutters.

"You were out forty minutes," she said without looking at him. "Drooling."

"I don't drool."

"You do. I have witnesses."

"Who?"

"The pillow."

He tried to sit up. His ribs complained but didn't scream, which felt like progress. The hole in his shirt had closed over into a stiff, tight line, something between a scab and a bad idea.

"I brought you up on my shoulder," Seraphina said. "Don't make it a story."

His face felt clean. Someone had wiped the blood off it with a wet rag, and the sheets smelled faintly of soap. He decided not to ask who.

"Okay."

"There's bread on the table."

There was. A heel of dark loaf, a wedge of hard cheese, a jug of water with a chip in the rim. Half the bread was already gone. Adrian looked at the crumbs on the table, then at the sharp line of her jaw, then at the wall.

"Thanks," he said, and ate.

The bread was stale. It was the best thing he'd ever tasted. Somewhere in another life, a cup of instant noodles sat going cold beside a keyboard, and the thought of it felt like a story about somebody else.

Halfway through the cheese, the blue pane flickered open in front of his eyes.

**[Objective complete: Survive the Debt Collectors.]**

**[Experience awarded: 340.]**

**[LEVEL UP. Level 2.]**

A warm rush went up his spine. His fingers stopped shaking. A thread of color came back into the room, as though somebody had wiped a window.

**[HP: 24 / 80.]**

**[Analyze (Beginner) has been updated.]**

"More blue lights?" Seraphina asked.

"Level up. I'm Level 2." He swallowed cheese. "Pike's gone for now. Thirty days."

"He'll be back with a magistrate's seal."

"I know."

"And you have a plan for that?"

"No."

She nodded slowly, as if that was the answer she'd expected. Then she glanced at the black seam of the window, and he saw her fingers close around her wrist.

**[03:06:41 until collection.]**

Adrian pushed himself up against the headboard. He wanted to say something useful. Something about contracts, or clause three, or what to do when a clock was counting down on someone's arm.

The blue pane flashed red.

**[WARNING.]**

He stopped chewing.

**[Anomaly detected on nearby target: Seraphina.]**

**[Concealed mark. Origin: Unknown organization.]**

**[Concealment grade: High. Analyze (Beginner) cannot display full details.]**

**[Mark status: Dormant. Signal received: Rising.]**

He read the last line twice. Then a third time.

"What?" Seraphina said.

He had not noticed he'd gone quiet. She had turned fully in her chair now, sword half lifted.

"It's the system," Adrian said. "The lights. It just warned me."

"About what?"

"About you."

The room was very quiet. A shutter clicked in the breeze.

"Explain," she said.

"It says there's a mark on you. A hidden one. Somebody covered it up with a spell, a good spell, and I can only see a piece of it. But it's there." He kept his voice calm, and he kept his hands visible on the quilt. "Clause three. The Principal's Mark. I don't think it was boilerplate."

Seraphina's face did not change. That was how he knew it landed. All the usual flashes of temper and irritation had gone out of it at once, and what was left was flat, smooth, and white.

"Where?" she said.

"I don't know yet." He shut his eyes and thought the word.

*Analyze.*

The pane opened over her. He pushed against it, the way you push on a stuck door. The text stayed shut, but something else happened. A shape took form on her, faint and silvery, like a watermark on a page.

She was sitting sideways, one shoulder toward him.

"Stand up," he said. "Turn around."

"Why?"

"I think it's on your back."

For a second she didn't move.

Then she stood, set the sword across the arm of the chair, and turned her back to him. She did it the way a person takes off armor, one plate at a time. Her fingers went to the collar of her coat and pulled it down off her shoulders, enough to bare her neck and the top of her spine.

He didn't look at her skin. He looked at the shape.

It sat between her shoulder blades. A circle about the size of his palm, thin silver lines forming a ring. Inside it, a shorter line crossed by two smaller ones, like a sealed eye. Around the edge, a ribbon of tiny characters in a script he couldn't read.

It glowed, very faintly, the way a coal glows under ash.

"Tell me," Seraphina said.

He told her. A circle. An eye. A ring of letters. He kept it plain and kept it short.

When he finished, she said nothing for a long time.

"I never felt it," she said at last. "I never saw it. I've changed my own bandages a hundred times. I've bathed in rivers. I would have felt..."

"It's glamoured. It hides itself even from the person wearing it."

"For how long?"

"No idea."

"*How long?*"

"I don't know, Seraphina." He said it quietly. He wanted to promise something. He had nothing to promise with. "I'm sorry."

She stood very still.

Behind her, the glow flickered. Once. Twice. A pulse, like a slow heartbeat, and he watched the silver lines flare brighter and settle again.

"Signal received," Adrian said, almost to himself. "Rising."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know. Something's calling it. Or something's looking through it."

"Then he knows where I am." Her voice had gone very quiet. "He's known the whole time."

"Maybe."

"That's why those three came to the door. They weren't there to pay me. He watched through this thing, saw the target's heart start again, and sent them to finish both of us."

Adrian opened his mouth to argue, and found he had nothing.

She turned. The coat slid back up onto her shoulders in one rough motion, and her eyes were hard again, bright red and furious. But he saw her hand shake when she reached for the sword.

"I've seen that sign," she said.

"Where?"

She said nothing.

"Seraphina. Who wears that mark?"

Her mouth opened. Then it shut. Out in the hall, a floorboard ticked as the old house cooled around them in the dark.

The black band on her wrist crawled once, hard, under her skin.