Lara came back to the room minutes later, but she looked like she had aged years.
Her face was pale, almost translucent under the candlelight, and her hands were trembling in a way she couldn't hide.
Lucian jumped up, his chair scraping against the stone floor.
"What happened? What did that witch tell you?"
Lara opened her mouth to speak, but only a choked sound came out.
She hugged herself, as if trying to keep the pieces of her body together.
Raziel approached her, his exterior calm acting as an anchor in the middle of the storm he felt in his stomach.
"Lara, breathe. Tell us what happened."
She finally looked up, and her eyes were full of terror.
"She knows," Lara whispered, her voice broken.
"She knows about my... gift. She said it was dangerous, that I needed 'specialized guidance'."
Lucian huffed. "Guidance? Who does she think she is? Does she want to give you private lessons?"
"No," Lara said, shaking her head. "They want to send me to a place. A sanatorium."
Raziel knew the word that was coming, but he needed to hear it.
He needed to confirm that the timeline had gone to hell as fast as he feared.
"What place?" he asked, his voice a thread of steel.
"The Saint Sophia Sanatorium."
BOOM!
The word exploded in Raziel's mind with the force of a cataclysm.
For Lucian, it was just an unknown name.
For Raziel, it was synonymous with screams in sterilized hallways, broken souls, and heretical experiments disguised as cures.
It was the Church's slaughterhouse.
And right at that instant, a translucent notification flickered in front of his eyes, visible only to him.
[SYSTEM WARNING]
[Status altered: Resonant Trauma Activated]
[Cause: Direct mention of an end-of-cycle catalyst (Saint Sophia Sanatorium)]
[Effect: -5% to Temporal Sanity]
[Passive Skill [Eternal Regression] resonates with past Echoes of pain.]
A sharp pain pierced his temple.
"She grabbed my wrist," Lara continued, almost in a trance, showing the slightly reddened skin.
"And I saw... I saw some scars on her arm, but they weren't normal, Raziel. They were... circular, perfect, and smelled sweet and rotten..."
Lucian frowned, confused. "Scars? So what? Maybe she burned herself with a censer."
But Raziel knew.
They were the marks of Saint Sophia's "therapy".
"We have to get you out of here,"
Lucian looked at him, his confusion giving way to alarm upon seeing the deadly seriousness on his friend's face.
"What are you talking about? Get her out of St. Celeste? That's madness!"
"A greater madness is leaving her here so they can take her to that place," Raziel replied, his gaze fixed on Lara.
"Trust me. Saint Sophia is not a sanatorium."
The night that followed was torture.
Nobody slept.
And when the great bell of St. Celeste announced dawn, its clangor didn't sound like a call to prayer, but like the ticking of a bomb about to go off.
At breakfast, the atmosphere at their table was heavy.
Lara barely touched her oatmeal, shrinking every time a cleric passed nearby.
Lucian, for the first time, didn't have jokes to make; his face was somber, full of a protective worry.
The rest of the day was a farce.
In Brother Matthias' theology classes, while the old fanatic ranted about the purity of faith, Raziel could only think about the impurity of the Church's methods.
In the training yard, while Jericho taught them how to parry a greatsword, Raziel calculated the academy's escape routes.
They were in a race against time, and now the three of them heard the starting shot.
Meanwhile, Lucian didn't waste time.
He used his charisma and his lineage to move through the hallways, looking for Brother Keith.
He found him in the refectory during lunch.
"Brother Keith!" he called him, with an urgency barely hidden under his noble smile.
The burly priest turned around. "Young Lucian? What brings you here in such a hurry?"
"My proposal," Lucian said, his voice low and serious.
"The one about allowing Lara, Raziel, and me to follow the path of the Healer. We need it now."
Brother Keith raised an eyebrow at his tone. "Need? That is a strong word, boy."
Lucian looked across the dining hall, where Lara was sitting alone, stirring her stew without appetite.
"It's... complicated, Brother," he said.
"There are people who need protection, and you can't always protect with a sword or a song. Sometimes, you need to know how to heal the wounds others inflict."
Brother Keith followed his gaze to Lara, and a understanding seemed to cross his face.
He nodded slowly.
"Compassion is the first tool of a true healer," he said, with a softness that contrasted with his size.
"Let me see what I can do but I promise you nothing, that Guild is a nest of vipers."
That night, Lucian intercepted Raziel near the library. His expression was grave.
"Raziel, we have to talk."
"What is it, Lucian?" Raziel asked, with a serious tone. "Did you discover something?"
Lucian fidgeted with his hands, strangely nervous.
He cleared his throat and took a quick look around as if to make sure no one was listening.
"Well, you see, Raziel... it's not exactly about the prophecy or some imminent cataclysm,"
Lucian started, his cheeks a bit red. "It's more of a personal matter."
"Let me guess," Raziel said, dragging out the words.
"Did the tailor ruin the stitching on your new jacket? Those tragedies are enough to break even the strongest soul."
Lucian glared at him, but a slight blush rising up his neck betrayed him.
"This isn't a joke, Raziel," he insisted, lowering his voice to a whisper. "It's about... a girl."
Raziel snorted, unable to hold back a laugh.
"A girl? Seriously, Lucian? You act like you've never seen one. The academy isn't exactly a monastery. We are surrounded by novices, all desperate for a look from the infamous Lucian Valerius Nyxian."
Lucian stood up abruptly and started pacing from one side of the room to the other, with an agitation that denied his previous drama.
"This is different, Raziel. This is... real."
Raziel raised an eyebrow.
He had seen Lucian jump from one whim to another, charming the entire female population of St. Celeste with an ease that Raziel envied and, at the same time, found a bit ridiculous.
"Alright, Lucian," he said, softening his voice.
"Tell me. Who is the woman who has captured the heart of the great Lucian Valerius Nyxian?"
Lucian stopped walking.
His gaze stayed fixed on a point beyond the paintings adorning the walls and he took a deep breath, as if taking courage.
"It's... Lara."