Valen caught up to Damien the moment they stepped out of the courtyard, his golden eyes still darting back to where Orion had disappeared.
"Hey!"
Damien didn't respond.
"Hey!", he screamed again.
"What?" Damien responds, annoyance flaring through his expression.
"Why'd you lie to him?" he asked, voice low, as though the Grand Warden's ears could stretch around corners.
Damien didn't answer right away. The light from the lanterns flickered over his face, throwing shadows across the faint scar under his eye.
"That man inside that room— do you remember what he was?"
"Yeah, the chief instructor of Defense and Sealing glyphs. I suppose it wouldn't be wrong to label him a traitor as well."
"He was a teacher. And knew every bit of detail about me."
Valen lowered his gaze, annoyed.
Damien's voice was sharp, clipped. "Trust is a luxury here, and it's one I can't afford to hand out for free. Not even to Orion."
He paused briefly, then continued, "Look, I'm already in a lot of trouble for having just trace amounts of the Witherflow attached to me. All because I apparently came across a Veyrant on my way here. What do you think they'd do to me if they found out that I set foot in the same room this—thing, this Calamity, was trapped in? Your alibi alone isn't gonna save me."
Valen's steps slowed. "But…it's Orion. He's not—"
Damien turned to him fully, the torchlight catching in his eyes. "To you, maybe. To me? He's just another man in the Order. And I've learned to tread that path carefully."
The words hung between them, heavy as a locked door. Somewhere behind them, the muffled roar of the restrained dragon echoed through the academy halls, a reminder that even here, in the heart of Solence, danger was never far from reach.
In reality, Damien wanted to keep his personal investigation as far away from them as possible. Getting involved here would only mean that his personal efforts to continue investigating Raphael will turn to dust.
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The day after, news broke of a calamity once said to have been slain by Nostradi Santos re-emerging from the courtyard of the Academia d'lube Sanctifie. With Nostradi himself now absent and on the run, whispers spread like wildfire.
Based on the old maps of his attack pattern, people suspected his hand in the sealing of several other calamities long thought destroyed. Yet, despite the academy grounds being searched from the topmost bell tower to the deepest archive vault, nothing surfaced. No hidden glyphs. No corrupted sigils. Not even a stray mana trace that could link him to the dragon.
A small-scale investigation was opened to bring forth the people that accompanied Nostradi in his raids, however, nothing came to light. Allegations were either denied or failed to get proven. Every reaccount of the event felt practiced, with everyone unanimously saying that the Dragon's Maw was indeed slain that day. What Nostradi did with it afterwards was entirely on him. None of the accused had anything to do with it being kept alive for this long.
And so, despite everything, Nostradi was the only one who was left accused.
A separate, much larger in scale, investigation was being continued alongside this for the disappearance of Prince Nicholas Ravenheart. Emperor Ravenheart himself was personally pushing this one to be prioritised as no whereabouts of the Prince had been discovered since the day of the intrusion. At some point, the two cases merged together with Nostradi being blamed for both the events during the Prince's disappearance and the Dragon's Maw attack. Reasons behind it weren't disclosed, but many eyewitnesses during the hearing said that it was due to him being placed in charge of the initial inspections during this case.
Damien felt that it was as if someone in the shadows was successfully getting away with every bit of their faults being piled onto the escaped convict instead.
He was disappointed—but not entirely because the search turned up nothing for the Exorcists. It was because he, too, had come up empty handed in his hunt for Raphael. Every lead he thought he'd gathered over the past month dissolved the moment he tried to follow it. The name itself felt cursed, like the syllables bent reality to avoid being spoken in the right place.
The academy buzzed with patrols now—armoured Exorcists at every gate, shimmering Solence wards etched into the walls overnight. The tension was thick enough to press down on the courtyard's usual chatter. Students spoke in hushed tones. Professors exchanged cryptic glances in the halls.
Valen noticed it too, and for once, kept quiet. He could tell Damien's mind wasn't on training or the lectures that morning.
When the midday bell rang, Damien lingered by the outer cloister, eyes scanning the spires and bridges that connected the upper levels. Somewhere in this holy maze, someone had to know something about that name. Someone other than Nostradi.
Raphael.
And if the Exorcist Order's great manhunt wasn't enough to flush them out…
…he'd have to draw them out himself.
A deep, resonant gong shook the courtyard. Damien, who had been leaning against a stone wall and half-watching the flow of students, snapped his head toward the sound.
A stork-like bird—if storks had crooked beaks, skeletal wings, and eyes too bright to be natural—fluttered toward him, its talons scraping lightly against the flagstones as it landed. It tilted its head, voice nasal and grated.
"Summoning: Damien Everwinter. From: Mirane Rosewood. To the training hall."
The message was curt, the bird's gaze unblinking. Then, with a clatter of wings, it was gone.
—
Inside the training hall, a small gathering waited, with one of the figures draped in the Celestial Accord's silver-and-white garb.
It was Valen.
Two new faces caught Damien's eye: a girl with long, scarlet hair that fell to her waist, who introduced herself with a bow as Violet Merryweather, and another with sharp eyes and a more guarded stance, giving only her name— Han Qingge.
Mirane Rosewood stood in front of them with her usual sense of reverence. The patterning in her attire resonated with a golden hum. The pulsating light from it held within them a sort of royal and divine flavour.
"I know the past week's been hectic for some of you," Mirane said, voice carrying with easy authority, "but we have somewhere to be."She picked her staff up and continued, "I had a chat with your Guild Leader. Both him and I weren't quite satisfied with how things ended with the Empire's investigations, so we wanted to take matters into our own hands."
Then her gaze locked on Damien. She stepped closer, leaning in just enough so only Damien could hear,
"And you, I don't know where you hail from and why that idiot picked you, but try to keep your nose out of things whenever you can help it."With that, she turned around. With a quick swing of her robe, she trotted ahead,
"Well, come on then. We're going on a field trip."
The flea market flared with colours and noise from the rickety stalls spilling trinkets and half-rotten fruit onto the mud-slick street. Hawkers barked over each other, the air thick with sweat, smoke. And Mirane Rosewood stood amidst it all. She felt as if every step on the cobblestone showered her figure in filth mixed with a nauseating smell of the poor.
"You'd think," she muttered, glancing around as if the whole place were an insult to her bloodline, "that we'd be sent to the archives or a council chamber. Instead…" She swept her gaze over a stall selling what appeared to be cured rat tails. "…we trudge through this."
Valen smirked. "You blend in fine."
She didn't respond—just lifted her chin a fraction higher.
They moved through the crush until Mirane stopped before a squat, lopsided shop wedged between two towering stacks of scavenged lumber. The wooden sign was so weather-worn the letters were a ghost, but inside it smelled faintly of resin and parchment.
An old man at the counter didn't look up from the receipt he was scribbling in. Only when Mirane announced herself, with a voice crisp enough to cut glass, did he raise his head.
"We're looking into Nostradi Santos," she said without preamble. "Recently, before his escape, he made certain purchases here."
The shopkeeper's brows knit. "You law?"
"Worse," Valen muttered under his breath.
"No," Mirane replied. "We're competent." She slid a coin across the counter, the clink drawing his eyes like a magnet. "Tell us."
The old man sighed, pulled a smaller ledger from under the desk, and flipped through the pages. "Yes… Santos. Bought several crates of smoked meats, a few barrels of wine, and enough dried herbs to feed an army. Paid in full. Then told me to deposit all of it under someone else's name."
Damien leaned forward. "What name?"
The shopkeeper tapped the page. "Ernst Vann."
Mirane turned, already moving. "Address?"
The shopkeeper gave it with a shrug.
---
The shack was less a home than a collection of wooden panels bullied into leaning together. Moss clung to the roof in damp patches, and a single crooked chimney trailed smoke like an afterthought. They stood in a narrow alley where the shadows seemed to hold their breath.
"Stay behind me," Mirane said—not out of protection, Damien thought, but so she wouldn't have to look at the mud splashing onto her hem.
She knocked once.
The door creaked open, and from the gloom emerged a man with a wiry frame, his eyes sharp but weary, hair hanging in uneven tufts as if cut with a dull knife. His clothes were the patchwork of someone who worked with his hands—leather stitched over cloth, threadbare at the cuffs.
Damien froze.
There—somewhere in the vault of half-forgotten moments—he remembered that face.
The man's gaze flicked between each of them before settling on Damien.
"Been a while," he said quietly.
The words landed like a thrown stone in Damien's chest. He didn't know why, but his pulse sharpened.
"Ernst Vann?" Mirane asked, her voice cutting through the moment.
The man's mouth curved—not quite a smile. "That's one of my names."
Damien's mind caught on the phrasing. One of his names?
Behind him, Valen shifted, hand brushing the hilt of his blade. The air seemed to thin, the muffled chatter of the market beyond the alley suddenly very far away.
Mirane's eyes narrowed. "You knew Nostradi Santos."
"I've known many men," Ernst replied, still watching Damien. "Some worth remembering. Some worth burying."
Damien didn't miss the way his words lingered on burying.
He lifted his hands through his robes, and on it was a wheel carved into the flesh, faintly pulsing with light.