Reincarnated as a Trash Extra To Kill The SSS-Rank Villainess-Chapter 142: His Teacher’s Secret

The East Basement stayed cold no matter how many candles they lit.

Raziel dragged his charcoal pencil across a fresh piece of parchment and practiced the fluid motions of Architectural Inscription without channeling any actual mana.

He traced a complex anchor loop for the fiftieth time, then he tossed the pencil onto the wooden table and rubbed his tired eyes.

He looked across the dark room.

Zorya was slumped over her own desk in the far corner. Her head rested sideways on an open translation book and her messy brown hair covered her face.

Her breathing sounded slow and deep, so the exhausted girl had finally collapsed after six straight hours of decoding ancient syntax.

She couldn’t generate the gold and black Umbral energy, but studying the walls of this hidden chamber had completely rewired her brain.

She pushed past the basic garbage the Church taught upstairs and figured out the deep calculus of the ancient foundation.

She drew standard blue runes with terrifying, master-level precision now.

Raziel stood up and pushed his stool back.

He unclasped his heavy dark novice cloak and walked over to her desk, draping the thick wool fabric over her shoulders to keep her warm.

He pulled his hand back, but the edge of the cloak caught on her right sleeve. The fabric rode up her arm and bunched past her elbow.

Raziel froze.

He stared down at Zorya’s bare forearm.

Thick, jagged scars covered her pale skin from her wrist all the way to her elbow joint.

They were not accidental cuts from a fall, and they definitely weren’t training injuries.

They were organized, deliberate wounds carved deep into the flesh.

But Raziel’s eyes bypassed the mutilated tissue and locked onto the center of her forearm.

A small black rune was tattooed directly into her skin.

Raziel recognized the geometric structure immediately.

It was a high-grade suppression seal.

The Inquisition used those exact patterns to lock down volatile mana cores in dangerous heretics and prisoners of war, essentially bolting a heavy iron chain to a person’s magic.

Someone branded this girl.

Zorya shifted in her sleep and groaned.

She opened her eyes, lifted her head from the book, and blinked at the dim candlelight.

She noticed the heavy cloak over her shoulders before she saw Raziel standing right next to her. She followed his gaze straight down to her exposed arm.

She gasped and snatched her arm back.

She yanked the sleeve down to her wrist in a fraction of a second, pressing her arm tight against her chest and curling inward to hide herself.

A heavy silence filled the basement.

"Do not look at me," Zorya’s voice cracked.

"I am just looking at the ink," Raziel answered and kept his tone completely flat. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"Stop looking at me with pity."

"It is not pity."

Zorya looked up at him with wide, defensive eyes. "Then what is it?"

Raziel searched his own chest.

"Rage," Raziel answered.

Zorya stared at him. She clearly didn’t expect that. "For me?"

"For you," Raziel corrected her. "Against the people who did this."

Zorya looked down at her lap and loosened her grip on her arm, though she kept the sleeve pulled down.

"I was six years old," Zorya started, her voice sounding dead.

"I drew a perfect containment seal in the dirt with a stick. I didn’t know any magic and I had no training. I just saw the shapes in my head and copied them, but the seal activated and trapped our farm dog in a kinetic bubble for three hours."

Raziel stayed quiet and let her speak.

"My parents were terrified because they thought a demon possessed me. They dragged me to the local parish and handed me straight to the priests. The priests tested my core, panicked, and said my capacity was an anomaly. They decided I was too young to hold that much raw power."

Zorya traced the outline of the hidden tattoo through her sleeve with her thumb.

"They burned the suppression seal into my arm to control the potential, and it locked my core down to thirty percent of its actual capacity."

Raziel looked at her arm and thought about the jagged scars surrounding the black ink.

"I was nine years old when I realized what the seal actually did," Zorya spoke faster now, rushing to get the brutal words out of her mouth.

"I realized I was trapped inside my own body. I sneaked into the kitchen one night, took a carving knife from the drawer, and tried to cut the ink out of my own skin."

Raziel clenched his jaw.

He pictured a nine-year-old girl sitting on a kitchen floor, hacking at her own arm in the dark to break a magical chain.

"It didn’t work," Zorya whispered. "The seal is anchored to the bone. The cuts just left the scars."

Raziel looked at her face.

Zorya possessed an absolute genius-level intellect for runic theory, and she translated the language of the Primordial Pantheon while operating on just a fraction of her actual power.

If someone broke that seal, she would become the most powerful Inscriptor in Phaedra.

Raziel stepped closer to the desk.

"I can remove it."

Zorya stopped breathing and looked up at him in pure shock.

"Architectural Inscription modifies existing runes," Raziel explained. "I can channel my energy into the tattoo, rewrite the structural anchor, and break the geometric loop without damaging your arm."

Zorya’s hands shook. Freedom sat right in front of her face, just one spell away.

But Raziel knew the cost of that freedom, and he had to be honest with her.

"If I break the seal, your true core will flare. The Church will sense the massive spike in your mana capacity across the entire academy. The Exarchs do not tolerate unchained prodigies, so they will hunt you down and lock you in a real cell."

Zorya looked down at her arm again. She pressed her hand against the hidden tattoo, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

"Should I?" Zorya asked the empty air.

"That decision belongs to you."

Zorya opened her eyes and looked at the ancient silver runes glowing on the basement walls.

She looked at the heavy bronze map resting on Raziel’s desk.

"Not yet," Zorya decided, dropping her hand from her arm. "But soon."

She looked at Raziel with a fierce, burning determination in her brown eyes.

"When I am ready for the world to see me whole."

VMMMM!

The East Basement shook violently.

Raziel stumbled and grabbed the edge of his desk to keep his balance, while Zorya gripped the sides of her chair to keep from falling over.

The silver runes on the walls flared with blinding, aggressive light.

Zorya jumped out of her chair and ran to the nearest wall.

"Danger!" Zorya yelled over the loud rumbling noise. "It says danger!"

Raziel ran to her side and read the next sequence of runes burning into the stone.

"Something is approaching," Raziel translated.

He looked at the heavy iron door of the workshop.

He expected to hear the heavy boots of Inquisitors marching down the stairs, or Elector Mordecai bursting into the room with his elite guards.

But the noise didn’t come from the hallway.

THUMP.

Raziel looked down at the stone floor.

The solid bricks vibrated with a massive, heavy impact.

THUMP.

It was not the rhythmic pulse of architectural magic.

Something massive walked through the deepest, forgotten levels of St. Celeste.

It moved far below the East Basement and far below the six sealed chambers, echoing up through the foundation.

Raziel activated his perception skill and pushed the Shadow Echo straight down into the floor to scan the entity moving in the dark.

His magic hit a solid wall of hostility.

The presence lacked a human consciousness.

The silver runes on the wall shifted one last time before the light died completely, delivering a final, terrifying message to the room.

The Nine dead gods left a guardian behind to protect the Forge.

The guardian slept for five hundred years under the Church’s nose.

The ancient magic never woke it up during the Ascension Tournament, and Raziel never triggered the alarm when he learned Architectural Inscription.

The guardian was awake now, and it did not distinguish between friends and enemies.