Chapter 5

Chapter 5

That night, Lian did not leave the West Tower.

He said he would coach me on my testimony for tomorrow.

I told him he was like a patient executioner.

He replied that an executioner doesn’t tell the condemned where the blade will fall ahead of time.

“So you’re more merciful than they are?” I asked.

Lian pushed the Confession Record toward me.

“Write.”

“Write what?”

“Write everything you remember.”

“And then you’ll delete the parts that are inconvenient?”

“And then we find the parts they fear most.”

I held the pen, motionless.

The candlelight cast his shadow onto the desk.

It was long.

Like a boundary that couldn’t be crossed.

“Did Damian really leave a message for you?” he asked.

“Why are you nervous?”

“I’m asking you.”

“You have no right to interrogate me now.”

“I’ve always had that right.”

Those words were too familiar.

We used to argue in the library. He wouldn’t let me read certain forbidden books. I told him he was overstepping. He said he’d always had the right to look after me.

Back then, I took those words as a sign of romantic tension. Now, they sounded like nothing but control.

I threw the pen down.

“Lian, have you ever considered that I didn’t come back to help you?”

“I have.”

“I might have come back to destroy you.”

“I’ve considered that, too.”

“And yet you still let me near you?”

He looked down at the pen that had rolled to the edge of the desk.

“You already destroyed me once, three years ago.”

It felt like a slap to the face.

“I destroyed *you*?”

He looked up.

“After you left, I spent every day waiting for you to come back and kill me.”

I laughed, trembling.

“You certainly have a way of making yourself sound like the aggrieved party.”

“I don’t feel aggrieved,” he said. “I’m guilty.”

Silence fell over the room.

Wind blew outside, making the iron bars rattle softly.

Suddenly, I didn’t want to hear it anymore.

But Lian had already begun to speak.

“The night of the North Tower Incident, I was in the basement.”

My fingers curled tight.

“I know.”

“I was the one who broke the Holy Lamp.”

I looked up.

He stood behind the candlelight, his face half-illuminated and half-shrouded in shadow.

“Damian wasn’t summoning evil spirits. He was trying to stop me.”

My throat felt constricted. “Stop you from doing what?”

Lian didn’t answer.

I stood up. The chair screeched against the floor, a piercing sound.

“Say it.”

“Opening the Holy Ark.”

“What’s inside the Holy Ark?”

He was silent.

I rushed over and grabbed his white robes.

“You made me lie for you. You made me cause Damian’s death. You made me carry the name of a perjurer for three years.”

My voice shook, sounding like someone else’s.

“And now you want to stop here?”

Lian looked down at me. He didn’t push me away. He even let me bunch up his collar.

“The Holy Ark contains the judgment records of past generations,” he said. “Including everyone the academy defined as a heretic.”

I froze.

“How is that a secret?”

“The *true* records,” Lian whispered. “They weren’t heretics. Most of them weren’t.”

I let go.

“You wanted to steal the records?”

“I wanted to make them public.”

“And that’s why Damian died.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why I was destroyed.”

He looked at me. “Yes.”

I raised my hand and slapped him again. This time, he didn’t turn his head away. He took it head-on.

My palm stung. Tears nearly fell. I hated myself for wanting to cry even now.

Lian said, “I only found out later that Damian wasn’t killed because of the judgment’s outcome.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“He said one last thing before he died.”

My heart sank.

Lian said, “He said that you saw the red light, too.”