Chapter 87 ： Identity Exposed
"Hello there." Ortlando smiled warmly, shifting his gaze from Shuang to Evan's face. "We need your help. For the next few days, there's no need to report to the Magical Items Office — the work there is routine. Come with us into the half-plane."
"Into the half-plane?" Evan kept his tone even. "What's happening?"
"Nothing alarming. It concerns Prince Elloran." Ortlando explained the situation they had discussed. Evan understood: they needed Shuang's particular abilities to mask the prince's connection from his infernal link.
"Is there any danger?" Evan asked.
"Very little. And even if there were, we're here." Ortlando said it with the easy confidence of a man who had not worried about danger in quite some time.
Evan was prepared to trust a Legend-rank mage on that assessment. Ortlando turned to Roland: "Go ahead with the prince's group to your tower in the half-plane. Evan and I will follow shortly."
"Come along, then," Charlemagne said. The vivid violet-black stain on his white robe had visibly shrunk, which suggested the robe's self-cleaning enchantment worked — just slowly, on infernal blood.
The faculty robes at Hollingburton came in four grades. Purple was for Demigod-rank, and few wore it. White marked a Legend — Roland's robe was white. Grey indicated an Arcanist, which was Evan's level. Black robes had no upper bound and were worn by the majority of instructors, most of whom were senior mages, as well as by graduates who had stayed on in administrative or assistant roles — Emma Watson being one example.
Student robes followed a separate system. Entering students wore grey, marking them as Magic Apprentices. Those who achieved elemental attunement and advanced to Mage rank changed into a two-tone robe, light red and black.
Evan remained standing as the others filed out. He watched Ortlando with mild curiosity. The headmaster waited until the door had closed, then pointed at it — and the door sealed itself.
Evan's curiosity sharpened. Whatever came next, Ortlando didn't want witnesses.
"Sit down," Ortlando said. "You're wondering why I kept you behind."
"Somewhat. I've only been at Hollingburton for about a month."
"What should I call you?" Ortlando asked, his eyes holding steady on Evan's face. "Evan Wang — or Nicholas Andrew?"
The question hit like a physical force. Evan felt a pressure settle over him, pressing him down into his chair before he'd finished the impulse to stand. He steadied himself. Ortlando had known for some time, clearly. If he'd wanted to act on it, he wouldn't have waited until now.
On his shoulder, Shuang made a sharp, alarmed sound — but the sound went nowhere. The room had become a sealed space. Evan put a hand up to quiet her.
"Call me Evan Wang," he said, meeting the old man's gaze without retreating. "The Nicholas who came before me is gone. I'm only Evan. Yesterday's days cannot be held."
"A philosophical answer. Very well — we'll say Nicholas no longer exists." Ortlando seemed genuinely satisfied with this framing. "You're a lich, and yet a flower fairy entered a contract with you. I've been curious about that since the beginning. A dual-souled flower fairy, I'd wager?"
"Yes," Evan admitted. Shuang blinked, not quite following the weight of the exchange.
"Even so — a flower fairy wouldn't sign a contract with a lich on those grounds alone. These creatures have instincts like elemental spirits; their sense of good and ill runs very deep." Ortlando leaned back. "You deceived me at first, I'll admit. I sensed the death-energy, and something else — a vitality that didn't fit. I thought you were a death mage with some unusual physical characteristic. I was only suspicious, not certain. Leonardo's letter mentioned you'd come from the Liya region, and I didn't recognize your name. But I knew of a death mage called Nicholas near the Liya Demon Forest who was said to have attempted the lich transformation and disappeared afterward — so I made a guess and watched your reaction."
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He smiled, with no particular apology in it.
"I didn't know myself, exactly," Evan said. "The vitality in my body came from an encounter with the ruins the Goddess Avna left in this world. I stumbled into them."
"That would explain it. And the flower fairy — did the contract come before or after the ruins?"
"Old man, you ask too many questions." Shuang had reached her limit. She flew up from Evan's shoulder, indignant. "I contracted with this lich before he ever entered those ruins. It's none of your business. I did it because his heart is good — if you don't believe me, go find a flower fairy willing to sign with you. I guarantee you won't find one."
Ortlando laughed. "That settles it. A flower fairy's instincts go to the heart, not the surface. You're a genuine anomaly, Mister Wang. I'm completely at ease now." He looked back at Evan. "You understand why I kept you close — to observe you."
"To watch over me, you mean."
"A lich is a death mage who has gone further along a particular path. I'm not a pious man — I'm a mage, and I don't enjoy killing without reason. I accepted your application and kept you where I could see you. If you had done harm, you'd have answered for it." He paused. "But you haven't. You've been here less than a month and you've invented the bicycle — a device for ordinary people, which is not what a mage would think to do, and certainly not what a lich would. The thing is already spreading through the Nabos capital."
"Then I can stay and teach?"
"Of course. Though I'd ask you to keep your nature quiet. The Creationist Church has standing warrants on liches, and it would create unnecessary complications." A short pause. "You have my protection here. No one will move against you."
"I appreciate that," Evan said, with a trace of something that was not quite gratitude and not quite irritation — the feeling of having one's most careful secret correctly guessed, by someone with an enormous advantage, who had simply waited for the right moment.
Ortlando took no notice of the tone. He turned to Shuang. "Your ability — you can sense the quality of a person's intentions, can't you? Including what they're actually thinking?"
"How did you know that?" Shuang's eyes went wide.
"Because he knows," Evan said, before she could spiral into indignation again. "His library has more books in it than you can imagine, and he's a Legend-rank mage. There isn't much he doesn't know. You're the only one in this room who didn't already know, which is why you're surprised."
"I'm not simple," Shuang said, ruffled. "I was just curious."
Ortlando gave Evan a brief look, then turned back to Shuang with a gentler tone. "Don't mind him. He's jealous of your gifts." He paused. "The question is this: can you sense the Oomani presence inside Prince Elloran — specifically, the link between his portion of it and the Oomani's true body?"
Shuang nodded. "I can. If Small Ling were here, it would be easier."
"Small Ling?"
"A unicorn. Wang can summon it."
Ortlando stopped. He looked at Evan with an expression that had left its usual composure somewhere behind. "You can summon a unicorn?"
"Is that so remarkable?" Evan said, allowing himself a small measure of satisfaction. "It's just a unicorn."
"You are genuinely bizarre." Ortlando shook his head slowly. "Are you really a lich?"
"Fully and completely."
Ortlando composed himself. "With both a flower fairy and a unicorn, our chances are considerably better. Let's go — we can discuss the details on the other side." He released the spatial seal with a gesture, then drew a line in the air. A door appeared in the middle of the office: an Instant Passage Gate, a high-level spatial technique that required a genuine Legend-rank understanding of spatial magic to produce. Few mages at that level could manage it even so.
They stepped through together.
Evan had never passed through a spatial gate before. The experience was unlike anything he had a reference for — the sense of space compressed into something resembling a single surface, streams of color moving past on both sides, as though he were briefly located in a space that wasn't quite the world he knew. He registered something new at the same moment: a layer around him that hadn't been there before, something that moved with the spatial flow rather than simply being carried through it.
Shuang's voice found his ear, barely above a whisper. "Wang. That's faith-force. It's showing you the spatial flow. No wonder gods can perform spatial transfers — faith-force has this application too."
Evan turned his attention toward the layer she was describing. For a fraction of a moment, he saw the goblins — small figures kneeling at a rough-made shrine, moving their lips. He felt their attention without meaning to. He drew his focus back.
In the same instant, somewhere distant in the Black Forest, several goblins paused mid-prayer with the uncertain feeling of being watched.
Evan set the experience aside for later thought. Space, he reflected in the brief remaining seconds of the transit, wasn't something objects existed inside — it was something objects generated around themselves, a property that emerged from matter rather than a container that held it. Distance was only a measurement of that property. If you understood the property deeply enough, you could move through it without caring about the distance at all. He caught the edge of the thought and then he and Ortlando were standing outside a magic tower in the half-plane.
He looked up. The tower rose to eighteen floors, built on a foundation of lapis lazuli, runic arrays flowing continuously across its entire surface, a beam of light rising from the crown and spreading outward above like a fountain, joining the light from the surrounding towers into a single luminous canopy over the grounds.