Semua Bab Sacred Obsession: For the priest who ruined me : Bab 31 - Bab 40

Chapter 32: Elias POV The networking assignment sat open across three windows on my laptop. Subnet masks, routing tables, packet flow. The professor had given us a practical scenario—design a small secure network and then identify every point where it could be compromised from the outside. I had already met with him once in office hours to clarify the edge cases. He was precise, almost dry, and seemed quietly pleased that someone was treating the work as more than a grade. I left the meeting with two extra papers and a short list of concepts to research on my own.Back in the laboratory the air smelled of warm plastic and old coffee. The hum of the servers under the floor was constant, a low vibration I had started to find almost comforting. I worked through the topology again, forcing myself to think like both the builder and the person who would try to break it. Every time the logic slipped I slowed down, rewrote the section, and tested it until it held. Progress was incremental.

Chapter 34: Elias POV Caldrith in late autumn carried a constant low thrum. The air held a sharp, metallic edge that came off the river and the glass towers. Traffic moved in dense, impatient streams. Somewhere distant a train horn cut through the morning haze. The university itself never fully quieted—footsteps on polished stone, the hiss of automatic doors, the overlapping voices of students who treated every corridor like a stage. Lectures began on the hour with the same dry precision: projectors humming to life, laptops opening in near-unison, professors speaking in measured tones that assumed everyone in the room already wanted to be excellent.Two months since I had arrived. Two weeks since the freshman party.Time had collapsed into routine. Classes. Laboratory hours. The slow, deliberate work of networking concepts and system logic. Nights spent in front of the laptop until my eyes burned. And always, at the end of the day, the call to Cassian’s number. The line still rang i

Chapter 36: Elias pov There was something about the man who had stepped into my path.It was not only the way he blocked the corridor without raising his voice. It was the stillness, the absolute certainty that I would stop. I had never seen him before, yet the air around him felt heavier than the usual campus noise, as if the space itself adjusted to his presence. The corridor lights cast a cool, even glow across the polished floor. Students moved past us in both directions—laughter, the scuff of shoes, the faint scent of someone’s perfume trailing behind them—but none of it seemed to touch the small pocket of quiet that had formed around him.I had never been to the garden he mentioned. I did not even know there was one worth walking to. The idea of leaving the familiar routes between lecture halls and laboratories sent a low pulse of unease through me.Thoughts arrived in rapid, disordered succession. Seraphine. This could be her. A quiet form of revenge for the refusal at the pa

Chapter 38: Elias pov The corridor back toward the computer science building felt longer than usual.My footsteps sounded too loud against the polished floor. Students passed in loose groups, voices overlapping, the faint scent of coffee and printer toner drifting from open doors. None of it registered clearly. My mind kept replaying the garden—the cool air under the tree, the steady sound of the fountain, and the way Lucian had spoken Cassian’s full name as if it belonged in ordinary conversation.Father Cassian Riven.No one at Caldrith Crown should have known that name. I had been careful. I had left Saint-Mireille without leaving obvious trails. The voicemails went into a void. The searches I ran stayed private. Yet this man—broad-shouldered, calm, carrying himself with the same controlled grace that still haunted me—had said the name without hesitation. The question of *how* sat like a stone in my chest. Black-market information. Old syndicate connections. Something worse. I co

chapter 40: Elias pov The stadium lights were already on when I arrived with Theo, throwing hard white glare across the field and bleaching the evening sky to a pale violet. The air smelled of cut grass, damp earth, and the faint metallic tang of the nearby river. Crowds moved in loose currents toward the stands—voices overlapping, the occasional burst of laughter, the low thump of bass from someone’s portable speaker. Theo walked half a step ahead, bag over one shoulder, the usual easy energy back in his stride. I followed.For the first time in weeks the constant pressure behind my ribs eased. Cassian was still missing. That fact remained fixed and sharp. But beneath it, for a few hours, there were no other immediate worries. No laboratory deadlines pressing against the inside of my skull. No corridor conversations to navigate. No gifts left on desks. Just the open space of the field and the rising noise of people who had come simply to watch a game.I sat in the stands and let th