Salvation at the Border
"When did the Intelligence Department say the news reached them, Nathan?"
"Three days ago, Your Holiness."
"Then they'll likely arrive here by the day after tomorrow at the latest. If they're in full retreat, maintaining order will be the most important thing."
"Hmm. We should hire healers in advance. We have no way of knowing how many among the priests side with the anti-Pope faction."
"It would be wise to send word to the border guards as well. They crossed swords with the Pilgrimage once before—they'll surely regard them as enemies."
"Good."
Opinions flew back and forth between Nathan and Erzena with remarkable speed.
The Five Senses Officers caught the essential points of the exchange and began relaying orders to the attendants under their command.
"You heard her? Contact the Healers' Guild. Tell them we're hiring around thirty people on a temporary contract."
"Attendant, come with me—this officer and you are going to designate a quarantine zone right now!"
Strategy and countermeasures, drafted in real time.
The somber mood, the tension that should have gripped everyone—it vanished without a trace, replaced by an atmosphere of methodical resolve to meet the situation head-on.
Like a pair perfectly in tune, the two of them planned, revised, and commanded the Immigration Office without pause.
And someone was watching it all in quiet silence.
"..."
It was Elaine.
Amid the bustle of people hurrying back and forth, she watched Nathan and Erzena without a word.
"Nathan, the Pope will never simply let them go. There may be a pursuit detachment. What will we do then?"
"No form of conflict is permitted at the border. Disarmament is a mandatory condition for anyone who crosses. Should they refuse to comply, we gain official grounds to intervene. So direct confrontation, at the very least, is something we can prevent."
"Right. Here of all places, keeping blood from being shed is what matters most."
A man and a woman, conversing at close range.
Elaine no longer felt pain in her heart when she saw the two of them together.
Now that she fully understood her own heart, she could understand the hearts of others as well.
Erzena loves Nathan too.
It was a painfully obvious truth.
The way she looked at him, the way she spoke to him, and the kiss Erzena had given him back at the Kell estate had made it certain.
And yet Erzena did not cling to him or fawn over him. She never pretended to be pitiful to win his sympathy.
Those golden eyes, unshaken even upon hearing such terrible news, sparkled more brilliantly than the divine power that wreathed her body.
So radiant. Too radiant for words.
Once, it had been her transcendent beauty and the holy aura surrounding her that seemed beautiful. Now, Erzena herself was the beauty.
Erzena held no official post here—none at all.
Only a temporary asylum seeker, and on top of that, an unofficial, hastily invented title of temporary 'Recovery Ward Director'—that was all.
And yet with a few words, a firm tone, and an upright bearing, she had reversed a mood on the verge of sinking into gloom and set everyone's fighting spirit ablaze instead.
A single word surfaced in Elaine's mind.
A leader.
A being who moved people's hearts, guided them with an invisible strength, and became the pillar upon which those who followed could lean.
Having steadied herself, Erzena calmly kept offering her thoughts on the present situation and the measures to come, walking about as she healed the exhausted one by one.
Just as Nathan did.
A dear friend—a woman who loved the same man—was finally spreading her wings.
Something hot rose in Elaine's chest.
I want to become like that too, someday.
It was admiration, and it was self-reflection.
A being standing tall and unashamed.
The person Nathan had spoken of so often—one who endures, refusing to break, even amid tragedy.
Now she could see it clearly.
Erzena was changing.
Then it happened.
"Your Highness. My sincerest apologies, but there's another traveler at the plaza refusing to comply with instructions... and requiring a bit of 'guidance.'"
One of the attendants spoke to her carefully, as though embarrassed by the request.
"Ah. Yes."
Princess.
Her original title.
Princess Elaine Castor.
Repeating her own name in her heart, Elaine turned her gaze toward the window.
Her time was drawing near, too.
The hour of change.
Civil war is among the cruelest forms war can take.
A war in which you cannot hide which ground is strategic, who the essential people are, or what must be seized and shattered.
And for those who had lost that civil war and fled... things were far from good.
An escape that had begun with thousands was now reduced to barely a thousand souls.
Flutter, flutter.
A torn flag dangled from a broken spearpoint, swaying precariously in the wind.
Rrrip.
Even that gave out at last against the wind, shredding apart and spiraling away into the sky.
Mohaim gazed up at it from the desolate plain of the Great Steppe, watching it drift off with a hollow look in his eyes.
"Keep your spirits up, Commander. At the very least, we're still alive."
At the sound of that worn, steely voice, Mohaim turned his head to face his subordinate.
"How do we stand... Vice Commander?"
"It's the worst."
Tena, too, was covered in wounds. Blood-soaked bandages were wrapped around her forehead and neck.
Mohaim listened as she forced her thoroughly exhausted voice to continue.
"A third of our brothers and sisters... are dead. Civilian casualties cannot yet be counted."
"I see... so that's where we are."
Escaping their encirclement had been nothing short of a miracle.
The endlessly incoming Second Knight Order, the Papal Guard, and the reinforcements behind them besides.
Facing enemies drunk on overwhelming numbers and the false banner of purging heretics was more than even an elite knight order could withstand.
Had it been the knight order alone, such sacrifice would never have been necessary. They could simply have fixed their eyes forward, become the blade, and driven doggedly toward the Crossline Kingdom.
But they were no longer swords.
He turned his gaze behind them.
"Uhh... hnngh..."
"Daddy... Mommy..."
"My brothers, my sisters. Forgive me, who could not avenge you."
A child orphaned by blood. A man who threw his body between the blades to shield his beloved and drew his last breath for it.
A knight carrying home nothing but a fallen comrade's broken sword.
An old man who barely clawed his way out of purgatory only to lie dying, his wounds beyond him.
Across the whole of the Great Steppe, as far as the eye could see, weeping and agony overflowed like floodwater.
Tena, unable to bear the sight of such carnage, murmured in a hollow voice.
"...It is a tragedy."
Mohaim could not deny it.
The battle at the Papal Court had truly been merciless.
To protect these people, the knight order had given up being swords.
We became shields—absorbing the spears meant for the innocent, enduring them, and carving out a path.
Even so, half the Pilgrimage had died. By the hands of those they had believed to be brothers.
He closed his eyes and offered a prayer for those who had fallen first.
Please... let them find their rest.
Suppressing the surge of grief and rage rising in his throat, he spoke.
"The Pope's pursuit forces?"
"Our rearguard is erasing our trail as we speak. They took heavy losses themselves back there—they won't be able to follow right away."
A small blessing amid misfortune, perhaps.
Tena spoke with a weariness etched across her face.
"We have to rest, even a little. We've been marching for two days and nights straight. Everyone is one step from collapse."
But Mohaim shook his head.
"We cannot linger here. The longer we wait, the more of the wounded we lose."
Only a single hope remains to us now.
And so they had to press on—there was no other way.
"We force-march. Toward the Saintess."
And only after moving through a full day without rest did it finally appear.
"Huh? Th-that's the wall! I can see the wall!"
"Ahh... we—we made it... we made it!"
"The Crossline Kingdom!"
The towering ramparts they had longed for so desperately it made their teeth chatter—and which, at the same time, they now yearned for more than anything—rose up before them.
And standing before that wall was—
"Welcome to the Crossline Kingdom, good members of the Pilgrimage."
The man Mohaim had once so desperately wanted to behead.
"This officer serves as Chief Administrator of the Southern Border, Immigration Office, an agency under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Crossline Kingdom."
The man who had opened eyes long shut to the truth—and set all of this change in motion.
"Central Officer Nathan Kell."
It was Nathan Kell himself.
"We meet again, Sir Mohaim Espirentse."
By nature, he never stepped beyond the border.
As an Immigration Officer, he was a being one could only meet by crossing into the border oneself.
And yet here stood the Central Officer, exactly one step beyond the border of the Crossline Kingdom, waiting to receive them.
Mohaim lifted his head slightly and looked up at the ramparts.
Grgrgrk.
The golems with which he had once crossed blades all stared down at them, greatswords gripped in their hands.
That was a combat stance.
They knew we were coming.
The Central Officer's gaze flicked briefly toward Mohaim's severed arm.
"You appear to have had a rough time of it."
Flat words, delivered without a trace of shock or consternation despite beholding this carnage.
Unchanged as ever, this man.
Whatever state his counterpart was in, whatever the circumstances, whoever stood before him—he showed not the slightest crack.
Mohaim answered with every emotion he carried written across his face.
"It has been some time, Central Officer Nathan Kell."
"On what business do you come?"
The Central Officer knew perfectly well why they had come. Even so, this was what he said.
"Should you wish to enter, we will process your admission following full disarmament by all parties, one week of quarantine, and individual in-depth interviews."
But the Pilgrimage's purpose was not to enter the kingdom.
"That is—"
Just as Mohaim calmly began to explain their circumstances—
"We need water and food. And a place to rest!"
Tena stepped forward, shouting in desperation.
"Tena!"
"We have too many wounded, Central Officer. Please, I beg you, help us. The Pope is hunting us down as we speak!"
The Central Officer's gaze moved past them to the people behind.
Those who had spent three days without proper rest or food, fleeing for their very lives, filled his entire field of view.
For an instant, Mohaim saw something like pity flash, ever so briefly, through those eyes.
"..."
The Central Officer was wrestling with himself.
Between the rules he was bound to uphold—and his own conscience.
Mohaim hastily pulled Tena back and spoke with urgent care.
"Central Officer—no, Central Officer, sir. We did not come to cross your border."
"...You didn't?"
For the first time, the Central Officer's eyebrows twitched in faint surprise.
"We did not. So please, do not trouble yourself on that account."
"Then what is the reason you have come here?"
If not to enter, then why come here at all?
Hanging onto the slenderest thread of hope, Mohaim posed once again the same question he had once hurled at Nathan before.
"Is the Saintess... here?"
"..."
Nathan did not answer.
The same reaction as before.
It was only proper.
With the Order turning the entire South upside down in search of the Saintess, keeping his lips sealed on this one point was the correct course.
And yet, for that very reason, the Pilgrimage had to hear the answer to this one question above all else.
The knight commander murmured in a trembling voice.
"We are no longer the Order, Central Officer, sir."
"...What did you say?"
"I, Mohaim Espirentse, am no longer a Holy Knight. I am nothing now but... a bloodstained butcher."
Mohaim knelt.
"C-Commander!"
Tena shrieked, stricken with horror.
"Forgive us, Nathan Kell. What we—what I did to you—now I understand the full weight of it."
I curse the zealot I once was.
I resent the man who mistook ignorance for faith.
Pressing his brow fully to the ground, he cried out in a cracked voice.
"But if I lose even the chance to set it right now, then even having opened my eyes at last, I will live out my days drowned in regret."
Mohaim's cry echoed across the open plaza.
My knights and I bear great guilt.
Whatever punishment befell them would be deserved. Even if they were called the words befitting slaughterers, he would accept it flatly.
But these people—these civilians—
Tears of repentance streamed down Mohaim's face.
"I want to protect them. I want them to live. I have spent my whole life as a bloodied blade, but these people—abandoned for no reason other than that they learned the truth—I want to keep them safe!"
For the first time, he poured out the contents of his heart.
The grief came flooding out in full.
"So please—I beg you—answer me."
This was not a meeting of Immigration Officer and Holy Knight.
It was a meeting between a man who kept to his principles, and a man come seeking salvation.
Carrying his desperate hope, he asked him once more.
"Is the Saintess—no, is Lady Erzena—here?"
Answer me.
You who know the truth.
You who opened my eyes.
Is our salvation here?
Do we even deserve to be saved?
Have you and Erzena forgiven us?
Answer me.
"..."
Nathan, without a word, turned his gaze toward the top of the wall.
Far in the distance, beside the border guards, someone was standing there.
Sky-blue hair, streaming in the gentle wind.
Meeting that figure's eyes, Nathan held his silence for a long while—then at last, he spoke.
"...Yes. She is here."
For the very first time, Nathan Kell broke a rule.