Secret History (1)
The man's screams, his wailing, went on and on without end. Clutching the body of his lover as it grew cold, his back looked impossibly small.
Kenis could do nothing but stand and watch. The horrific ritual she had been swept into as a child, her mother's sacrifice, and her death.
Suddenly she felt lost. Had her mother died because she had intervened in the Trial?
Why was the God showing her this past?
I... I...
The warehouse was thick with bitter grief. But reality would not even grant them a moment of mourning. A paladin burst through the door, shouting in a frantic voice.
"De—demons! Demons!! They're coming for the walls! The demons are swarming!"
Misery, it was said, always brought more misery in its wake. The paladin's face was dark as he delivered the desperate news. Chaos erupted inside the warehouse.
With the Pantheon already thrown into disarray by its own internal affairs, a demonic assault on top of it all... Stopping the attack had to come first.
Even as the paladins scrambled into motion, Demonic remained slumped, head bowed, still holding Ria who had fallen into a sleep from which she would never wake. No one spoke to him. It was the paladins' quiet consideration for a man who had just lost his love.
Amid that turmoil, Kenis quietly made her way out of the warehouse. She walked somewhere apart from the noise and drew in a breath of cold night air. The distant shouts of paladins drifted faintly toward her, and the citizens of the Holy City stirred awake at the untimely uproar.
With vacant eyes, she looked up at the moon.
Mom... she did it to save me...?
Everything reached her as if through a dream, hazy and unreal. She felt her vision begin to warp. The outlines of objects wavered as if dancing, writhing, merging and splitting apart. They melted away like something dissolving in a dance.
Like a fleeting illusion, like morning dew, everything around her faded into nothing.
Shff, shff.
Just as she thought she heard the sound of someone walking across a sandy shore, Kenis realized she was lying down. The cold night air was gone. The piercingly bright night sky was gone. All that remained was the soft give of a bed beneath her.
Blink.
She slowly pushed herself up and blinked, and her blurred vision gradually sharpened.
This is...
The Pantheon's infirmary. Had she collapsed during the Trial, the way the others had, and been brought here?
It was late into the night; not a single presence stirred nearby.
Is the Trial... over?
She carefully rose and stepped out of the infirmary. The Pantheon, sunk deep in sleep, was terrifyingly still. Kenis simply walked the corridors without destination.
To soothe the tangle in her mind. To grasp the purpose of the Trial the God had shown her. She needed a moment to think.
"...So then—...!! We...!!"
"...—it's still too soon...!"
"...Hm?"
Walking the dark hallway, she found a door with a thin thread of light spilling through. Light and noise leaked from a crack left barely open. Familiar voices came from within.
As if drawn, Kenis approached the door. She silenced her footsteps completely, smothered every trace of her presence, and moved toward that narrow gap.
Inside she saw several familiar faces. Demonic, Antonio, and a handful of elderly Great Priests.
Whatever they were debating so intently at this late hour, their faces were grave, each pressing their case without yielding an inch.
Working hard even this late into the night.
Thinking it was nothing more than a work meeting, Kenis was about to turn away when a single word drifting out through the door stopped her cold.
"We must tell the Hero about Ria now!"
"It is far too early for that! The Hero will be thrown into terrible confusion!"
"How long do you intend to keep this quiet under that excuse?!"
"This is the Pantheon's original sin — our original sin! In the Hero's last Trial, the young days of Paladin Demonic and Ria appeared! What do you think that means?! The God already knows our crime!"
"Th-that... Just because the young days of Paladin Demonic and Ria appeared does not mean the Sacrifice Ritual will surface as well! That is pure speculation! In the end, is it not all merely Great Priest Antonio's conjecture?"
"Yes — it is my conjecture, and perhaps even a delusion. But under this sky, there is nothing we can hide. Why do you still not understand that?! Reveal the truth, and even now atone for the original sin—"
Antonio and the other Great Priests raised their voices against one another. Demonic simply sat with his eyes closed, brows deeply furrowed, listening to it all.
Rofinus's unilateral act... it wasn't?
The Pantheon's original sin. The Sacrifice Ritual. Ria... Kenis knew at once that these were the things that had appeared in her Trial. And that it had not been Rofinus acting alone — the Pantheon itself was deeply entangled.
Bang—!
The door flew open with force. Every gaze in the room snapped toward it.
"That conversation just now. Tell me everything, in detail."
"H-Hero...?"
"How... no — how much did you hear?"
"Kenis! When did you wake up?"
Panic, unease, anxiety, gladness...
Eyes carrying every kind of emotion turned toward Kenis. She lowered her voice, cold and even.
"My mother. Rofinus. And me. What happened back then — leave nothing out. Tell me all of it."
"H-how do you...?"
"How does the Hero know that name?"
Clear dismay spread across the Great Priests' faces. They had never expected Rofinus's name to leave Kenis's lips.
Haa...
Demonic let out a long, deep breath, then rose from his seat and walked toward her. His eyes, cold as ice, were filled with profound regret.
"Kenis. Walk with me a while. While we walk... I'll tell you as we go."
As Demonic left with Kenis, the Great Priests did not dare stop him. Sorrow still clung thick to his back.
Have you ever felt that way? Not knowing why you are in a place, or how you got there... that sensation of having become a dementia patient. Or of suffering short-term memory loss.
Of course my condition wasn't nearly that serious — but if you asked me why I was at the seaside, I would have nothing to tell you.
"...What is this?"
Because I truly had no idea. Looking around, there was nothing but a sea of black water in every direction.
An open ocean.
The sea stretched all the way past the horizon. When I lifted my head to the sky, stars packed densely together formed a glowing Milky Way.
I stared blankly upward, then dropped heavily into a sit. I had no idea where this was, or what was going on.
What in the world... is this...
I clutched my head and groped for my last memory. I had definitely received a phone alert that an error had been patched, and I had opened the game.
And then, and then...
Crack! Something split, and the floor gave way. I fell for a bit, and then...
I was here.
Something was wrong. I had been playing a game at home, the floor had collapsed, and now it was the ocean? And this tiny island floating in the middle of an open sea?
It felt so unreal that I just gazed up at the sky — until a sudden sense of déjà vu made me spring to my feet. This sand island, that sky, the black sea...
I had seen this somewhere. A place I had definitely been before... right — in a dream?
Somewhere around here, for sure...
I had once dreamed of picking up a phone identical to my own somewhere around here. Yes — this was the place. A star had fallen from the sky, and what landed was a phone exactly like mine.
Shff, shff.
Fine grains of sand slipped between my toes, tickling them. Tracing the faint memory, I walked the sand island. Somewhere here, around this spot, I had picked up the phone.
From that phone... Kenis. Right — Kenis had appeared.
The hazy memory grew clearer the more I reached for it. Here, I had given Kenis a "Blessing."
The strangeness of something I had dismissed as a mere dream now approaching as reality. Wondering if I might be dreaming again, I pinched my cheek as hard as I could — and felt a sharp, stinging pain.
Not a dream. So then... this was reality?
What the hell... what even is this? Where am I?
I had just been peacefully playing a game in my room. What was all this supposed to mean?
Shff, shff—
In this strange place where no waves broke and no wind blew, the sound of someone walking across the sand reached me. Human footsteps. The thought filled me that I should meet whoever it was and ask about this place.
"H-hey! Wait a second!"
Far off, a woman stood at the boundary between sand and sea. Her back, as she gazed out over the water that lay still as a quiet lake, looked pure — and somehow sorrowful as well.
I ran toward her in a hurry, then gradually slowed.
Red hair...?
Her hair, red as if it were burning, caught my eye. Suddenly the shaman's words flickered through my mind.
A fairy?
She had said there was a fairy who attended me. A red-haired fairy. And this woman's hair was red as well. Was this mere coincidence?
Lines began to connect between the strange events that had been scattered like stars across the night sky. Like a constellation, they started to form a single picture.
The inexplicable dreams, the black sea, the red-haired woman... She would know. The things I did not know — she would tell me.
That conviction settled over me.
Shff, shff—
I slowly shifted my steps and approached her. Whether she heard my footsteps or not, the woman turned around with unhurried grace. In this strange space with no moon, she shone like the moon itself.
She was so beautiful that for an instant I thought she had actually glowed. Even with a translucent veil covering her face, it could not hide her bearing or her beauty. With the sea behind her, shining among the stars — she looked like a goddess of the moon.
"Uh, I— um, ahem, ahem!"
Even with more than half her face covered, her beauty was unmistakable enough to leave me speechless. Realizing how pathetic I must look, a sudden urge to die of embarrassment welled up.
Blood rushed to my face, burning hot. I tried somehow to fumble out words, but my eyes kept darting anywhere but her face, roaming the empty air. Half-formed, stammering scraps of speech tumbled out.
"Ah, um. So, me? I know this is going to sound stupid, but. Ahem! I-I was playing a game at home, and... ah, how am I even supposed to explain this?"
"...It is a pleasure to meet you."
"Huh?"
The woman bowed deeply at the waist. She lowered her head further and further, until her knees were about to touch the ground. On first meeting, I was about to receive a full prostration.
"No! Wait, wait a second! Don't do that — please, just stand up!"
"...Yes. Thank you."
Suddenly I thought of the shaman who had started with a bow out of nowhere. Why did I keep running into people like this lately? An unnameable melancholy washed over me.
I stared blankly at her face, then felt a sudden ache at the crown of my head. Come to think of it — was this the woman who had sometimes appeared in my dreams, and in the nightmare where she hit me over the head with a hammer?
The woman straightened from her bow and spoke in a lovely, clear voice.
"You must have many questions. Where this place is, and who I am..."
Rustle.
She began slowly lifting the veil that covered her face. Like a new bride's bridal veil, it rose shyly with her hand, revealing her features.
Hup.
My breath caught. Those golden eyes looking straight at me. Even if you melted gold and carved it into a jewel, it would not be more beautiful than that.
Her golden eyes curved gently, drawing the shape of a crescent moon.
"Shall we walk a while? As we walk slowly, I will explain everything one by one."
A feeling as if I had been enchanted. Without realizing it, I moved my feet and followed her.
