This Heart Resembles a Curse (2)
Her body grew heavy, like cotton soaked in water. It felt as though someone had rubbed ice along her spine. A chill radiated from her vertebrae, spreading through her limbs and raising gooseflesh. Brian's eyes lost their light. Amid it all, ragged breathing battered her eardrums. It was Wilson's.
"Ah, forgive me. For a filthy whore to dare... Sara, they were defiling you. I'm just glad I could sweep them away like this."
Her eyes felt dry and gritty. Turning her gaze toward him took monumental effort.
"See? Our church is taking down the villains of this back alley. Sara, you must come with us."
Wilson smiled brightly, as if nothing had happened. No one could possibly imagine that this was the same man who, moments ago, had screamed obscenities while slashing Brian down.
Sara's breath came in short gasps. Her legs trembled. As she took a hesitant step back, Wilson approached.
"I'll save you. I can save you."
"Why...?"
"Why? This is a filthy place, Sara. Our church has labored for so long to purify this pit of evil. The time has finally come. Orin's grace has shone upon the lowliest depths."
Words she couldn't comprehend—or didn't want to. Sara saw his cheeks flush. Dark ecstasy welled in his eyes. At the same time, she glimpsed her own reflection in those pitch-black pupils. Sara knew that look. Eyes filled with lust. A gaze she'd grown hazy on since meeting Lenoir, but one that had once made her retch—the stares of certain men from before.
"I've saved you. I've always been watching you. From now on, I will be your knight. We can be happy together."
His reaching hand filled her with dread. She could barely process Brian's death. He hadn't even given her time to grieve. Her mind went blank. Her eyes burned. Her jaw chattered, her breath came in hitches. Just as his hand was about to touch her—
A fierce longing for life surged stronger than ever. Praying this was all a lie, Sara instinctively recalled the name farthest from this nightmare, the one that brought peace.
'Nari.'
The pendant hummed shrilly, and a burst of golden radiance exploded outward, shoving everything away.
Pa-aaang—!
"Gaaah!!!"
Wilson flew backward. Sara didn't know what had happened—she simply surrendered to instinct and fled. She heard him screaming her name from behind.
Sara! Sara!
That furious voice spurred her steps. The more she sensed his gaze on her back, the more terror clawed at her brain.
'No. No. No no no no no.'
It was a bad dream. It had to be. She just needed to get out. Nightmares ended if you ran far enough. Her vision blurred. Tears distorted the world.
"Hic...!"
A sob escaped her throat. She clutched the pendant tightly. Not knowing where to go, Sara stumbled through streets filled with blood, screams, and explosions.
The back alleys were a warzone—no, more like a slaughterhouse. Nothing else fit the sight of helpless residents thrashing against unstoppable violence, their necks snapped all too easily by the holy knights.
Fires roared. Blood boiled with acrid stench. Moonlight filtered through clouds, casting a hazy glow over the black, red, and cold scene.
Selbes, queen of the back-alley prostitutes, lay sprawled in the mud, her prized blonde hair filthy. Her guts spilled from her side. Each time her vision blackened, she glimpsed death's shadow. With every repetition, scorn deepened.
'From the beginning, then.'
The lord and church had plotted this, hoping to flush out the city's maggot den. Under pretexts of relief and purification, using rations as bait to spark unrest, then claiming disorder to justify the purge.
They shouldn't have taken the church's rations. Shouldn't have grown dependent. Shouldn't have deepened ties. When they tried wielding rations as leverage, hands had to be washed clean. It was all hindsight now. They hadn't stopped it in time, and now it crumbled. No regrets. A life spent scrambling to survive each day left no grand dreams.
But one lingering attachment. One worry even now.
'Sara.'
That child had to escape unharmed. From her youngest days, when she couldn't tell right from wrong, her fair, lovely form had been the prostitutes' dream. She'd let them taste a mother's life, something none dared imagine. Even if everything ended, if Sara survived to see tomorrow, it would be a satisfying end. That's why she'd sent Brian. The girl knew her way with a knife—surely she could guide Sara out of the alleys to that strange man.
The street's countless corpses began to look like tangled threads. Breathing felt like labor. Exhaustion meant death approached.
Sara, Sara. Precious Sara Lorojin. In her final moments, she whispered that name. Thus ended her wretched life.
Splish, splash. A silhouette approached through blood puddles. Selbes saw only an indistinct human shadow.
How strange.
"You who crawl the lowly earth."
Amid the muffled din, the man's voice rang clear.
"You who, even so, never lost your humanity."
His gaze and bearing looked down with infinite detachment. Even this close, he felt eternally unreachable. Unreal.
He spoke in a voice without highs or lows.
"I have come here, and you have seen me."
He extended a hand. Warmth spread from her forehead. Then Selbes's eyes flew wide.
The shadowy silhouette sharpened. A pair of eyes gleamed with brilliant gold, shining down on her. Behind him, a halo of the same hue blazed into existence, spinning radiantly.
Hallucination? Miracle? Whatever the thought, certainty followed.
"Let there be light for you."
⟨ DIVINE UTTERANCE ⟩
The man who spoke those words resembled the heavens of ancient tales.
Lenoir walked the back alleys. His steps were leisurely and serene amid the chaos. No one noticed him. Neither those devouring others' futures in their greed for today, nor the heretics invoking gods to scream of justice.
Because Lenoir no longer deigned to see them.
Those swayed by illusions could not see Lenoir. Those who believed phantoms could not see him. Only those who believed in pure truth could perceive him.
And in coming this far, there had been but one: a dying prostitute woman, caked in mud.
Thus, his disgust.
Despite eons of boundless salvation like the sea, mortals disappointed him in their same old ways. They defiled their creators, who had loved and sacrificed for them in every living breath.
He loathed mortals. Humans especially. Their vulgar habit of embracing ugliness for petty greed was abhorrent.
Behold, what came of the gods' efforts for these base creatures.
"Nari..."
A girl with no uninjured part of her body stood before him. She'd run aimlessly, then frozen upon spotting him, swaying pitifully in the muck. Proof that the sovereign of the heavenly throne had become a helpless wretch.
Lenoir gazed at the staggering Sara. He faced the soul of the goddess who had become such a being.
Words formed and dissolved in his chest countless times. How fitting your state, paying dearly for believing the unbelievable. Had you but set your own laws, I would have been your sword time and again; vowed to guard morality's foundation, I would have been your eternal shield. Yet you fled into worthless death, reduced to this?
He longed to hurl every resentment. Yet the words that emerged—why this, of all things?
"Why dost thou weep?"
He placed a hand on her cheek, brushing away the tears. Each droplet touching her skin felt like a blade slicing through his veins to shred his heart. The warmth mimicking body heat chilled his spine like frost.
"Weep not so."
Cunningly, she could supplant all his resentments with a single tear, squeezing and crushing his heart.
"When thou weepest, I know not what to do."
Thus the agony. This heart was Lenoir's cruelest curse.
"Hic, hu...!"
He drew her into his arms. Covering the eyes and ears of the girl sobbing as if she might collapse, he lifted his head, restless.
Through her alone did life feel real, and it hurt. Her joy was his reason for being, and it sickened his soul.
Yet the cause of these tears—those unworthy ones. That, at least, he could address, as she pleaded.
"I shall not leave thy sorrow be."
Please, wipe away thy tears.
Hwaaaak—!
Golden brilliance began to flood the streets.