The Lonely Saintess After the End
The world was black and red.
Landscapes that, by all rights, should have been shining in every color had lost that light entirely.
"......Lord."
A single woman walked through that world. Her snow-white hair stood out far too starkly in a place smothered with dust and ash.
"Is this truly... the Lord's will...?"
So murmured the white-haired woman — Eila, once Saintess of the Hero's party.
The Hero's party had succeeded in defeating the Demon King. They had simply come far too late. The world had already ended, and everyone was dead.
The Great Warrior, fighting the monsters, had been reduced to a mass of meat — a corpse so ruined that even its shape could no longer be recognized.
The Great Mage had poured out every last measure of power to save the others, and died in the spending of it. That body, at least, was more or less intact.
The Great Sage had remained alone in a rift between space and time so everyone else might escape. Not even a corpse could be found.
The Sword Saint had cut the monsters down in a single stroke, and paid for it when his body came apart into particles and crumbled away. The dust on the ground was all that remained to bury.
The Divine Archer had stayed behind alone so the others might live. All that was found of her afterward was her head.
The Thief, at the very end, had sacrificed their body to block a trap. There had been no chance to search for the remains.
And the Hero, after bringing the Demon King down, fell to a single attack forced out by wringing dry what strength remained. He melted away completely. Not even a corpse could be found.
What remained was the Saintess.
And the Holy Sword — the Hero's memento, and nothing more.
Eila wandered without aim, her steps unsteady. Holy Sword in hand, she simply walked. It did not matter where.
How long she had been walking, she could not have said, when a building collapsed entirely to ruin came into view before her. It was the cathedral that had summoned the Hero.
She knew it meant nothing now. She walked toward it all the same.
She cleared the wreckage blocking the path and skirted what she could not shift, and at the end of that road she reached a room. Cracks ran through the walls, and half the ceiling had fallen in. White lines were drawn across the floor.
The Hero Summoning Circle.
Every adventure had begun in this place. Then it was only right that the adventure end here as well.
The Saintess laid the Holy Sword at the center of the circle and pressed her hands together in prayer.
She was a Saintess in name, if nothing else. In her final moment, offering a prayer to the Lord was the proper thing to do.
And in that instant—
"Huh...? Huh? Huh?!"
Blinding light erupted from the summoning circle.
When the light subsided, nothing at all remained in the space it left behind.