The Cult of Catastrophe
In a darkened sealed chamber—
Drip…
Drip…
Within a space lit only by a single faintly trembling candle, several figures sat gathered around a round table.
"…I see. So that's how it is."
"Yes. A secret letter reported that the Saintess had genuinely been on the move, so it is unlikely to be false."
A woman's voice, low and settled. Across from her, a man bowed his head as if in answer.
"Even Executors have been dispatched, they say. There are rumors that their whereabouts have recently gone strangely quiet, but…"
"So the hunting hounds of the light have gone missing."
Hmm—
The woman stroked her chin, sinking into thought as though the news intrigued her. A black cloth veiled her face, so little of it could be seen—yet the corner of her mouth, just barely visible, curved with unmistakable amusement.
"How ridiculous."
"……."
"The very thing they built to find Him turns out to be of use to us instead."
The incident that had lately set the Holy Kingdom in an uproar was this: the ringing of the Bell of Catastrophe.
"Those fools probably don't even understand what that object truly is. By now they'll be tearing through every related ancient record like madmen, but…"
"They will never realize that the most important documents are already in our hands."
None of it was anything they needed to worry about.
Indeed, an aged document rested in the woman's hand—its form strikingly similar to the one the former bishop of Anton Village had once examined.
"Worms bloated on peace. Over the last thousand years… countless brothers of our order sacrificed themselves to obtain these things, and those people forgot it all in a mere handful of generations."
Thup.
She closed the document she held and spoke as though murmuring to herself.
"God did resurrect. He merely postponed that moment a little longer, that He might fulfill a greater design."
"Yes. Precisely so."
"And now, in our age, He has at last revealed Himself."
She already held an unshakable conviction that their god had risen again in this very era—and the reason was about to leave her lips.
"From the moment of its design, the Bell of Catastrophe does not ring for anything less than a being on par with the Great Catastrophe itself."
Her voice carried absolute certainty. No other possibility was left standing.
"And on top of that—an entire village vanished without a trace not long ago, did it not?"
"Yes. Not a single survivor, they say."
"Ha."
At that answer, a soft laugh slipped from her mouth. Whether it was joy or anticipation, no one could tell.
"To commit something of that scale and leave no trace of the culprit…"
"What little remained was only the wreckage of destruction—discarded as if to say, look at what I have done."
"Excellent."
She slowly leaned forward. In the candlelight, her half-revealed eyes burned with a strange, unidentifiable heat.
"If He had wished to erase the traces, He could have done so with ease."
"Which means…"
"It was a signal. Sent, for instance… to those He wished to meet."
"You mean that even if the Holy Kingdom catches His trail because of it, He hardly seems to care?"
"Exactly."
With that, she opened the ancient document once more and let her gaze rest on the passage she loved best.
The Great Catastrophe neither failed to resurrect, nor did He vanish.
He was merely waiting for the proper time.
We know not when that hour will come, yet we must never forget:
One day, the Great Catastrophe will surely reveal Himself to the world once more.
A passage after my own heart…
Of course, the fact that the man who wrote it had been a hero of the past was rather less to her liking.
Haa—
She closed her eyes again in silence, then issued her command to the faithful of the order who watched her.
"Find Him."
The voice rolled through the cave.
"Before the Holy Kingdom does."
"Yes."
At that single brief word, every person in the sealed chamber bowed their head in answer.
"We will find Him without fail."
It was something they had waited for far too long.
A span of years too vast to measure. Countless of the faithful had fallen along the way.
And so they could not—would not—let this slip away.
At last.
A thousand years of waiting seemed finally to be drawing to its end.
The next morning.
I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be around here.
Juhan had arrived at the place he had set as yesterday's destination. More precisely, he was scanning the area believed to be the source of the rumors.
Where the hell is it?
No matter how hard he looked, he couldn't find a thing.
Anton Village's only magic engineer—and supposedly the most skilled one in the whole area.
The man Juhan was searching for was Carlton, the magic engineer of Anton Village.
For someone living in a little place like Anton, his reputation was surprisingly solid. Said to be quite talented, and so on.
Mid-to-late thirties, if I remember right.
But Juhan was already stuck before he had even met Carlton. He had reached the place where the man was supposed to live, and yet there was no sign, no marker—nothing he could use to identify it.
I don't want to stay in this village any longer. I want to wrap this up and get out.
Because he truly had no desire to remain in Anton, a faint edge of impatience was starting to creep in.
The reason Juhan wanted out of Anton Village was perfectly clear.
Clank, clank.
"……."
It was them—the Holy Knights currently filing past right in front of him.
The number of Holy Knights keeps growing.
Far from decreasing, the Holy Knights dispatched to Anton Village only multiplied as time went on.
And if they ever realize the Executors have disappeared…
For now they didn't seem to have noticed that the dispatched Executors were gone. But it wouldn't be long before the Holy Kingdom learned the truth. He needed to get out of this village before something even bigger broke loose.
Tsk. I can't even release my power to check the surroundings.
Holy Knights and soldiers already carpeted the area. Letting his power free here would be no different from hanging a sign that said, Come and get me.
Swish, swish.
Juhan kept searching the surroundings for any trace of Carlton.
Where on earth… huh?
His tearful efforts were rewarded sooner than expected.
Could that be it?
Nearby buildings, back alleys, even behind oak barrels—he had scoured the area like a man hunting rats, and then an unidentifiable handle snagged his eye.
"……."
The entrance it was attached to, however, looked—even by the most generous estimate—like a manhole. The moment he opened that hole, he fully expected a blast of foul stench.
Hmm…
He stood before the mysterious manhole, mulling it over.
"…Tsk. Whatever."
Grab.
As if making up his mind, he seized the unknown handle and heaved upward with force.
Krrrreek—
How long had it been since anyone opened this thing? The lid he was pulling on screamed with a sound so awful it felt as though it might tear apart.
It didn't feel like opening an entrance so much as ripping one free.
After roughly a minute of yanking—
"…Is this even right?"
Haaah—
The man who had done the pulling looked at the result of his work and let out a hollow laugh.
No matter how he sliced it, he hadn't opened the entrance so much as torn the whole door off its hinges.
Well… might as well go in.
He had managed to open it somehow, so he figured he ought to head inside.
Whoosh.
Without much hesitation, he dropped straight down through the hole.
Haaah—
Thud.
Not that deep.
The drop wasn't as long as he'd expected—maybe about ten meters.
One small mercy: the rotten stench he had braced for never came.
Rustle, rustle.
He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a single small matchstick, then struck it.
Fssst.
Flicker.
I'll have to make do with this for now.
He had never once imagined he would be going underground, so of course he hadn't prepared a torch or anything of the sort. And he wasn't free enough to climb back out just to hunt for something better to light.
So he had no choice but to press forward by matchlight alone.
This should at least let me make out what's right in front of me.
Crunch.
Crunch.
It wasn't as though walking was especially difficult, so Juhan advanced at a careful pace. Only the sound of his footsteps echoed through the unknown passage.
…Was there really nothing here after all?
After walking another five minutes without any idea where the tunnel led, two thoughts began to collide in his head: I should have searched the surface more carefully and There really was nothing there to begin with.
"…?"
But in that moment, something entered his field of vision.
Light?
Not far ahead, a faint glow was leaking out.
Step, step.
Almost as if drawn by it, he moved toward the light, and before long he reached its source.
A door?
An unfamiliar door stood there, light still pulsing and spilling from within as though something was happening on the other side.
He couldn't tell what. But one thing he could say with certainty—
Someone's inside.
There was someone beyond that door. He hadn't used any power to sense it.
Clang—
Clang—
If he simply listened, a faint hammering sound drifted out from within.
"……."
After a brief moment of consideration, Juhan reached toward the door.
Knock, knock.
He tapped carefully against it. And at the same time, something changed.
The sound stopped.
Cut.
As if confirming his guess that someone was inside, the hammering fell silent at once.
In a way, the person on the other side seemed more tense than Juhan himself. Juhan was simply standing there looking around, while from within came not so much as a dead mouse's whisper.
…No response at all?
Swish.
Just as he raised his hand to knock again—
Clack!
Wh-what?
With a scrape of metal, a small window set into the door slid open.
An eye?
Beyond it, a pair of unidentified eyes stared hard at Juhan. Then the man's voice came through—laced with the wary edge of someone who lived hidden in a place like this.
"…Who are you?"
And when Juhan heard that voice—
Somehow, from that single short line alone, he found himself thinking he had come to exactly the right person.