Holy Kingdom's Saintess [2]
The resting chamber was filled with the faint scent of incense and a sacred silence. Moonlight filtering through the window illuminated the pale face of Se Rena lying on the bed.
“……!”
Se Rena's eyelids fluttered, then snapped open. She tried to sit up, but a groan escaped her as burning pain shot through her muscles, and she collapsed back onto the sheets.
“Don't move. The oracle's massive wave ravaged your holy veins. Even for you, you're no better than a charred wick right now.”
The pope, who had been keeping vigil by her bedside, restrained her with a kind yet heavy voice. Se Rena gasped for breath and clutched at the hem of his robe.
“Your Holiness…… what of the oracle?”
The pope fell silent for a long moment. In his seasoned eyes lingered unprecedented anguish—and the terror of confronting something too dreadful to even speak aloud.
“……A 'void' whose identity or nature no one knows.”
His low voice cut through the quiet room.
“That nameless being, which wets the gods' blood yet feels no thirst, now sits beside some young life.”
Se Rena's eyes shook weakly. A vast void, and a calamity indulging in sloth. The words she'd summoned at the cost of burning her soul scattered like shards in her mind. As a saintess who had studied theology her whole life and purified countless heretics and monsters, she had never encountered any mention of such a being in scripture or the priests' records.
“Se Rena, this is the goddess's most vicious warning to us. Something beyond our common sense has awakened.”
Se Rena clutched her chest. Where the holy core had resided lingered a chilling divine afterglow that raised goosebumps. The coldness conjured an illusion, as if the oracle's pointed existence was indifferently scanning her.
“We must know who that void is. Your Holiness, is there even a single line in the Holy Kingdom's hidden records about such a being?”
Instead of answering her desperate question, the pope turned to gaze at the distant horizon beyond the window. Deep shadows of anguish etched into the furrows of his face.
“Se Rena. The Holy Kingdom holds records untouched by light. Taboos upon which the goddess herself imposed silence, transmitted only to successive popes through soul imprints.”
“Taboos……?”
Se Rena's eyes widened. She had mastered all the Holy Kingdom's scriptures and history. Even she had never heard the word.
“You're saying there are records hidden even from me, the saintess? What could they possibly……”
“Because they are records of the gods' defeat.”
The pope's curt reply struck her heart like ice.
“An event where the gods themselves erased their shame and fear from humanity's memory. The identity of that calamity which dyed the continent in blood millennia ago slumbers there.”
The pope drew a silver key from his robes. The moment it touched the air, the holy power in the resting chamber warped strangely.
“Now you must know as well. For the goddess to grant you the oracle directly means she has given you both the qualification and duty to unseal that taboo.”
Se Rena swallowed hard. The weight of that immense truth made her forget even the pain crushing her body. She gripped the bedsheet with trembling hands and stared at the pope.
“Guide me to where that taboo slumbers, Your Holiness.”
The pope did not reply immediately to her earnest plea. His gaze lingered on her slender wrist, still bloodless, and her shoulders faintly trembling from the oracle's aftermath.
To him, Se Rena was more than the saintess upholding the Holy Kingdom—she was like a granddaughter he cherished and sheltered. He desperately wanted to lay her down and let her sleep right then.
“…….”
The pope's eyes met hers. Though clouded with pain, those blue depths burned with a chilling, unyielding resolve. It was no mere curiosity, but the stern determination of a saintess staking her very existence on facing the truth.
With a short sigh, the pope finally bowed his head. No words of dissuasion could sway that steadfast gaze.
“Very well. Your eyes tell me my words would be wasted anyway.”
Murmuring softly in resignation, he slowly rose from his seat. His worn robes swept the floor with a heavy rustle. Pausing at the door, he turned back to Se Rena on the bed with a stern gaze.
“……Are you prepared?”
In response, Se Rena summoned strength into her trembling legs and stepped down from the bed. Though the burning pain in her holy veins lingered, she stood unaided, meeting the pope's eyes head-on.
“I am prepared, Your Holiness.”
At her resolute voice, the pope nodded slowly. He raised the silver key from his robes toward the empty air.
Into thin air?
Doubt flickered in Se Rena's eyes. But in the next instant, as the pope thrust his hand forward as if inserting the key into an invisible keyhole, a bizarre wave rippled out.
Creak, crrrick—
Gripping the key in midair and twisting it forcefully, the pope elicited a ominous crack. The chamber's air shattered like glass, twisted space seeping inky blackness. The rift widened, forming the shape of a massive stone door.
“……!”
Before the door that mocked physical laws, the pope warned Se Rena in a low voice.
“Remember: what you see and hear from now must remain eternally buried for as long as the Holy Kingdom endures. What you face is not the gods' glory, but the pathetic record of their flight and hiding.”
The pope grasped the heavy door handle and pulled.
Rumble—
The door to a space sealed for millennia groaned open, spilling forth chill, fishy air redolent of an ancient battlefield's blood. Se Rena swallowed dryly and followed the pope into the pitch-black abyss devoid of light.
The moment they crossed the threshold, sensation vanished from beneath her feet.
The resting chamber's floor and the stone door's touch felt unreal, distant. Se Rena drew breath, but her lungs filled only with scorching sulfur and the tang of blood. Before she knew it, she and the pope pierced the blackness, gazing down from an impossibly high sky upon an ancient kingdom from millennia past.
“This is……”
Se Rena's eyes trembled in shock. The sky was already blood-red, the earth split and spewing boiling lava.
“Behold, Se Rena. The truth of that day the gods were defeated and fled.”
The pope's voice mingled with the battlefield's clamor.
The field was a slaughter. Mere dozens of demons from Hell tore through tens of thousands of holy legions like paper. Leading them was a blond demon glaring down at the gods with insufferable arrogance.
“……Ah.”
Se Rena's eyes quaked in horror. The four legendary high gods, revered only in the Holy Kingdom's scriptures, were locked in desperate battle, surrounding that single demon.
The blond demon at the center sneered, erupting golden authority like an explosion. The high gods' holy flames and spears of light shook the earth and boiled the seas, but even that dazzling destruction fell short of dispelling the demon's haughty shadow.
In the fierce clash, the demon's hand finally pierced the chest of the foremost high god mercilessly.
“Your light is truly…… laughable.”
With the demon's jeer, golden demonic power whipped outward. The high god's noble form disintegrated into particles without a scream, vanishing into nothingness.
Each fall of a high god rocked the earth, assaulting Se Rena's soul above with shattering shock.
Even the remaining three gods burned their divinity utterly just to push him back—the undeniable truth of the day the gods were defeated and fled.
Then.
The roiling ancient battlefield warped in an instant, the scene shifting rapidly as if space itself was forcibly twisted. Millennia rewound in reverse, the viewpoint leaving the bloodied field and plunging into the shabby alley of a rundown refugee village.
“This is……?”
Se Rena inhaled in bewilderment. Utterly unlike the gods' war she'd just witnessed, it was a squalid, realistic scene. The vision's gaze passed through the murmuring crowd, fixing on a child standing in one corner of the village square.
And as the gaze shifted slightly aside.
A man standing languidly beside the child slowly turned his head.
“……!”
Se Rena's heart plummeted.
In the vision, the man stared straight through her, as if aware of Se Rena watching from here and now.
Different from the arrogant golden light of the demon she'd seen. Only a deep crimson sloth, poised to reduce all to nothingness, dwelled in those abyssal depths.
“Gasp!”
The vision shattered like glass. Se Rena knelt on the resting chamber floor, gasping raggedly.
She covered her eyes with trembling hands. The terror that the man in the record had watched her across time and space consumed her body.
“Se Rena! Pull yourself together!”
The startled pope gripped her shoulders, but Se Rena parted her quivering lips.
“Just now…… our eyes met.”
“What are you saying? It was a record from millennia ago!”
“No, Your Holiness. Not a remnant of the record. The 'void' the oracle indicated…… it was clearly watching me, from beyond the vision, in this very moment.”
Se Rena groaned, shielding her eyes. That languid gaze piercing across spacetime still seared her retinas like a brand, scorching her soul.
“Se Rena, calm yourself.”
The pope clasped her trembling hands firmly. In his seasoned eyes burned realization deeper than dismay.
“I saw only the wretched battlefield projected by the holy scriptures from millennia past. But you…… you witnessed something more at the vision's end that I could not see.”
His voice sank low. Staring directly into her shaken eyes, he asked.
“Tell me. What did you see? Where was that 'void'?”
Se Rena panted, obsessively replaying the vision. Across millennia, the gaze had halted in that shabby, impoverished alley. Amid the murmuring refugees, a weathered wooden signboard had flickered by.
“……Anshik's 13th District.”
The pope's brow twitched at the name slipping from her lips.
“There was a signboard in the corner of the village square. Where refugees gather…… Anshik's 13th District. Your Holiness, he was there, stroking the child's head while looking at me.”
After heavy silence, the pope nodded slowly. The oracle had been vague, but the goddess's pointed location was chillingly precise. He laid Se Rena back in bed, admonishing her in a weighty voice.
“Understood. Rest first. Peering to that distant place through your divine eyes must have drained your soul immensely.”
“Your Holiness, we must act now. I need to go confirm it myself……!”
As Se Rena struggled to rise, the pope pressed her shoulders down with gentle yet firm strength. His eyes mingled sternness toward the saintess with a grandfather's tender worry for the child.
“I know as well. If the goddess showed you that place through your eyes, it means only you can confront that calamity. But Se Rena……”
The pope paused, licking his dry lips.
“Your body is like melted wax now. Moving in this state, your soul will crumble before you even face that 'void.' Wait until you're fully recovered. That is my final plea as pope—and as the old man who cherishes you.”
Meeting his earnest gaze, Se Rena bit her pale lip and finally nodded.
The pope stayed until she slept, then quietly slipped from the resting chamber.
Click.
As the heavy door shut, waiting Archbishop Benedict approached. Hiding his trembling hands in his robes, the pope issued a chilling, restrained command unlike before.
“Benedict. Find 'Anshik's 13th District' on the saint's map immediately.”
“13th District? That's where the refugees gather……”
“Prepare an escort the moment the saintess recovers. This must be handled with utmost secrecy. Minimal personnel, no army—but deploy the Three Swords.”
Archbishop Benedict's face paled instantly.
“Your Holiness, you're moving the Three Swords? They are the final blades guarding the holy seat! Calling them all at once when they must protect the saint……”
“Nothing takes precedence over this now.”
The pope cut him off, staring into the corridor's lightless darkness.
“Assign the kingdom's sharpest three swords to the saintess. Her life is the kingdom's life, her safety the goddess's will. Remember that. Should even a scratch befall her, those swords must break themselves.”
Benedict bowed deeply, speechless.
In the Holy Kingdom's deepest night, three holy swords—nameless across the continent, responding only to the pope's command—silently drew from their sheaths, shattering the silence.