That Goddamn Bitch of the Cathedral
Walking out of the tower, Yona decided she would have to move inns.
Alevian was simply too much to handle.
She was grateful for his kindness, of course, but she drew the line at anything that crossed beyond it.
Tsk…
He'd said he would look into it, but she wasn't holding out much hope. If a result came back, great; if not, well, there was nothing to be done about it. If neither miasma nor mana could be sensed, then what was left to check?
…Which meant the only remaining possibility was holy power.
Yona looked up at the sky. Having left late in the morning and stopped by the tower along the way, the sun was already high overhead—probably around noon by now.
She and Alec had agreed to visit the cathedral tomorrow to buy a Holy Shroud, but what did any of that matter. After a moment's deliberation, Yona turned her steps toward the cathedral.
The closer she drew to the cathedral, the thicker the divinity in the air became. The holy power dwelling in Yona's own body stirred in response, wriggling about as it circulated within her.
A bell tower soared high overhead. Every hour, on the dot, it would ring out to tell the townsfolk the time. Considering that clocks had spread only among a small sliver of the upper class, even marking just the top of the hour was a mercy worth being grateful for.
"Yona! So you've finally shown up."
"Hey, old man. Good to see you."
"Old man? You little brat."
"You are an old man."
After trading a few quick greetings with the holy knights standing guard at the entrance, Yona stepped inside the cathedral.
Alevian had confirmed that no miasma could be sensed from her, and even now, walking into the heart of the cathedral, nothing reacted to her presence. Maybe she truly didn't have any miasma at all—Yona certainly hoped so.
Amusingly enough, despite wielding the very same holy power, the treatment priests and healers received could not have been more different.
Priests were hailed as nothing less than the sons and daughters of the Heavenly God, capable of projecting holy power outward—able to purify, raise barriers, and even heal from a safe distance.
Healers had no such luxuries. Their name was exactly what it sounded like: simple users of healing. They could not release holy power beyond their own bodies, and could only channel it into whatever their hands touched directly.
So while priests could purify and heal in perfect comfort, healers had to risk their lives to do the same work. Purification meant pressing themselves against a corrupted beast's body—or, like Yona had done, shoving an arm straight into the wound itself. Healing meant laying their hands directly upon the afflicted flesh. No wonder the treatment could never be equal.
In the eyes of the priests, healers were only half-capable despite wielding the same power, and they couldn't help but look down on them; and the healers, for their part, couldn't help hating those priests, even if they never dared say so to their faces.
Among the already scarce users of holy power, only one in twenty emerged as a healer rather than a priest—and that scarcity only deepened the discrimination.
If I had to fall into a world like this, they could've at least dropped me in as a priest. Why a healer, of all things?
Yona grumbled inwardly as she walked down the quiet corridor of the cathedral. She didn't think such thoughts outside—strangely enough, the moment she set foot in this place, the grievances began piling up. And when she ran into that woman—that particular woman—it only got worse.
"Oh my, if it isn't the crazy-haired healer."
A red-haired runt stepped squarely into Yona's path.
"'Crazy-haired'? Isn't that a bit rude to say the moment we meet, Priest Vigrind?"
"I was merely stating a fact. A woman who insists she's a man couldn't possibly have her head on straight, now could she?"
Yona fell silent.
The girl before her—really nothing more than a tiny pipsqueak who barely came up to Yona's chest—was, in fact, the same age as her. They had entered the cathedral on the very same day, grown fairly close for a while, orphans under the same roof.
Of course, that was only until the Day of Discernment arrived. On that day, Vigrind was ordained a priest and Yona was cast out as a healer, and from that moment their treatment diverged completely. Vigrind began looking down on her, and by now the two of them couldn't stand the sight of each other, itching to tear each other apart on sight.
"If you have no business with me, get out of my way. I'm here to see Instructor Nun Aize."
At those words, Vigrind smiled crookedly—a genuinely spiteful little smile—and Yona's brow narrowed of its own accord, her face scrunching into a scowl.
"Heheh. Sure, go right ahead, then."
"…Then I'll be off."
Yona didn't wait for Vigrind to step aside. She wanted to be free of this place a second sooner, and she had no desire to look at Vigrind's face a moment longer. She simply brushed past the girl standing stubbornly in her path.
"Teacher."
"Yona! You came."
As always, Instructor Nun Aize welcomed her warmly. A woman who, though a priest herself, made no distinction between priests and healers, treating all who wielded holy power as equals. A gifted priest who refused to join any of the cathedral's factions, devoting herself instead to teaching the children. And—
The benefactor who had taken in a panicking Yona when she first fell into this world.
"Teacher, it's been a while."
"It has, Yona. Have you been well?"
"Yes, thanks to you."
"Come, have a seat."
Aize offered her a chair with a soft smile—a plain wooden one, perfectly suited to her gentle temperament. Yona smiled back and sat down.
"So, what brings you here?"
"Oh, nothing really… I just wanted to see how you were doing…"
Aize's smile grew warmer still. She reached out and stroked Yona's hair, asking tenderly, "You know, not once since you finished your training have you come to visit me just because. You only ever show up when something's troubling you. Did you think I wouldn't notice?"
"I—I'm sorry."
Had that really been the case? …Yes, she supposed it had. She'd only ever come to Sister Aize when she was facing something she couldn't handle alone.
"Oh, don't apologize. If you don't come, I just assume you're doing well. And that's the best news of all, isn't it?"
"…Well, actually, the thing is—I have a bit of a problem."
Yona mumbled, fidgeting. Whenever she stood before Aize, her confidence drained away like this; even she couldn't quite understand why.
"A problem? What kind of problem?"
"On my arm. Here."
Yona slowly rolled up her sleeve. As the fabric of her priest's hooded cardigan crept upward, a dense mass of characters emerged into view—and at the sight of them, Aize's eyes went wide.
"What—what is this, Yona? What on earth is this? What happened to you?"
Where to even begin? Yona took a slow breath and organized her thoughts.
"So—"
—and so it ended up like this.
By the time Yona finished her explanation, Aize's expression had grown terribly dark. She knew absolutely nothing about these characters. She was a nun, not a scholar of the divine—she had no way of understanding such things. But the knowledge that Yona had suffered through something so terrible, and that it had led to this, weighed heavily on her heart.
"Well then, let me see. It goes all the way up to your shoulder?"
"Yes."
Hardly waiting for Aize to finish speaking, Yona shrugged off the cardigan entirely. What was revealed beneath—the black characters packed densely from her shoulder all the way down to her wrist—left Aize speechless.
"Good heavens… all of this… what is all of this?"
The mere sight of the letters was deeply unsettling, so black they seemed to drink in the light. Something about them inspired a visceral revulsion—and if one stared at them long enough, they seemed almost to writhe of their own accord.
"Does it hurt at all?"
"No pain. I can move fine, and my holy power is unaffected."
"Really, now."
A pale blue light bloomed in Aize's hand. With a hand radiating divinity, she caressed Yona's right arm—and Yona's expression didn't change in the slightest. It simply felt warm, Aize's holy power; that was all there was to it.
"No pain even now?"
"Nope. Nothing."
It was a baffling thing. Despite the ominous-looking letters carved so densely into her skin, not the faintest trace of miasma could be sensed. And since they showed no reaction to holy power either—
Could it be that they were just… letters?
"…I'll look into it as well, Yona. You can't go wandering around like this. And—now that I think of it, what about your Holy Shroud? Why have you come wearing a cardigan?"
Only then did Aize notice that Yona had arrived without her Holy Shroud.
"Well, about that… it got soaked through with miasma. I threw it away there."
"You did?"
Aize had no idea what to make of it. Even racking her memory for any precedent, in all her forty-odd years she had neither heard of nor seen anything like it.
"All right, then. Just a moment."
Aize rose and rummaged through a wardrobe. Surely there was a Holy Shroud from her active days stashed away somewhere. She hadn't used one since becoming the instructor of novices, so it would have been carefully stored away.
"Found it."
A Holy Shroud, neatly folded inside a small wooden box. Aize lifted it out, gave it a gentle shake to brush it off, and turned back to Yona.
"Sister?"
"Take this, Yona."
"This is…?"
Taking the Holy Shroud Aize offered without the faintest idea why, Yona looked up at her—her face clearly asking, why are you giving me this?
"It's yours now, Yona."
"…What?"
"Holy Shrouds are expensive, you know. You've been getting by on unpaid-issue ones all this time. You're a Bronze Rank adventurer now—you should be using better equipment. It's nothing luxurious, mind you, but it's a very serviceable shroud. So use it, from now on."
Aize smiled. That Holy Shroud—the one she had worn as a side-arm during her active years, back when she, a priest, had climbed all the way to Bronze Rank herself—would now be passed down to Yona.
"You've worked so hard, Yona. I know better than anyone how rare it is for a healer to survive to your rank. So keep pushing onward—beyond Bronze, to Silver, to Gold, all the way to Platinum."
Aize gave Yona's cheek a light, playful pat.
"…But don't you dare die, Yona."