Hell, Hell
Iris could not draw even a single proper breath. Above Mariel’s head floated a halo of a grotesquely deep red. No history of the Holy Kingdom had ever recorded such a thing.
The kindest Saintess was said to have radiated a warm golden light. A radiance that soothed wounded hearts. The purest Saintess was said to have shone with flawless white brilliance. A light no one could dare defile. The Saintess who faced the Demon King was said to have borne a pale blue glow. Cold and stern, yet beneath that light no one ever retreated.
But a halo as thick and blood-soaked as this had never once been spoken of since the kingdom’s founding. Still, everyone in the room understood it instinctively. This was a halo. The undeniable proof of a true Saintess, granted only to one chosen by the Goddess.
The moment that truth struck her, Iris tried to look away. Her eyes refused. Her gaze remained nailed to the crimson radiance. She tried to lower her head. It would not move. She tried to twitch her fingertips. They stayed frozen. She tried to close her eyelids. They refused to obey. The red halo remained fixed at the center of her vision.
Her skull felt as if it were being torn apart from within. It was like someone had reached inside and was ripping her eyeballs out. She instinctively summoned her holy power—to block it, to push it back, to tear that red stain from her sight. Yet the moment her power rose, the crimson halo drove even deeper into her mind.
A silent scream lodged in Iris’s throat.
Then Mariel’s lips moved, quiet and soft.
The instant her name was spoken, Iris fell into darkness. There was no floor, no walls, no ceiling—only an endless void stretching in every direction. In that sky hung a single red halo, like a sun, like an eyeball, like a god with its mouth sealed shut.
Iris tried to move. She could not stir at all. She tried to close her eyes. They would not close. She wanted to cover her face with her hands, but her hands were nowhere to be found. Or rather, they existed yet refused to obey. The red halo said nothing. It simply watched.
At first, fury boiled up. Take it away. Remove it now, you bitch. Iris screamed inside her own mind.
But the red eye suspended in the void offered no reply.
How much time had passed? It felt like a full day. Perhaps several days. Iris hurled curses until she began to tremble, denying everything. This is a hallucination. This cannot be real. Why should I have to suffer something like this? No matter how often she repeated the words, nothing changed.
It felt like months. Perhaps years. The red halo remained exactly where it was. The pain was so intense it seemed her eyes would burst. Her eyelids, stretched wide, never blinked once. It felt as though a white-hot needle was scraping the deepest parts of her mind.
Memories she had believed forgotten rose one by one. A single small letter. Medicine that arrived too late. Groundless rumors. A pilgrimage from which no one returned. Pia’s tear-streaked face before the confessional. And the joy Iris had felt in that moment—the sickeningly sweet joy of believing Mariel might break.
“Ah… no.” Iris’s voice cracked open in the darkness. “No, no… I only…”
The red halo remained silent. It gave no answer, offered no forgiveness. It simply continued to watch.
“Please…” At some point Iris found herself on her knees. “Please, Goddess. Forgive me.” Her lips shook. “I was wrong.”
The red halo stayed silent.
“It was all… my fault.”
The moment the words left her, something scraped upward from the back of her throat. The things she had hidden. The things she had buried. The things she had believed erased because they were never discovered. They had pooled inside her like spoiled blood and now came flooding out at once.
“When I heard Pia’s confession… I was so happy.” Iris’s shoulders trembled. “I knew that child was terrified. I knew she intended to lay her burden before the light because she could no longer bear it alone. Yet I…” Tears slipped from her chin. “I was so very happy.”
The red halo did not answer. Iris bowed her head lower.
“I thought I had found a flaw in Sister Mariel. Whether the child was dangerous, whether she truly carried any connection to black magic… none of that mattered.” Her lips split. “It was enough if Sister Mariel fell.”
The moment the words emerged, Iris doubled over as though she might vomit. What came out was not blood. It was her own sin.
“I hid Candidate Rose’s letter.” Once her mouth had opened, she could not stop. “It was from her sponsor. If she had received it, that child might have endured. I knew. I knew and hid it anyway.”
The red halo watched without the slightest tremor.
“She was a sickly child. I knew the medicine must not be delayed. Yet I told myself a single day would not matter. No… I told myself it would not matter even if it did.”
Iris tried to cover her mouth. Her hand remained frozen, only clawing uselessly at the floor.
“I spread the rumor that Candidate Elin was a bastard. Whether it was true or false did not matter. I wanted to keep that child from ever lifting her head again. I wanted people to whisper every time they looked at her.”
Her throat felt torn. Still the words would not cease.
“I knew the northern pilgrimage route was dangerous.” Iris’s voice shattered. “I knew and said nothing. It was not that I hoped she would not go. I thought she might never return. Even so… I decided it would be acceptable.”
Beneath the red halo, Iris’s breath fractured.
“I did not kill them with my own hands.” The words came out like an excuse. But the next ones tore straight through it. “So I thought it was all right.”
Red tears slid from the corners of Iris’s eyes.
“I believed my hands were clean. I never gave the order. I never held the blade. I only delayed the letters, delayed the medicine, spread the rumors, and kept silent.”
She slammed her forehead against the floor again and again.
“I… I wanted to become the Saintess.” The words were tiny. “I wanted to stand higher than Sister Mariel. I hated how everyone looked at her. I hated how people felt safe when she smiled. I hated that she was loved even when she did nothing.”
Her voice sank lower. “So I wished for her to fall.”
In the darkness Iris trembled.
“Please…” There was no strength left in her voice. “Please, forgive me.”
The red halo remained silent. Beneath that silence, Iris whispered one final time.
“I… was wrong about everything.”
In the corner of the room, the young inquisitor watched as Candidate Iris froze with her gaze locked on the red halo. Then her shoulders began to shake violently.
Her eyes remained wide open, never blinking once. From those grotesquely bloodshot orbs, tears poured in unbroken streams. Her lips parted. The words came too fast, too many, tangled together. They sounded like prayer, like screams, like confession. Yet a few fragments rang clear.
Pia was happy if Mariel collapsed the child called Ria wasn’t important letter medicine rumor pilgrimage my hands are clean no I was wrong.
The broken words spilled across the floor. The inquisitor wanted to cover his ears. His hands would not move.
When the torrent finally ceased, Iris’s body crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut. No one approached her.
Mariel simply looked down at Iris. Quietly. Benevolently. Yet the tips of her fingers trembled almost imperceptibly. The old hair tie wrapped around her finger dug into her flesh. A short, thin breath slipped between her pale lips.
The darkness Iris had seen, the time she had endured, the red halo that had bored into her eyes—the pain did not end with Iris. It flowed into Mariel as well. Still Mariel smiled with gentle affection. Because this pain was nothing compared to being left behind in a world without Ria.
“Rowen.”
Mariel’s lips moved again. It was an unfamiliar name. One of the inquisitors in the corner froze solid. The red halo reflected in his pupils. The next instant he was there—in empty darkness, beneath a sky pierced by red light, trapped in the agony of eyes that could not close.
And outside, he opened his mouth as though swallowing a scream.
Before he could finish, his body crumpled.
“Damir.”
Another.
He collapsed to the floor.
“Versel.”
This time it was a white-haired veteran inquisitor who had seen every horror the world could offer. The moment his name was called, terror seized him and he clamped both hands over his mouth. Yet soon those same lips parted with trembling care.
Each time a name was spoken, faces turned toward the red halo and then away again. Those who returned all wore the same eyes—bloodshot, drenched in tears, eyes that had witnessed what should never be seen.
The remaining inquisitors who had not yet been called grew deathly pale. Some tried to trace the sign of the Goddess with shaking hands. Some bit their lips until they bled. Some threw themselves to the floor even though their names had not been spoken.
No one tried to stop Mariel. They could not even conceive of stopping her. Terror quietly devoured the conference room.
In the midst of that hell, Carden spoke.
His voice was low and broken. “So that this matter would not reach Saintess Mariel. So that the Holy Kingdom would not be shaken…”
Mariel’s head turned slowly.
“Carden.”
The instant the name was spoken, Carden stood within the darkness. Beneath the blazing red halo, old documents drifted upward.
Weak brand reaction. Disposition suspended. Further investigation possible. Claims of injustice. Urgent request for retrial.
One name had been erased. The true brand had belonged to the biological child of a powerful noble who pulled the strings of the Holy Kingdom.
Carden had erased that name and inserted instead the name of a powerless orphan with no one to protect her, turning the child into a sacrificial lamb.
At first it had been bait. A name meant to frighten. A mere collar to wring confessions from the small fry. But the procedure advanced. The execution order came down. One stroke of his pen could have stopped it. Yet revealing the truth would have exposed every bribe he had taken and every document he had falsified.
So he had stayed silent.
The Carden in the conference room opened his lips.
That pain flowed into Mariel as well. The erased name. The child used as bait. The silence when he could have stopped everything. Mariel’s fingertips trembled. Yet still she smiled. The pain of being left in a world without Ria lay far deeper than this.
On the floor the silver chains trembled faintly. Demian remained standing. His lips were blue, his hand frozen around the cross.
Mariel’s head turned toward him.
“Demian.”
The moment the name was spoken, Demian stood in the darkness. The red halo hung above him like an eye, like a mouth, like a sealed sky.
Demian bared his teeth and shouted with every vein standing out on his neck.
He glared at the red halo as though possessed. “I merely performed my duty as an inquisitor! I followed the strict laws of the Holy Kingdom and lived for Daisy. I struggled only to repay that sin—for Daisy!”
The halo gave no answer. Instead it showed him the memory he had spent his life avoiding. Pitiful Daisy tripping in the dark, small hands clawing at the dirt.
“Brother… hic, brother…”
He had looked back. He had definitely looked back. His sister’s desperate face had burned itself into his eyes. Up until that moment he could still believe he had acted for her sake.
But the red halo showed what came next. The feet that stepped back even after seeing her captured. The hands that trembled and never reached out. The scream swallowed in his throat so he would not be discovered. And then—the relief. I survived. Thank goodness it wasn’t me. Thank goodness it was Daisy.
Demian stopped breathing. No. That can’t be. I never thought such a thing. I did it for Daisy. For Daisy.
The words peeled away one by one in the darkness. The claim that he had lived for Daisy was half true, and that made it even more nauseating. Behind that half-truth he had hidden his own escape.
It was not only the Holy Kingdom that had deceived. It was not only Mariel who had turned away. He had turned away first. Most deeply.
Beneath the red halo, Demian finally had nowhere left to run.
The Demian in the conference room fell to his knees.
The silver chain slipped from his fingers. Unlike the others he did not collapse. He did not shatter like Iris. He did not bend double and wail like Carden. He simply knelt, gazing up at the red halo in the sky. Tears fell. His lips trembled. Yet he did not look away.
It hurt like madness. It hurt as though his chest were being pried open and the buried things dragged out by hand. Strangely, Demian could not turn from that pain. No—he did not want to. For the first time he understood that he must not run.
“Atonement…” Demian’s lips shook. The word was not a prayer, nor did it mean he had been saved.
He looked at Mariel. She was smiling. Even while in pain. Even while blood-red tears slid from her eyes. With that same gentle, benevolent face.
In that moment Demian understood a fraction of the truth. One could only see by suffering. One could only stop running by suffering. He could not look away from that smile.
After that day the Inquisitor’s Office could no longer deny Mariel. Some who had seen their own sins beneath the red halo believed it to be the Goddess’s will. Some still could not close their eyes at night. Some clutched their silver holy emblems, terrified their names would be called again.
The shape of the hell each experienced differed, yet the result was identical. They all bowed their heads. Saintess Mariel’s halo was real. Beneath it they had seen things that could not be expressed in words.
Iris was no exception. Beneath the red halo she had realized to the marrow what kind of human she truly was. After that day, not once did jealousy or wicked thoughts of denying Mariel ever rise in her throat again.
In mere days the celebration for the birth of the Saintess was prepared without hindrance. On the surface it was a glorious banquet blessing the advent of a noble Saintess chosen by the Goddess. The Inquisitor’s Office and Iris had chosen the guests with care—high clergy, noble sponsors, senior holy knights, those connected to the Saintess candidates.
On every invitation a short sentence had been written.
The newly manifested Saintess has personally designated you and invited you to this place.
Those who received the invitations believed it divine grace and a chance to enter the heart of power. They closed their eyes in rapture and prayed. Who would stand first beside the new Saintess? What position would the newly born Saintess claim inside the Holy Kingdom? What could the one at her side obtain? They called it faith. Yet greed clung to their fingertips before any prayer ever could.
The banquet hall overflowed with pure white light. White marble floors, silver candlesticks, flowers and incense prepared to bless the Saintess’s birth. Everything appeared clean and sacred.
Then the doors opened. Mariel entered.
The nobles and priests watching with anticipation blinked. At first, from a distance, they mistook the sight for terrible bloody tears. Beneath Mariel’s peacefully closed eyes, a horrifying red line slid slowly down her cheeks.
Someone swallowed hard. But the red was not flowing from her eyes. It was falling from above. Above Mariel’s head floated the red halo. At its edge a single drop formed.
Plop.
The drop fell onto Mariel’s closed eyes. In that instant the pure white light of the banquet hall shattered. Candle flames trembled crimson. Blood color spread across silver cups. Long red shadows stretched across the white marble.
No one could speak. The red halo had not crushed them. It had merely brushed once across the hall. Yet everyone saw. Though their eyes had never closed, though their prayers had never stopped, they saw the things buried inside them crouching in human shape.
Some saw themselves bound in chains. Some saw themselves endlessly reciting prayers with no voice. Some saw themselves reaching from beneath black water. Some saw themselves prostrate beneath the altar while the light above refused to look down no matter how they begged.
Whether it was hell or illusion, a warning from the Goddess—none could say. But all understood the same truth: that was themselves, unforgiven.
Clang. A silver cup struck the floor. From that sound the people in the hall began to collapse one by one.
“O Lord…” A tiny voice trembling with terror broke the silence. Then from every corner of the hall, desperate sobs and screams erupted like contagion.
“Please… forgive me…”
“Spare me… ugh, I was wrong…”
“Great Saintess… mercy… please show mercy…!”
They did not name their sins. They could not. To speak of what they had seen, of what had taken shape inside them, would drag them back beneath that red halo. So they simply begged. On their knees. Clutching scriptures. Gripping thick crosses. Banging foreheads against the floor. Begging only for forgiveness.
The celebration was no longer a festival honoring the Saintess’s birth. No one laughed. No one raised a toast. No one blessed the Saintess’s arrival.
Mariel walked slowly among them. Ria’s hair tie remained wrapped around her finger. Even as the highest figures of the Holy Kingdom lay trembling on the floor, Mariel did not release it.
Someone reached out a sobbing hand.
Mariel stopped. She looked down at him. There was neither anger nor disgust—only a quiet, benevolent face.
Mariel smiled with gentle affection. At those words every person in the hall stopped breathing. Mariel kept smiling. Still with gentle affection.
That night none of those who left the banquet hall were smiling. Some had lips turned blue. Some clutched scriptures with trembling hands. Some collapsed against corridor walls the moment they stepped outside. No one spoke precisely of what they had seen.
At some point cautious whispers began to circulate inside the holy city. The Saintess knows everything.
At first some refused to believe. The high clergy who attended the banquet returned with deathly pale faces. Someone had knelt before the Saintess’s halo. Those who had seen the light entered the confessional unable to speak. Such rumors were always exaggerated.
Yet the people soon learned the words were more than rumor.
It happened on the day Saintess Mariel passed through the grand cathedral’s cloister. People stepped aside at first out of reverence for a true Saintess. But when the red halo swayed quietly above her head, the air itself changed. It was only a halo—thick as blood, falling like tears, a light closer to wound than prayer.
The moment they saw it, everyone in the cloister swallowed their breath. A woman passing the cathedral remembered ignoring a starving child’s outstretched hand long ago. A novice nun holding a candlestick remembered the letter she had hidden out of jealousy. A holy knight at the door remembered the night he had shaken off a hand begging for salvation.
Just for an instant. The moment the halo touched their eyes, sins they believed forgotten rose to their throats. There were no screams, no confessions. Yet for a long while afterward the people could not speak, unsure whether what had surfaced had ever truly been gone.
When sunset dyed the cathedral’s white walls, people no longer gazed out windows for long. Whenever the holy flames flickered, some unconsciously bowed their heads. Red was no longer a warm color. It was the color that recalled Saintess Mariel.
Laughter grew scarce. Prayers grew longer. No one commanded it, yet people knelt longer than before, stood before the confessional more often, recalled their sins more easily. The Saintess knows everything. The phrase had become not a blessing but a warning.
The line before the confessional stretched from dawn. The lights in the penitence rooms behind the cathedral burned late into the night.
That night was the same. Low screams leaked from behind the cathedral, from the repentance rooms. Someone wrote their sins and punished themselves. Between murmured prayers came the sound of a whip slicing flesh. Some repeated prayers while weeping. Some clutched papers covered in their sins, foreheads pressed to the floor, unmoving.
No one bound them. No one pushed them. They knelt of their own will, bared their backs of their own will, punished themselves. Because they could not forget the unforgiven selves they had seen inside the red halo.
Mariel heard every sound. The low prayers. The swallowed screams. The whip cutting flesh. The sobbing voices unable to bring their sins into the open. That pain rode the red halo and flowed into her as well. Her fingertips trembled. Her breath caught. Ria’s hair tie dug deeper into her flesh. She felt the pain exactly as it was.
Yet Mariel smiled. Ria was dead. So the poor, pitiable Ria must now rest in the Lord’s embrace. Before the Lord’s wide arms, Saintess and sinner and child branded with black magic were all but small, weak lambs. There Ria would no longer need to run, no longer need to lie that she was fine, no longer need to smile while hiding pain, no longer need to swallow fear alone.
There Mariel would no longer be a Saintess. The red halo, people’s sins, the countless faces seen through pain—she could set them all down. If only she could reach that place, she wanted to brush Ria’s hair. Slowly. Gently. Without hurting a single strand. She wanted to untangle the silver locks one by one, press a warm teacup into small hands, kiss a soft cheek and ask in a gentle whisper:
Was it cold today? Were there any injuries or pain? Did you have any frightening dreams? Did you endure anything alone in this cold world without telling me?
Was this foolish me too late?
Ria would probably say she was fine again, as always. She would make her pain small and look away as if nothing were wrong. This time Mariel would not believe her. She would ask until the end. She would listen until the end. This time she would not miss even the tiniest tremor hidden behind the words “I’m fine.”
Such a day would come. Someday. The day the Lord said It is finished. The day when no more sins remained to be seen, no more pain remained to be shared. The day the sin and punishment laid upon her finally ended.
When that day came, Mariel would be able to die.
Death was not punishment. It was liberation. It was the door to Ria.
Yet she could not die yet. The Lord had given her a task. The Lord had left her a punishment. The punishment was not over. There were still sins she must witness. She must make people recognize their sins and lead them to repentance. There were still those who must be brought before the light.
Therefore Mariel must pay the price a little longer. Just a little longer. See more. Hurt more. Bring more sins before the light.
If at the end of this pain Ria waited, Mariel could smile as much as needed.
At the edge of the red halo another drop formed.
Plop.
The blood-colored drop fell onto her closed eyes and slid down her cheek. Mariel kept Ria’s small hair tie clutched in her hand. She did not let go. As though it were the last knot still connecting this world to the place where Ria waited.
Mariel smiled quietly, earnestly awaiting the death that would one day be granted to her.