A Humble Dream
A Humble Dream
Rosaria, the saint imprisoned with a crown of thorns upon her head.
A middle-aged woman entered before her. Her name was Erika—the saint once revered as the Saintess before Rosaria.
She now stood before Rosaria, who was in the process of becoming a saint. Rosaria stared at her blankly. The same blonde hair and silver eyes as her own. The previous Saintess approached the current saint and offered a respectful salute.
"...Why, of all people, must it be me?"
It was a lament she could not voice to just anyone. But she thought the woman before her would understand—and so Rosaria gave voice to her grievance.
"...Because it is the will of the Lord God."
Erika did not look like someone who had once stood at the summit and fallen. She carried herself with composure, her bearing that of one long accustomed to bowing her head to those of higher station.
"...Then why did you do such a thing to Canaria..."
That memory remained vivid.
The Pope and his knights appearing without warning. Canaria overpowered and collapsing unconscious before her eyes. Even the sight of her being bound and carried off like a slave while senseless—that memory, which Rosaria had watched through tears of blood, still gouged at her heart.
"...That is the fate of the saint."
Erika had been exactly where Rosaria was now. Thirty years ago, on the day she became the Saintess. She, too, had lost her love, been dragged here, forced to wear that ill-fitting crown, and endured the persuasion of the previous saint.
"...It is painful because it is noble. As a seeker of truth who stands before all others, one lives in the most wretched of ways. For if the saint dies, all of this crumbles."
And now she mouthed the very same sweet words she herself had heard back then.
Erika found it utterly repulsive. Wasn't she wagging her tongue to force a crown onto the grieving girl before her—all for the sake of her own freedom?
Just like the previous saint she had despised thirty years ago.
And so she resolved to be different from him.
"...You speak of it rather indifferently."
"Even I, at first, was exactly like Lady Rosaria."
She had cursed the world. Cursed the fate of the saint. Cursed the Holy Nation that had dragged her here to be made into a saint. But she came to understand—nothing would change.
"...However, I have now let go of everything."
She had given up. Given up on changing things. Given up on returning to her former self, and on her heart that yearned for what it wanted. Given up on the right to pursue happiness and the freedom to love someone. In the end, she had cast aside the human she was before being a saint, and simply placed the saint's crown upon her head.
"...To the Lady Saintess, who must still find everything so bitterly unjust, allow this old woman who has let go of everything to tell you a tedious story. Listen if you wish. If you do not, you may let it go in one ear and out the other."
Even after so many years, that memory alone had not faded.
She still cherished it. And now, she could speak of it—could tell it to the despairing girl before her—because Erika had suffered the agony of parting no less than Rosaria.
"Outside the Holy Nation, there is a very small village. It is called Bersian Village, where a noble of House Versian serves as feudal lord. It is small, but the people there live well. And I was a maid assigned to serve the nobles of that house."
A saint is not born a saint. Except for the first, all saints lived their own lives before suddenly becoming saints and being forced onto the path of a seeker of truth.
And the Erika before Rosaria's eyes was no different. She had lived as a maid of House Versian before awakening as a saint and being brought here.
"It was a humble life. Performing a maid's duties all day long, going out to buy delicious food with the wages I earned and savoring every bite, sending what was left to my family—that was the ordinary life of a maid. Even my dream was nothing grander than becoming head maid."
Some memories were painful simply to recall. Memories that stood at odds with reality were all like that, and each time Erika retrieved those happy recollections, she was merely tormented by the contrast with her present existence.
Nevertheless, the reason she told this story was nothing more than presumptuous advice—meant to help Rosaria steady her resolve as someone who had already suffered the agony of losing her world, just as Rosaria was suffering now.
Because Erika had already lived through that sorrow.
"I wanted to live ordinarily and die ordinarily. While other maids presumptuously fell in love with the sons of noble houses, I fell in love, in the most ordinary way, with a boy from the local bakery. I, a maid, loved a young man named Pan."
It was pure love in a pure time. An ordinary young man who swore he would follow in his father's footsteps and work hard so that everyone might eat delicious bread. An ordinary girl who loved him. She could no longer recall what had first sparked that love. It was a sweet love precisely because there was no reason for it.
"I loved him with all my heart. So in the end, I confessed those feelings, and we even exchanged a promise to marry one day. We said we would live together once we became adults, and live happily together until death."
They had locked pinkies and sworn it. Since they loved each other, they pledged an unchanging love and built their happiest memories.
"But one day, the Pope arrived from the Holy Nation. He declared that I had become the Saintess and ordered me to come to the Holy Nation. And as you well know, Lady Rosaria—is it not true that meeting the saint is permitted only to the Cardinals of the Holy See? Pan was someone who possessed no such qualification."
They suffered a living separation. The sorrow of being unable to meet even while both still drew breath—it felt as if a nail had been driven straight through her heart, tearing them both apart inside. When she heard the news that Pan was living like a wreck, drowning himself in drink, she even yearned to set the Holy Nation ablaze.
"I was in agony. I had no desire to live as a saint. How could a girl who was a maid possibly possess such nobility? I resisted with all my strength, I cursed, I resented. Just as Lady Rosaria does now."
Grind. Rosaria gritted her teeth and glared at her. In her current state, she was in no condition to hear anyone else's advice, so her silence made its meaning plain: would she please just shut her mouth?
But Erika had not opened her lips merely to offer advice. Paying it no mind, she continued to describe her own tragedy.
"...However, the hell that unfolded afterward broke my spirit utterly. For the Holy Nation was already rotten to the core. What the Pope wanted was not a saint who stood above his own head. He merely desired an obedient figurehead—a slave of the Holy Nation who would heed his words and use her divine power to enrich the Holy Nation."
The situation was turned on its head. The Holy Nation, which ought to belong to the saint, demanded a saint for its own sake. And most regrettably, the Holy Nation had maintained that vile custom for a very long time—the priests of the corrupted Holy Nation were experts at taming saints.
"I too wore that crown of thorns. When I still refused to obey, they hung me upon a cross and drove stakes through my hands. Lashes came daily. They strapped a leash onto me, abusing and torturing the saint to turn her into the Holy Nation's dog."
To make her an obedient hound, the Holy Nation tortured the saint. They cared nothing for damnation. What mattered was the reality of eating and living well in this world, not heaven after death.
Moreover, from the moment the crown of thorns was placed upon her, the saint lost all power and authority. Her sins extended only so far as striking a human being. Simply by bowing her head in prayer before the cross, those sins were—lamentably—forgiven.
And so no one thought twice about abusing the saint. What they wanted was merely the saint's divine power, not for the saint to guide them in righteousness.
"...Would you like to hear more?"
Rosaria shook her head. She understood Erika's true intent. She did not want to hear her speak any longer, dragging that past out to pain them both.
'...Is she telling me to pretend to listen to the Holy Nation?'
It was a garbage heap where the servant had become the king. She took the meaning to be: bow your head, repulsive though it may be, feign obedience, and wait for your chance.
'Lady Rosaria, I am different from my predecessor.'
Erika's predecessor had been a man whose spirit had long since been broken.
He was like dead ash, with even the embers of resistance stamped out. And so he had offered Erika no advice. He had never once thought of helping her change the hell that awaited her.
Because he lived fixated on one thing alone: that he would at last be freed from that pain.
But Erika was different. A flame still flickered in her heart. She was merely hiding that light.
What she lacked was the strength to match her will. She was so feeble that for the very first time, a foreign nation had dared to challenge the Holy Nation. Thus Erika did not possess the power to change the Holy Nation.
She was a luckless saint—the weakest of them all.
But what appeared at that moment was Rosaria.
A child whose eyes held a ferocity that surpassed even her own when she had first come here. And beyond that, a halo blazed in those eyes, burning brighter than the sun.
In the instant she beheld her, Erika knew.
That the saint before her eyes was the saint among saints that all saints had longed for. That she was the second Solomon who would transform this corrupted Holy Nation.
Like the Erika of the past.
But different from the Erika of the past.
Standing before her was a being destined to become a sacred fire that would never be extinguished.
And Erika, who had walked that thorn-covered path first, resolved to guide her. Since Rosaria, too, had already resolved to give her heart to a demon if it meant saving Canaria, she took Erika's hand and began the preparations to burn down the field of thorns.
From that day forth, the two saints raised the banner of rebellion in their hearts against the Holy Nation.
It creaked awkwardly as it rose, but that did not matter.
For the fire kindled in Rosaria's eyes could never be extinguished.
She would save Canaria—the one she loved and who loved her in return. And for her sake, she would change this rotten Holy Nation. From now on, she would grit her teeth and endure, her mind fixed on that alone.
Before she was a saint—as Canaria's friend—she set her heart ablaze for revenge for Canaria's sake.
*
Time lost all meaning. She could no longer tell whether a month had passed, or a year. To that extent, memories began to ricochet inside her utterly exhausted head, heavy with a dazed numbness.
Auditory hallucinations, then visual ones. The agony of burning flesh. The bitter taste clinging to her tongue. Her internal organs endlessly spewing blood. Her consciousness fading. Her body wracked with uncontrollable tremors—all of it painted the portrait of a dying woman.
And yet, Canaria did not die.
Because from the moment she swallowed the Demon's Essence, she was no longer human. She did not die, even without water or food. She did not die, even when she bled enough to fill a bucket. She did not die, even when they tortured her by driving a red-hot blade through her flesh.
The demon she had become did not die.
But her mind continued to crumble. From the pain. From the sense of loss. And from the disgust of being a demon—the revulsion she felt each time she devoured another demon, the side effects that felt as if her entire body were being burned and broken, and the sensation of holy power being forcibly poured into her body to suppress the rampage.
Everything gnawed away at Canaria's mind.
"...Rosaria, I'm still alive."
A flickering hallucination of Rosaria appeared before her. She could not tell whether it was a demon's whisper or an escape conjured by her own fracturing mind. But at that vision, Canaria twisted her lips into a smile and laughed as if delighted.
Because even imagining it made her happy.
Thinking back on it now, those had been five years of overflowing bliss.
She had loved that time with all her heart—when her heart had been opened, when she had been taught love, when she had been shown happiness. And so, even now, after she had fallen so far, Canaria lived on with that time as her fuel.
"...That's right, we promised. So I'm just keeping it."
When had it been? She could no longer recall it precisely. Her body and head burned too hot. Even so, that day had surely been a very warm one. It was a day when she had stubbornly rested her head on Rosaria's lap beneath the shade of a tree. What had she said back then? Ah, yes. It was the first day she had asked Rosaria if it wasn't uncomfortable for her.
Perhaps it had been the day after her fight with Isabella. The day Isabella had gotten angry, demanding to know why she couldn't play with them too, since she was also Rosaria's friend.
Rosaria had said that wasn't true. That just as Canaria liked her, she liked Canaria too—and that Isabella, with whom Canaria had just fought, was also a friend who cared for Rosaria the same way Canaria did. That was likely what Rosaria had tried to make her understand. The Canaria of those days had lacked so much, unlike now.
Most of all, she hadn't properly grasped the concept of friends. She hadn't even understood that relationships could extend in more than one direction. It must have been the heart of a child who didn't want to have her mother taken away. Perhaps it was because she couldn't bear to see the person who had given her everything getting along with someone else.
Just like a younger sibling jealous of an older sister.
"...I was so foolish."
Still, even those memories were happy. It was the day she first learned what jealousy was. And perhaps, from that point onward, the three of them—Rosaria, Canaria, and Isabella—had become friends. So now, all she felt was sorry. Toward everyone.
If she had known it would end like this, she should have been a little more honest.
And she should have gotten along with them more.
If she had shaved away her sleep to gaze upon that face for just one more second, would she not feel this regret now? Or would the ache in her chest only have grown sharper the more she had done so? There was no way to know. No matter what she had done, she would probably be regretting it now, wouldn't she?
At that thought, tears spilled again. Yet even so—faced with the memories flooding her mind and the hallucination shimmering before her eyes—she simply smiled. Her lips were unmistakably smiling, but tears streamed down her cheeks.
At the same moment, nausea surged through her. A familiar sensation. She knew she mustn't spit out this foul, metallic thing filling her mouth, but her body was in no state to obey her will.
Canaria began to retch blood.
And then, reflected in the spreading pool of crimson, she saw her own wretched form. It was exactly the same look she had worn on the first day she had glimpsed herself in the mirror at the orphanage. The look of having lost the world from her eyes, her entire body cloaked in wounds.
But two things were different from back then.
One was the awkward smile drawn across her lips. And the other was the color of her hair, which was no longer black.
From the moment the number of demons she had devoured exceeded seven, Canaria's hair had gradually been losing its hue. Now, having surpassed ten, it had already turned pure white.
"...Will Rosaria not recognize me?"
Though surely such a thing would never happen. Even so, she was afraid—just in case. For Canaria, being forgotten in the memories of her beloved Rosaria was more terrifying than being tortured. More terrifying than devouring demons.
Or would she be shocked to see this hideous form? Would she be saddened? Or disgusted? Or perhaps not... She didn't know. The mere thought of what emotion Rosaria would feel—and how she herself would receive it—brought on a pain that felt like dying.
Something had been clamoring noisily for some time now, but she ignored it for the moment.
As Canaria herself had prescribed, the treatment best suited to her current self was happy thoughts. She felt that if she allowed herself to dwell on any more darkness, she would no longer be able to keep her promise.
"...But, what promise did we make again?"
She stared blankly at the sky. What she saw, of course, was not the sky but a dark ceiling. Loathing the sight of a ceiling where no stars could possibly exist, Canaria closed her eyes.
And then she began her happiest fantasies. She desperately hated the muttering in her ears and the wretched sensations now filling her insides. So, forcing her mind to work however it could, she began to imagine a life together with Rosaria.
Ah, yes. It was about living together with Rosaria someday, in a place like paradise. In that pure white paradise where nothing stood in their way—not as the Saintess and the Demon King, but simply as Rosaria and Canaria.
From that day on, that dream became the second binding that held Canaria together. Thinking of that humble, impossible dream, Canaria lit its candle in her heart to push back against the encroaching darkness.
For the first time in what felt like forever, Canaria's heart grew warm.
At that sensation, she simply laughed like a madwoman and wept. It was a desperately pitiful sight—like the prayer of a believer who had fallen into hell yet still yearned for heaven.