「 episode 13; arc 0.9a 」 —fragments of cipher//promise— 「 historia i 」

It was an accident.

She was sinking.

I swear it was an accident.

Deeper and deeper into the bottomless abyss, she was sinking.

I’m sorry, Mother...I was a coward without courage just like the rest of them...

It surrounded her—thick dust of a sickly dark gray hue. Its collective density beyond comprehension, it blinded her and encompassed the entirety of her being no matter how much deeper she continued to fall. The further she dropped into the bowels of the planet, the darker and darker the dust became.

It hurts.

She clutched her chest as she coughed in severe pain. Her already anxious breathing was hampered by the mass of impossibly concentrated dust around her. Short of breath, she gasped for air as she felt twinges of discomfort bounce within her head.

It hurts so much.

Wheezing in distraught as her descent progressed without end, it was impossible to avoid inhaling the now nearly black dust that enclosed the space around her. With every speck of it she took into her body, strained pressure built in her lungs. In the time between seconds, it distressingly amplified at a harrowing rate until it could be contained no further.

The pressure within her chest burst forth in the form of rippling waves of torment that rolled down her body. Agony she was sure only existed in nightmares tore her apart from the inside. Crippling sensations that she could only imagine to be comparable to her vital organs coming apart piece by piece in bloody chunks were dismantling her body, and she was helpless to stop it.

Without warning, amidst the horrors of feeling herself being turned inside out, a series of especially dissonant tremors suddenly boomed within her head. Her hands quickly moving upwards, she pulled at her hair in excruciating misery as she was afflicted with a level of physical suffering that far and away surpassed what she could ever endure. 

Yet, to her dismay—

How long? How long must I wait to feel the warmth of God’s light? I was promised...

—the suffering that obliterated her head evolved further still, transcending beyond degrees of mere physicality.

He was just a child. Didn’t know a thing about spiritus or necromancy. May he find peace.

External thoughts began to occupy her mind. Memories that weren’t her own. Feelings that weren’t her own. Regrets that weren’t her own.

Trapped in the deathstream for all eternity...I should have listened. I should have believed.

With every ounce greater the anguish within her grew, the louder the outsiders in her head became. Faint voices she had never heard before speaking of experiences she had never lived before invaded the privacy of her decaying mental zone, seizing her sense of self. 

Done in by one of those blasted heartbroken...what kind of mercenary am I?

It was as if her own consciousness was being replaced, overtaken by the minds of a hundred others all at once, and it was swiftly driving her to new depths of torture. Torture that she was sure she wouldn’t be able to withstand for much longer.

She needed an escape. Anything to stop the pain. Anything to stop the stray thoughts that were stealing her away from herself, the fleeting contrition that wasn’t even hers to reminisce about in the first place.

As one of the now thousands of disconnected echoes in her head resonated within her ever so slightly louder than the others, she found her escape.

Why did I have to die?

Death.

She felt her heart pause in bewildered dread as reality dawned on her. In her ongoing crisis of feeling herself being torn limb from limb and the ensuing panic of losing her own mind as her thoughts became mixed with countless others, she hadn’t quite realized it yet.

She was going to die.

Whatever following moments she had left would be her last. One way or the other, be it from collision upon the end of her fall or asphyxiation as regretful souls dragged her down to hell with them, she was going to die.

Mother...

It would stop at that point. Everything would stop. 

The gruesome pain. The prying trespassers. All of it would simply vanish with her forthcoming passing. She would be set free.

...all I want is for this to end...

However, even the promise of being released from the scourge set upon her could not make her yield.

...but I promised you...

It burned.

...and I don’t want to break that promise a second time.

Minuscule and stifled as it was amidst the suffocating pain that continued to push her to the brink of death, she felt it burning as it came to life within her soul. It took shape as memories and emotions flooded her mind.

Her own memories. Her own emotions. 

The cacophonous deluge of external consciousness that drowned her was gradually washed away, leaving her with a single thought.

I don’t want to die.

It burned and it burned, becoming ever more heated and prominent as it melted away that which clouded everything else. She felt oddly at peace as her single thought became the center of her existence.

I don’t want to die.

An image in her head took the forefront of her mind. The darkness of her room, seated in front of her computer. Her eyes focused on a chat window in the center of her monitor’s glaring light, and the rising warmth the sight of it instilled her with.

I promised Chaewon that I would protect her…

The image flashed.

A tiny pinky finger extended, hooked around the finger of the woman who only wanted to provide for her. The beginnings of a solemn swear that would stand the test of time.

...and I promised you that I would live...

An oath she made in the past had become her anchor in the present—the physical manifestation of her will to live.

...so I don’t want to die, Mother.

Her single thought took over her.

It had become absolute.

Yet, in the selfsame moment that she felt her consciousness descend just as her body fell deeper into the void of dust that drained both her body and mind...

Then live. 

...someone answered back.

Leagues beyond the hazy, disunited recollections of strangers that had swarmed her thoughts, she heard it clearly. It wasn’t a thought, but a voice. 

A tangible presence within her had answered back. 

When she froze with disbelief, unsure if she was hallucinating or not, it spoke again. Now in the center of her cleared headspace, there was no mistaking its distinct and pronounced tone. 

With the last of its words echoing in her head, she felt herself drifting into a sleep so deep that she wasn’t sure if she’d ever awake.

Seek comfort in my embrace as you become one with me, child. Submit to me so that you might yet live.

「 ⮜⮜⮜ ★ ⮜⮜⮜ 」

“Mornin’, Olivia...eh? Hyejoo...? Uh, mornin’ to you as well, little lady...”

Burning illumination from a bright sun rained down upon a busy town square below in the middle of a well-to-do city. 

Several dozen figures were congregating close to an ornate central fountain, most of them sweating profusely from an excessively hot summer afternoon. Middling chatter growing louder and louder as more and more individuals joined the crowd, a mix of hushed whispers and candid conversation filled the atmosphere. Though their topics varied slightly, their eyes were all focused on a particular sight ahead. 

Their point of interest was a small wooden stage that was in the process of being set up in front of a masterfully crafted marble statue. A young girl’s eyes stared at it in wonder as she always did—it was a grand sculpture of a sizable wolf with six majestic wings. The painstakingly extensive details of the creation was present even in every single feather, massive though its wingspan was. Her eyes wandered downwards, idly reading the embossed text of the silver plaque set upon its stone pedestal.

LUPUS
Blessed by the warmth of God’s light with Lucifer’s darkness cast aside.
HOLY CAPITAL OF THE CHURCH OF THE SACRED FANG

Two men in lightweight chainmail armor who towered over the crowd stood at the front of the stage with sharpened swords of ebony steel and decorated shields of black and white. They stood unwaveringly still yet not unready to act, preventing anyone from getting too close to the hardworking laborers clothed in gray tunics behind them. 

At the anterior of the expanding crowd, a middle-aged woman with a cloth eyepatch stood quietly. With one hand, she fixed her hair as black as night itself behind her ears. Her other hand was around the shoulder of a small child that stood at her waist, gently holding her close.

“Er, ‘scuse me if this ain’t none of my business, Olivia, but did ya really need to bring Hyejoo to see this? A public execution ain’t exactly the sorta thing a nine-year-old girl should be seeing, ‘specially not front and center like this...”

The man that had greeted her and her daughter moments before spoke to her again, his words now barely more than a whisper. The young girl he wished to spare from the conversation heard him all the same. Olivia knew this much when she felt her child nudging herself closer to her.

Olivia didn’t promptly acknowledge her acquaintance’s nosy questioning. Her uncovered right eye of deep brown instead focused on the sound of shuffling footsteps from afar.

Three people were approaching the square from across a nearby road. An armored sentry similar to the other two lead them towards the stage by chains tied to their wrists and ankles. With their clothing tattered and ragged and their vision blocked by black cloth wrapped around their head, it was clear they weren’t being treated as people.

Through long, messy bangs of ebony as dark as her mother’s, Hyejoo remained silent as she watched them come closer with her eyes of equal brown. Indeed, they weren’t people as far as everyone else was concerned. No, they were below people. Below animals, below insects.

In the eyes of the holy order and the general public at large, they were below even the very floor the crowd stood upon, for they were the absolute worst thing to be.

They were necromancers, and the young girl struggled as she always did to understand why that alone was enough to make them subhuman.

“This isn’t the first execution Hyejoo has seen, and it won’t be the last,” Olivia declared quietly. Caressing her daughter’s face gently, neither of their eyes wavered from the sight of the necromancers being organized into a line atop the stage. “She needs to see it. She needs to be reminded of it. She needs to understand the privilege her humanity gives her.”

Olivia’s acquaintance showcased a sour frown as he looked down to Hyejoo next to her. With a shake of his head, he sighed and brought his own eyes forward. “I ‘spose ya might have a point. Can’t run away from reality, can we...?”

“No,” Olivia whispered almost inaudibly, her voice briefly quivering. “No, we can’t.”

“Good citizens of Lupus, I ask for your attention.”

At the behest of a man who had just stepped down from the stage, all strands of conversation rapidly ceased. 

Coming to a stop between the two knights and the spectators of the slaughter, he who summoned silence stood stoutly with his hands behind his back. Dissimilar to the workers who had just come down from the stage themselves, the man was adorned in oversized robes of black. A large hood covered most of his face, leaving his features to Hyejoo’s imagination.

With little to see of the priest’s visage, Hyejoo’s gaze ended up focusing upon the insignia set into the center of his robes. Colored white, a collection of sharpened fangs formed a circle, pointing inwards to the silhouette of a howling wolf within it.

It was nothing she hadn’t seen before, but every time she found herself staring at it, the young girl’s mind became riddled with perturbed uneasiness. The deep attention she was absentmindedly paying the emblem was tossed aside, however, when the priest’s voice came back into existence.

“The Church of the Sacred Fang will now commence today’s scheduled executions. By the decree of our holy order, three necromancers shall be sent back to Lucifer’s domain from whence they came. Rejoice as our world is cleansed of Lucifer’s presence with their passing, and be comforted knowing they will no longer taint the salvation that God will bring unto us.”

Though he spoke with raised arms in boisterous righteousness, the priest was met with lasting silence. The silence in question was not born of judgmental disapproval or unbelievable shock, but of mundaneness. The sight of individuals yawning and idly messing about with cell phones in response to being told that they were to bear witness to a trio of consecutive murders said all that needed to be said of the public’s opinion. 

For the good citizens of Lupus, it was just another day. Just another round of necromancers brought to death before their very eyes in the name of God’s light. Nothing of consequence.

And it deeply disturbed Hyejoo to absolutely no end.

The lack of fanfare did not deter the priest in the slightest from his mission as he turned around and approached one of the nearby laborers.

Positioned on a single knee in front of the two knights with his head facing the dirt below him, the laborer held up an immaculate double-edged sword of pristine steel with both hands. The priest grabbed it by the hilt carefully, slowly lifting it high into the air above. The sun’s rays were reflected cleanly off of its polished blade, momentarily blinding Hyejoo as light blinded her vision.

“With the virtuous blade of the Noble Wolf, our holy order will now do away with these blemishes upon God’s light,” the priest announced with piercing conviction in his voice. Below his hood, his eyes fell upon his quarry above. The three necromancers were standing perfectly still in a line, restrained by the sentry behind them that held on tightly to the chains that bound them.

With a disquieting lack of emotion in her eyes, Hyejoo’s gaze silently followed the priest’s path up the stairs. He approached the first of the prisoners—an elderly man with a wrinkled face to show for it. He kept still and quiet as the priest undid the covering around his eyes. The crowd stirred slightly as they saw his mixed hues of brown and burning crimson blink before them.

“Demon of Lucifer’s blaze,” the priest began as he discarded the cloth, “if you have any last words, speak now and pray that God acknowledges your plea in spite of your transgressions.”

A tense silence became the center of attention as the necromancer emptily stared back at the crowd peering at him. Some passersby away from the crowd who had just happened to be in the area paused their strides, deciding to briefly break from their commutes to bear witness to the day’s proceedings. 

With all eyes on him, the fire-aligned necromancer graced the priest with a response. A tired voice escaped his cracked lips as he looked at nothing in particular. “Had you spared my wife and daughter, I suppose I would have said goodbye to them.”

“Had they not been accomplices in hiding you away from us for more seasons than you had a right to live for, perhaps you would have been granted such an opportunity,” the priest hissed with scathing fury. “May your tale remind the good citizens of Lupus what fate awaits those who foolishly attempt to harbor necromancers.”

“Quite,” the relic of a man agreed, unaffected by the priest’s tone. “Well, perhaps I don’t need to say farewell in any case, given that I’ll be seeing them again in a—”

From beneath his hood, blotches of vermilion stained the sheltered face of a priest turned executioner.

“Not for even a single moment will I suffer such delusional implications that a necromancer would ever join a human being in experiencing the warmth of God.”

Pressed up against the older man’s body, the executioner had taken a firm hold of one of his shoulders as he drove his holy armament straight through his prisoner’s heart. 

“Even with their treachery of keeping you from our judgment, your family members were not demons in human skin like your ilk. They were human. God’s light awaits them, marred and dim as it may be from their sins,” the sanctimonious swordbearer claimed as he slowly pulled his blade out of the elder’s chest. He spoke to a lifeless corpse that fell over backwards while a laborer rushed on stage next to him, offering up a folded white cloth. 

“All that awaits you is an endless journey of inestimable suffering as you make your way to the bottomless abyss of the portal to Lucifer.”

The gathering of onlookers was eerily silent as the executioner wiped his blade of the necromancer’s blood. Spotless, he admired the sword with scrutinous eyes as he handed the cloth back to the laborer next to him. While he approached the next of his targets, Hyejoo was momentarily fixated on the motionless body on stage. 

Her vision shifted to the sight of a bright cyan iris staring at the sky above. The holy headsman had removed the cloth blinding the second necromancer. 

The moment her sight was freed, a woman who couldn’t have seen more than thirty summers pass her by gazed upon the rolling clouds high above. Her eyes moved slowly across the horizon above her, scanning for something in particular.

“Demon of Lucifer’s rime,” the executioner began as he indicted her, following his script without deviation, “if you have any last words, speak now and pray that God acknowledges your plea in spite of your transgressions.”

“I don’t,” she responded immediately, her unbothered tone matching the neutral expression set about her face. When she found it, she focused on it; the passage of clouds unveiled an aerial thoroughfare of gray airborne dust. It traveled slowly in an infinite line across the sky, the sight of it relaxing her greatly. “I just wanted to see it one last time—the road of spiritus I’m to become one with...”

Hyejoo didn’t flinch at the gut-wrenching sound of flesh being split open as the executioner unceremoniously ended yet another life before her very eyes.

“To mistakenly find beauty in something as doleful as the passageway of lost souls...become one with the deathstream as you wish, then, and do not ever return to our realm, demon.”

Pulling the blade out of her chest, he watched as the lifeless shell collapsed onto its side. From beneath the veil of his cowl, he wore a scornful scowl when he saw that the woman died with a faint smile on her face.

The laborer presented the white cloth once more, and once again did the executioner dight the weapon for its next job. Proceeding down the stage, he came to a stop next to the last of his prey. An oddly mischievous grin was plastered on the third necromancer’s face as his cloth blindfold was undone.

“Saved the best for last,” he playfully assured as he was revealed. “Should keep the people entertained. Good call.”

As opposite eyes of dark brown and a bright beige were revealed, noteworthy noise broke free from the crowd for the first time proper since the executioner’s introduction.

“He’s lucent?! Bloody hell, don’t see that too often...better than being born of Lucifer’s darkness and being tossed into the portal, but still...poor sod.”

The man next to Olivia mused to himself under his breath as the young necromancer smiled widely towards the chattering crowd. He turned his head to his hangman, seemingly in a horribly misplaced good mood. “Knew that’d stir ‘em up a bit.”

His smile widened further as he felt the sharpened edge of steel sink into the flesh of his neck. Fighting back laughter, the necromancer of light nodded to himself ever so slightly while muttering inaudibly under his breath. “After everything I did to help keep the lot of you safe…”

As the executioner snarled in a low tone that clearly exemplified the deep offense he took with the necromancer’s mere existence, the crowd immediately brought an end to their chatter.

“Archdemon of Lucifer’s blasphemous luminescence...for the crime of stealing the warmth of God’s light and disrespectfully claiming it in the name of your master born of hell, your head will be ours.”

“That serious, huh?” the necromancer questioned in disbelief. He shook his head, uncaring of the blade pressed into his neck or the resulting laceration of the motions of his neck against it. Aloof beyond reason, he was peculiarly unaffected by the situation at large. “Well, alright. Do I at least get any last words like the other two?”

“Unfortunately,” the executioner conceded, holding his tongue as he sank the holy sword just centimeters deeper into the open wound across the necromancer’s neck. “Speak if you must, but know that God will never acknowledge those who steal the warmth of the light.”

“Alright,” the archdemon said in understanding as his eyes fell upon the public before him. 

With a sigh, his carefree demeanor rapidly twisted in a downward spiral. His eyes fell, settling into a gaze b with anger. An annoyed grimace showed itself on his face as he spoke as loud as he could manage through the now prolific bleeding of the cut on his neck.

“You’re ing welcome, you misguided bastards.”

Gasps and shouts immediately rang out. 

Olivia reflexively brought Hyejoo closer still as a small selection of individuals from the group began to run forward. With due haste, the duo of knights at the front of the stage raised their blades in a forward cross, blockading their progress. Though it stopped the crowd’s advance, it did little to stop their verbal protesting.

“His head needs to roll! Take his head!”

“I’ll not suffer breathing the same air as him! Kill him!”

“Find his family and end them as well!”

“Silence!”

An uproar in the form of a single word came from the executioner. It was laced with a furious outrage that was barely contained, evident by the whitened knuckles of his swordhand’s tightened grip. Still looking to the necromancer below him, his words were delicately chosen as he tempered his vehement exasperation.

“Archdemon,” he stated calmly, nudging the sword a slight measure further into the necromancer’s neck. “Pray explain the absurdity of your insult to our well-placed faith in God before I give your audience what they are rightfully owed.”

The necromancer answered his executioner’s demand not with words, but with a light breath.

As a small cloud of beige dust began to form in front of him, the mob at the front of the stage clamoring for his death immediately scurried backwards in terror. No sooner than it began to coalesce even the slightest amount did the executioner push the edge of his steel a fair degree deeper into the necromancer’s neck, causing him to recoil with coughed up blood as his neck was cleaved further.

His breath and focus disrupted, the dust dissipated as the necromancer weakly shook his head in disappointment. “The idiocy...to be so terrified of a little spiritus…”

“We have every right to be wary of your tricks, archdemon,” the executioner countered. “Calling forth the earthbound souls of the lost in an act of necromancy at the site of your own execution...such audacious blasphemy confounds me. I fail to see why we have anything to thank you for.”

“How about your damn lives?”

The necromancer lifted his head as high as he was able, wincing with a closed eye through the burning sensation of splitting his neck open even further in doing so. “I couldn’t tell you how many of the heartbroken I’ve killed...! Plenty of them real close to town! I went out of my way to protect you people, risking my life for your safety, and this...this is the thanks I get?!”

Hyejoo found herself clutching at the fabric of her mother’s pants, holding onto her closely. The necromancer’s words were rife with pain and disbelief, and it reflected back onto the child’s mind as she tried to understand why his status as a necromancer was enough to see him dead.

“You seek praise and salvation for defeating mindless dolls made of plastic…?”

The necromancer dropped his head in silence as his judge, jury, and executioner tilted their singular head in confusion. “A basic accomplishment even the most novice of novice mercenaries and warriors could manage...you believe you should be excused in any capacity because of this? When the Church of the Sacred Fang already manages the regular upkeep of Lupus’ defenses against the heartbroken without issue?”

“Can anyone really trust your defenses when you can’t even protect us from the so-called demons already on the inside?”

The necromancer’s strange claim giving pause to his train of thought, the executioner fell silent. Noticing his quarry oddly fixated on something, he turned his head and followed his gaze.

His sight came to a stop at the steel-faced Olivia at the front of the crowd. The single-eyed woman was challenging the necromancer’s direct gaze at her, bearing no reaction to the growing smirk on his face and the increasing attention from others she was receiving.

“Eyepatches. Classic move. Hide the eye, hide the fact that you can handle spiritus and dabble in necromancy,” he said through another spat of coughed up blood. 

“Worked for me for years...until it didn’t. Others always told me I’d eventually run into a knight or priest who would give into their curiosity and check it out, or that I’d be seen for a single moment without it and then reported..and they were right. Respecting one’s potential injury is all well and good, but what if they really were just hiding it in plain sight, you know…?

“Well? You’re not just gonna stand there and let her walk out of here alive, are you?” the necromancer asked in disapproval. “There’s no way she isn’t doing what plenty of us have done for years. She’s one of us. She has to be. Why not bring her up here while the stage is already set up?”

“That won’t be necessary. That woman is not one of your kind.”

The necromancer’s frown quickly returned when he found the executioner’s focus unworriedly returning to him. It multiplied as he watched Olivia raise her arms up from Hyejoo’s shoulders to reveal the source of his misunderstanding.

Hyejoo’s eyes fell to the floor as she turned slightly, her back pressing into her mother’s side. She knew what her mother was about to divulge and why it was necessary, but it never made the sight anymore pleasant.

With the eyepatch removed, Olivia shamelessly displayed the deformed void in her face. 

Scarred skin formed an unsettling hole beyond recognition and beyond repair where her left eye should have been. The necromancer’s expression gave birth to incredulity as he stared hard at the ruined remnants of her eye socket. “You’ve got to be kidding me…! That doesn’t prove anything! She just cut it out!”

“Know you not the facts of your own demonic lineage?” the executioner inquired, his patience growing thin.

“For all we have learned in the centuries that the Church of the Sacred Fang has stood proud, a necromancer cannot be forced to summon spiritus. Only by proxy of their cursed eye or with a willing, intentional display of their own accord can we ascertain the status of Lucifer’s lackeys—both of which you have so graciously presented us with.

“Besides that, Olivia is a well-known informant for our ongoing hunt against necromancers,” the executioner explained, giving rise to boiling wrath in his quarry which was present in his eyes. “Many of Lucifer’s underlings have been executed on this very stage by means of information she has procured, and today, like many times before, we will be rewarding her handsomely for her efforts.”

“You turn us in on the regular? You’re part of this damn hunt?!” the light-aligned necromancer openly questioned Olivia. His ragged shirt nearly covered in the blood of his wound, his words were damaged and hoarse, but all the same, he raised his voice as best he could. “Lady, you are one of us! There’s no way you aren’t! So how could you...why would you…?”

“Do not waste your final breaths mislabeling an upstanding citizen of Lupus. Until she is directly witnessed performing necromancy, I will not have you claim her to be one of Lucifer’s demons. As for why, like countless others, she has a child to raise and feed. Do not judge her for bringing your existence to our attention so that her daughter might grow hale and hearty.”

“Wait, she’s the one who reported me to th—”

The sound of something hitting the ground cut off the necromancer’s words. It was his own head as the executioner drove the virtuous blade of the Noble Wolf upwards through what remained of his neck, decapitating him completely.

“Enough of your nonsense, archdemon of Lucifer’s blasphemous luminescence. May your extinguished life help restore peace of mind to the good citizens of our fair city.”

Desensitized well beyond reason, Hyejoo watched the severed head roll off the edge of the stage without a reaction of any sort. Only one thought was on her mind, and it was the question of if the executioner had just done the right thing.

The severed head fell into the hands of a dispassionate laborer who handled the task with calm professionalism. Hyejoo had to wonder just how many times they might have caught necromancers' heads.

“Good citizens of Lupus, the Church of the Sacred Fang thanks you for your attendance and contributions towards today’s purge of Lucifer’s demons,” the executioner announced with a raised voice. Stepping down from the stage with a laborer in tow, he handed off the holy weapon to him after cleaning it once more. The laborer joined the others in bending down on one knee as he continued.

“Your watchful vigilance of our city’s streets is part of what keeps the warmth of God’s light from becoming stained by the invasion of Lucifer’s hellspawn...the hellspawn who breathe the selfsame spiritus which flows along the deathstream. For that, you have our continued appreciation. As with every hunt, specific individuals who provided information leading to the capture of today’s executed may step forth and claim their reward.”

Hushed gossip began to spring up from the crowd as one of the silent laborers stood up. Vanishing behind the stage, he returned with three stacks of black paper bills and assumed his unmoving position next to the executioner.

Slowly, two people from the depths of the crowd made their way forward. A woman approached first, apprehensive eyes nervously evading the downward glance of the executioner from above her. She took the money that he handed her, returning a nod while she kept her eyes to the ground.

“Thank you for your service, good citizen.”

Eyes were only briefly glued to her as she hurried away, stuffing the money in a small handbag before disappearing across the street without a word. A yawning man walked up next, grabbing the people’s attention as he scratched his bald head with one hand and picked at his yellow teeth with the other. Upon seeing his paycheck being handed to him, he giggled to himself with a greedy smirk.

“Never get tired of this free money...I’ll be sure to enjoy a round with the boys on this. Thanks, lads,” he said as he flipped through the bills.

“No, thank you for your service, good citizen,” the executioner redirected the notion, the man’s ever present stench of alcohol not breaking his composure. “May you feel the warmth of God’s light.”

“Eh? Ah, yeah, God’s light...sure thing, lad,” the impious alcoholic dismissed. Turning around, he murmured something to himself out of the executioner’s earshot with a chuckle as he departed. “Whatever helps you lot sleep at night. Bloody lunatics...”

With one payment remaining, the holy headsman slowly turned his head towards Olivia. Others followed, watching her expectantly.

For the past several moments, her attention had been captured by the sight of the necromancer’s head. The laborer that had retrieved it was still holding onto it, and she searched for something as she peered at what remained of him. 

As always, she searched for something—anything—that might tell her that she had done wrong.

And as always, she found nothing.

Clearing her head, Olivia extended an open hand towards her child. “Come now, Hyejoo.”

With zero remorse or regret to speak of for her actions, Olivia was at peace as she felt Hyejoo’s palm settle against hers. Clasping it gently, she led the girl forwards and stepped up to the executioner.

Grabbing the final set of bills from the laborer next to him, the holy headsman presented it to the aged woman. Through the veil of his hood, he secretly gazed into the vacant recess of her missing eye with a faint smile. “Your fifth successful hunt this month, Olivia. I must wonder if you are starting to accept the truth of God’s light…?”

“The only truth I have ever accepted is providing for my child,” Olivia instantly rebuked. A familiar sense of relief resonated within her as she simultaneously felt both Hyejoo’s fingers intertwined with her own in one hand and the texture of the dark paper currency she held in the other. “I would kindly request that you do not attempt to convert me to your faith.”

“A reasonable request. I will respect your wishes, then, much like you respect our holy order despite your lack of faith,” the executioner conceded with a small nod. “Believer or not, you will experience the warmth of God’s light all the same, as will your child. With your efforts in weeding out Lucifer’s hellspawn, the light you shall bask in will be all the more blessed.”

“Let’s be off, Hyejoo. We need to stop at the bank before we go to the market.”

Entirely disregarding the executioner’s sentiments as she refixed her eyepatch, Olivia gently motioned her daughter forwards with her. Hyejoo reciprocated, keeping up with her mother as they departed from the scene. Turning her head back, Hyejoo saw the audience begin to disperse as the laborers began to take apart sections of the stage.

A small number of individuals approached the executioner and engaged in conversation with him. Their faces were alive with smiles, animated with admiration and reverence towards someone they seemed to view as a hero. Others in the crowd looked on with collective indifference before dispersing, returning to their daily lives.

Hyejoo’s vision ultimately landed upon the necromancer’s severed head once again. As grim as the sight was, she didn’t feel physically sick. Her stomach no longer turned at the sight of death like it did the first few times. With unmoving, disconnected eyes, she simply gazed at it and saw it for what it was according to the Church and the general public: just another one of Lucifer’s demons, culled in the name of protecting God’s light.

She frowned as her thoughts dissented from the majority, for she still could not see what he was as something punishable by death.

Feeling an uncomfortable sensation of being watched, Hyejoo’s eyes shifted to her left. 

Despite being the center of attention for a few devout followers speaking to him, the executioner was entirely removed from his conversation with them.

From the cover of his cowl, he hid a malicious glower towards the young girl as he watched her leave.

「 ➤➤➤ ★ ➤➤➤ 」

“Do you feel bad, Mother?”

At a small table in a dimly lit dining room, Hyejoo absent-mindedly poked a fork at a platter of mashed potatoes and assorted vegetables. Across from her, Olivia sat with a tranquil disposition. The one-eyed woman was taking measured bites of her food, but as her daughter delivered her question, she paused.

“No, Hyejoo,” Olivia sternly declared with a small sigh, “but if you must hear the words from my mouth yet again to be satisfied, then so be it.”

“I don’t feel guilty. I never will,” Olivia said, her eyes unfalteringly piercing Hyejoo’s. “The only way we can live in comfort is through the Church’s rewards for contributions to the hunt. Feeding you, keeping this roof over our heads, buying you all of those video games you like to play...it’s only possible because of the hunt. I’ll never make enough money otherwise, not even with both the jobs I work. So, no, I don’t feel bad. I’m only doing what any mother should. I’m providing for my child.”

“But you...you killed him. He died because you turned him in, so...you killed him, didn’t you? Just like all the others...and killing someone is wrong, isn’t it?” Hyejoo asked. Her eyes seemed to be searching for an answer in her mother’s silence as she stared back.

“I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill any of them. Those I’ve turned in have no one to blame but themselves for their demise.”

Her mother’s voice descending into a near whisper, Hyejoo’s grip on her fork tightened as she grew quiet. Olivia tensed up equally, her hand curled into a fist on the table. 

“It is as the priest said,” she began, her gaze focused on Hyejoo, “just as you’ve been taught in school. Aside from the initial awakening outside of their control, necromancers cannot be subjected to forced summoning of spiritus. They must consciously coalesce it with their breath, leaving either their demonic eye or visual evidence of necromancy as the only proof of one’s connection to Lucifer. All he had to do was cut out his eye once it shifted in full. Preferably before, even. That’s all any of them ever had to do.

“Lose the eye and never think to summon spiritus, and the Church cannot claim you as a demon. Moments of pain and weeks of recovery for a lifetime of safety. That’s all it takes,” the aged woman scoffed in disbelief. “A questionable loophole it may seem, but a loophole it will remain, as it has for centuries. The Church has no other choice but to abide by it, no matter how suspicious a missing eye may seem. They would tread on the trust of the general public if they persecuted someone for that alone.

“All he had to do was cut out his eye,” Olivia repeated in a murmur, shaking her head as she returned to her meal. “Believing he could get away with living in Lupus, the holy capital of all places, while Lucifer’s iris was still attached to him...ridiculous. There’s a reason I only turn in the foolish ones, Hyejoo. He, like the rest of the ones I’ve hunted, was nothing but a coward without courage. His death falls not upon me, but upon the weakness which prevented him from doing what needed to be done.

“Lose the eye. Moments of pain. Weeks of recovery. A lifetime of safety,” Olivia drilled into her daughter’s mind between bites of her food. “Sometimes, that’s all it takes to live, and the gift of drawing breath can be easy to take for granted. Remember that.”

Hyejoo didn’t respond.

Her young eyes fell upon her untouched dinner plate, still contemplatively playing with her food. After a moment, the sound of her fork being set down followed by her light voice summoned Olivia’s attention anew.

“Promise me.”

Olivia’s eye strayed up and away from her food. Her daughter was extending her small hand forwards, pinky finger extended in a slight curl.

“Promise me that you didn’t kill him, Mother,” she requested, the brown of her eyes twinkling with the supplication only a child could manage. “Promise me that you aren’t a killer.”

Olivia paused, swallowing her food as she studied her daughter’s unanticipated pensiveness. For all of the times now that she had turned in a necromancer and made Hyejoo watch the resulting execution, this was the first instance in which the girl had questioned if she was a homicidal criminal for doing so. 

“I promise,” Olivia expressed in earnest, extending her own pinky finger. She announced her agreement with a clear and concise tone free of doubt or second guesses, knowing full well what promises meant to her daughter. The child had grown to take them extremely seriously ever since she learned what they were, valuing them more than most might. 

Hooking her finger around her daughter’s, Olivia locked it into place and prevented Hyejoo from pulling away as she suddenly spoke again. “But promise me something as well, Hyejoo. Promise me that no matter what happens in your life, you will always do whatever it takes to continue living. Even if it hurts. Even if you want everything to stop. Promise me you’ll do everything in your power to live.”

Hyejoo gulped. Though she was a child who witnessed death before her very eyes on the regular, a child she still was. 

The girl who hadn’t even seen her tenth winter yet felt noteworthy confusion take root within her when she descended into her mother’s eye. She was being delivered a look of grave concern, as if she were being warned of a forthcoming event in her future that she should have already long been aware of. 

She took no issue with the promise at its basic principle, yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some deeper meaning beneath the foundation of the oath she was about to make to her mother. Incapable of fully deciphering the insinuations behind it, if any, Hyejoo was left to nod meekly in agreement. 

“I promise.”

With their pledges sworn in full, Olivia eased backwards. Hyejoo followed, yet as she sank back into her seat, she still displayed a lack of appetite. Her face was scrunched, a swarm of thoughts assailing the stability of her mind. Olivia examined her closely as she stared at her food, allowing a strained silence to occupy the atmosphere for a short period before she broke it.

“What brought all of this about, then, Hyejoo?” Olivia asked as she gave her full undivided attention to her daughter. “You usually only ask if I feel bad. What made you worried that I was a murderer?”

“Um...well, it’s...” Hyejoo said in a broken stammer. 

Her fingers found a bit of her hair tied up near the center of her head, fidgeting with it like an apple stem as she found her words. “Everyone in school’s been talking more than usual about it—how great the hunt is, how it keeps us safe. They celebrate it like the Church of the Sacred Fang is doing a good thing, but it...I…”

Olivia’s eye fell slightly as she watched the girl she lived for struggle to form her thoughts. Hyejoo’s small voice eventually resurfaced when she stabbed her fork through her mashed potatoes, frowning as she did so.

“Lately, I don’t think it’s keeping us safe at all,” Hyejoo stated, collecting her thoughts proper. “Most of the time necromancers never do anything bad. The one you turned in even helped us by fighting the heartbroken. The more I think about it, the more it feels like all of this is wrong. I don’t think the holy order is doing the right thing at all. But if they really are wrong, if killing is wrong...then why does everyone else think it’s right...?”

“It doesn’t matter what they think. If you think it’s wrong, then it’s wrong.”

To Hyejoo’s surprise, Olivia’s agreement was instantaneous and steadfast. Her mother wore a straight expression of solemnity as she nodded. “You can’t let others decide that kind of thing for you, Hyejoo. You’re the only one who can choose how you want to see things.”

“Is it really okay for me to see things differently from everyone else…?”

The answer to Hyejoo’s question came in the form of her mother suddenly peering at the drawn curtains of a nearby window. As if doubting the established privacy of their home, she stared at it for a moment before looking back to Hyejoo and exhaling slowly.

Hyejoo’s heart raced ever so slightly as red dust took shape above the center of the table. It remained in its incomplete form, becoming nothing and merely floating as a cloud without incident. Olivia pointed at it as she spoke. “What is this, Hyejoo?”

“It’s...it’s spiritus…?” Hyejoo said slowly with a blink, her statement becoming a question as confusion showed itself on her face.

“Just spiritus? Just dust?” Olivia pressed. “Not the regretful souls of the lost as the Church claims? As your teachers and peers claim? It’s not the remains of those who couldn’t pass into the afterlife sincerely, denied the ‘eternal bliss’ of the ‘warmth of God’s light?’”

“I...I don’t...” Hyejoo mumbled, unsure anxiety preventing her from even forming a complete thought. As the cloud of dust slowly took the shape of a ring of gentle crimson flame, she watched it carefully as it expanded and surrounded her food.

“So then what did I just do?” Olivia pondered aloud towards her daughter, joining her in watching her soft blaze encircle the home-cooked meal.

“Necromancy…?” Hyejoo answered indecisively. “You...you used spiritus to perform necromancy…”

“Just necromancy, then? I’m not interfering with ‘God’s plan’ as the Church of the Sacred Fang would decree? I’m not ‘disturbing the natural order of the world’ by ‘manipulating’ the souls of the lost to do my bidding? It’s mere necromancy and nothing more?”

“I don’t...I don’t know, Mother,” Hyejoo admitted, becoming visibly flustered as her eyes shook slightly. Circuits in her mind were on fire with question after question, worriedly overthinking in full. “I don’t know what to believe…”

“You’re overthinking things, Hyejoo. You don’t have to know. Not yet.”

The consternation spreading within Hyejoo gave way and evaporated into nothing as her mother excused her lack of understanding. The ring of fire dissipated, her cold dinner now somewhat reheated. She looked up to her mother across the table, the one-eyed woman returning fully to her meal and speaking between bites.

“You’re under no obligation to figure something like that out right this moment. In fact, you don’t have to know for a long time. All you have to know is that your belief ultimately must come from something you’ve decided for yourself. You can’t let yourself be pressured into believing something at the behest of others. The only person who can tell you what’s right or wrong is yourself.

“So, if killing seems wrong, then it’s wrong,” Olivia assured her daughter as she rose from her seat, picking up her empty plate. Making way for the nearby open kitchen, Hyejoo’s eyes fell to her own untouched food as she idly messed with it again. “It doesn’t matter if the others disagree. Don’t be scared of being different, Hyejoo.”

Hyejoo silently processed her mother’s sage advice as she picked at a bundle of broccoli next to her mashed potatoes. Her forehead was creased ever so slightly with the furrowing of her brows, still deep in thought.

Rinsing her dishes in the sink, Olivia grabbed a paper towel and wiped her hands dry as she looked to Hyejoo across the counter. A small grin materialized on her face as she watched her leer at the vegetables on her plate. “Oh, Hyejoo, speaking of promises...I trust you haven’t forgotten the one we made last week?”

“No, Mother...” Hyejoo admitted with a tiny frown, already catching on to her mother’s plan. She puffed her small cheeks in a bothered manner as she looked to the collection of vegetables on her plate.

“Then I hope that plate is empty before I get out of the shower, otherwise that new game will stay on the store shelf. And I will be checking the trash, so that little trick won’t work a second time,” Olivia warned as she left the kitchen in pursuit of the bathroom. She lovingly patted Hyejoo’s head as she passed by her, ruffling her hair a little bit.

Hearing the bathroom door close, Hyejoo was left to her own solitary thoughts. 

The executions played back in her mind as she stared at her food, much like they always did when her mother made her watch them. While she had long since grown numb to the sight of murder before her very eyes, questions of morality were now sparking within the young girl’s mind with her mother’s counseling. In that moment, the foundations for her beliefs were slowly being sown.

The sight of the leafy green broccoli before her prevented her from pondering the questions for very long. She steeled herself as she skewered the vegetable with her fork. All present thoughts in her mind were instantly overwritten by pure disgust as she bit down on it and swallowed hard against the urge to spit it back out.

“Gross…”

「 ➤➤➤ ★ ➤➤➤ 」

Steam filled the bathroom as the sound of running water came to a stop. Loud vents on the ceiling ventilated the closed room proper as a hand reached for a hanging towel from behind the cover of the shower curtains. Draped modestly in the towel, Olivia carefully stepped out of the shower as the mist in the room slowly met its end.

Approaching the sink, the necromancer who valued providing for her child over the lives of innocents took a deep breath. She peered at the gradual manifestation of her own image in the mirror, the fog vanishing from the surface of the glass by means of ventilation. When her tired, somewhat wrinkled face was revealed in full, her focus fell upon one aspect of her face in particular.

It was the aspect that had no aspect.

Despite the due attention she gave it under the refreshing rain of a heated showerhead, the concave vacancy adjacent to her eye still showed signs of slight filth in the smallest crevices of its deep scars. Reaching into the cabinet below the mirror, she left her fingers to search for a cotton swab as she kept her incomplete sight upon the source of its incompletion.

Feeling not the softness of cotton but the dull edge of cold steel, Olivia paused.

Slowly, her vision traveled to a small razor blade she retrieved from the insides of the cabinet. Old and broken, it was coming apart at the hinges and in dire need of repair or replacement. Yet Olivia kept it regardless, refusing to discard it at every juncture she ever considered doing so.

Whenever she began to doubt the worth of keeping it, she leered at the fading bloodstains across the length of the blade—the reminder of the courage she summoned on the horrid night she first discovered her unfortunate potential to call forth spiritus. The moments of pain and weeks of recovery she endured so that she might continue living.

Olivia felt implacable resolve take root within her as she stared hard at the cornerstone of her prevarication to society. It was the same resolve that always took root when she reminded herself of it, the same resolve that always cleared her mind of all vacillation.

She needed to see it. She needed to be reminded of it. She needed to understand the privilege her humanity once gave her, and what it meant to lose it.

A troubling unease was forming in Olivia’s mind, however, as she continued to peer at the razor blade. An image was becoming more and more present in her head, even in the face of her attempts to dismiss it. No matter how much she didn’t want to think of it, the image remained.

The image of her quiet, well-behaved little girl. 

No matter how much she willed it, while holding the blade and while staring at her own crimson relics of years past imprinted upon it, the image of a smiling Hyejoo simply refused to leave her mind.

The sunshine of her life whom she was entirely committed to protecting and providing for at all costs. Her number one priority above all else. Her angel that she would stop at nothing to secure a long, stable, peaceful life for.

When holding a bloodied razor of all things, why was her mind plagued with such beautiful, serene images of Hyejoo’s innocent, purehearted smile…?

A ruminative silence came and went before Olivia wordlessly set the razor back down in the cabinet. Her eye returned to the mirror above it, fixated upon the small cavern of flesh on her face which stood as a ghastly reminder of her courage.

Her fingers quivered as her hand found her eyepatch next to the faucet. Slowly, she donned it proper, sliding the elastic string around her head.

She made a quiet declaration to herself, but deep down, part of her feared that it was more of a trepid solicitation than a claim of absolute certainty.

“If it comes to that...I’m sure she’ll be ready. She promised.”

「 ➤➤➤ ★ ➤➤➤ 」

“What in Fate’s name…?”

“Damn...I wasn’t expecting much after Sunmi said how corrupted the source mana was for that gateway crystal, but this is unreal...”

“Yes, this is frankly unparalleled to anything we’ve ever seen before...”

“How…? How did it come to this…?”

“. Looks like this one’s gonna be a waste of time after all.”

From a freshly materialized door of gray, five sorceresses emerged one by one. 

The last one to pass through closed the door behind them slowly. Her odd eye of distinct cyan was sharpened with caution as she scanned the area while the door began to turn to dust.

They were stood in the middle of what could barely be considered the ruins of a darkened city. The fragmented frameworks of buildings were present, as were some of the pillars that acted as their foundations. Nothing rose higher than a few feet above them, however, creating a rather infinitesimal skyline. Bits of metal that resembled sections of vehicles were strewn about all over the place, and splintered, severed trees along the sidewalks were uprooted entirely. 

In the distance, there was a clearing—a small town square of sorts was in shambles. A marble statue of a six-winged wolf that had seen better days was barely standing, half of its wings entirely broken off and its head severed. Close to the damaged sculpture, a wooden stage not far from it was torn to pieces. Swords, shields, and chains of imprisonment were loose around its broken surface.

As one of the sorceresses took a step forward, a gray-haired woman stepped in front of her. She impeded her path with a raised arm, looking down at the floor below them. “Careful, Jiwoo.”

The barely shorter redhead equipped with an immoderate amount of jewelry and a frilly peach-colored blouse followed her instructions without question. Realizing what she was about to step on, she became visibly uneasy as her contrasting hues of dark gray and oceanic azure went downcast. “Oh...I see. Thank you, Jungeun…”

Jungeun and Jiwoo stepped back in unison towards their three comrades, and the five took in the sight properly.

It was a boundless sea of lifeless frames that littered the ground of the world before them, mixed with mutilated humans and dismembered fiends of plastic alike. 

Indiscriminate carnage extending as far as they could see, the endless expanse of death stretched well into the horizon towards the edges of the city. What was likely once a bustling metropolis full of vibrant life and towering skyscrapers was now a graveyard for all forms of life.

Taking a careful step forward, a short blonde with hazel eyes focused on one of the nearby corpses. Propping herself onto one knee, she rolled up the sleeves of her mint-colored sweatshirt and examined the body of an adolescent boy. Turning his head to get a better look at his face, her eyes fell as she saw patches of decayed pitch black skin upon his cheeks and forehead. His eyes were colorless voids of nothingness, his sclera and irises consumed by shadow.

“Clear signs of having gone into shock much like most of the others, it seems. No doubt brought about from being poisoned with tainted mana well beyond his corruption threshold…”

A voice chimed in above the blonde. An older woman with short neck-length hair had come to a stop behind her, sharing in the study of the deceased teenager. Jiwoo was close behind her, though her attention was set to the sky above.

“Haseul...” Jiwoo started, her face going dark at the sight of the sky.

Her words landed on deaf ears as Haseul became lost in her continued autopsy. “Aneurysms claimed their manastreams as a result of the extreme corruption, leading to system-wide ruptures which thus lead to leakage. Uncontained, the corrupted mana seeped into the body, and from there...the rest speaks for itself.”

“I can only wonder how recent this was,” the blonde replied as she rose to her feet. She gazed at the interminable loss of life before her with a somber glance. “With so many of them, it appears as if the entire city fell at once, which seems impossible, but there’s no other way they would all be clustered together like this. And I’m not sure it would explain the fiends...so just what exactly happened here?”

“Haseul. Chaewon.”

The two examiners performing their postmortem report turned around, their attention called towards the wistful cyan eye of a physically toned woman in a burgundy tank top.

“What is it, Sooyoung?” Haseul inquired.

“Look up.”

Upon hearing her words and witnessing Jungeun and Jiwoo silently peering at the sky above with their heads craned upwards, Haseul and Chaewon did the same.

Shifting their vision skywards, they realized the lack of sunlight in the area was not due to the time of day.

An astronomically heavy layer of dark gray dust had consumed most of the atmosphere high above them. Blotting out the sun like ash from a volcanic eruption, the corrupted mana shielded the world from the rays of its star for miles on end. Densely coalesced bits of it slowly drifted to the ground like snowflakes, and as they neared Chaewon, she could feel her insides squirming uncomfortably with every breath of air she took in.

“Given by the amount of bodies and the corruption over our heads, I’ve got a feeling that this town might have been ground zero,” Sooyoung conjectured with crossed arms, joining the others in the sight of the immense blockade of dust above. 

“If so, whatever the hell happened here is about to set the stage for the whole planet if it hasn’t already, and the rest of this entire universe is gonna follow in no time at all.”

“So you’re implying—”

“That we should get the hell out of here, yeah,” Sooyoung interrupted Haseul without hesitation. She grimaced as she exchanged a glance with her short-haired friend of several years. “Take a look around you, Haseul. An entire city gone, humans and fiends alike. There’s no one left to save.”

“It may just be this town, though!” Haseul optimistically offered, inciting a sigh from Sooyoung. The swordswoman’s gaze drifted away towards nothing in particular, seemingly having had fully expected the rebuttal. “It wouldn’t take more than a few hours just to see if there’s civilization nearby…!”

“Normally, I would have vouched for the standard procedure of a thorough search for at least half a day, but...I’m inclined to agree with Sooyoung in this instance, dear,” Jiwoo sounded off next to Haseul, drawing her eyes to her.

“You as well, Jiwoo?” Haseul asked in defeat. “You don’t want to check even a little bit…?”

The woman of water was genuinely apologetic in tone and expression as she tenderly grabbed onto Haseul’s hand with a shake of her head. “I’m not so sure there’s anything to salvage here whatsoever, dear, be it magi, information, or otherwise. We’re bearing witness to a timeline brought to the end of its days by Fate itself. We should return and look elsewhere.”

“Jungeun, what about you…?”

The spearwoman ignored a sinking depression that crept up in her heart as her eyes briefly focused on the couple’s interlocked fingers. Steadying herself, she looked to Haseul. “Sorry, but I feel the same. This place looks so screwed up that I’m worried we’ll blink right out of existence along with it if we don’t head back soon…”

“I see,” Haseul murmured dejectedly, her eyes falling slightly. She brought her attention to Chaewon next. “The majority has already claimed the rule, but...what do you think, Chaewon?”

As silence lingered for longer than they expected, Jiwoo blinked. “Chaewon…?”

Extensive focus was drawn towards the immobile Chaewon as she still did not answer. The girl’s attention was completely absorbed by something a fair ways down the road, and when their eyes followed, the others understood why.

“Someone’s...someone’s alive…?”

At the distant end of the road, the subject of Haseul’s question was slowly coming into view from down the horizon with an unhurried approach.

In a pool of the city’s past inhabitants, the person came to a stop and stood with an eerie calmness about them. Bearing no reaction to the remarkable degree of near limitless death that surrounded them, they merely looked upon the foreigners curiously from a ways off.

It was a girl with an astonishingly fulgurant odd eye unconditionally bathed in scintillating amethyst.