Chapter 29
‘Kill me…’
The voice ringing in her head made Arzeletta blink. Surely like a hallucination, she heard some sound.
‘Please kill me…’
Startled, Arzeletta turned her head. The only one she faced was Exion.
“What’s wrong?”
“Ah… no.”
Who on earth was speaking to her?
‘Kill me, I want to kill…’
“……”
‘I want to escape this pain, Rzel, I…’
Arzeletta swallowed harshly.
Rzel.
There was only one person in the world who called her that.
‘You are…’
In someone’s presence, Arzeletta barely opened her blurred eyes.
Before the eyes of the girl caught in a trap, awaiting death, appeared an angel.
An angel with the face of a dignified boy appearing to be in his mid-teens.
“……”
For a moment, Arzeletta forgot the death looming before her.
Long silver hair that seemed like it belonged only in old legends. Violet eyes resembling violets.
But above all, the most beautiful was the boy’s face. Transparent and pure as if he had never seen dirt, as if no stain of the world had ever touched him.
An angel, perhaps.
Arzeletta thought.
At the moment before her death, an angel had finally appeared before her.
At the moment of ending this life full only of sorrow and questions, the great god who had tormented her all along must have sent her an angel.
Arzeletta immediately reached out her hand to the angel. The angel’s violet eyes widened.
“Don’t angels… get hunted?”
“…Angel?”
The silver-haired angel tilted his head and asked back. For a moment he frowned, then answered as if understanding.
“Are you speaking of me?”
Arzeletta nodded.
Then the angel narrowed his eyes. A smile.
Seeing that smile, which instantly became dazzlingly beautiful, Arzeletta was left speechless.
It was a smile somewhat different from pity for someone cruelly dying, but so beautiful it pained the heart.
Like a sculpture crafted from glass—transparent and brilliant yet cold to the touch.
Even that coldness felt mysterious, and Arzeletta gazed at the boy in a daze.
“Do you want to become an angel?”
The boy asked. After a brief moment of thought, Arzeletta nodded.
“Why?”
“……”
“To be revered?”
It wasn’t because she wanted to be revered, but because she didn’t want to be hunted.
However, Arzeletta did not add that.
He looked down at Arzeletta, whose life was fading, without any emotion.
Like a fish out of water, gasping, Arzeletta looked up at him. As if seeing the most beautiful thing in life.
“…Have you ever prayed?”
After a brief silence, he spoke unexpectedly.
“The prayer that can only be made once in a lifetime.”
“……”
“The kind of prayer that fairies like you make.”
His violet eyes, transparent like jewels, fixed on Arzeletta. Breathing steadily, Arzeletta accepted his gaze meekly.
As if revealing the pain of the trapped Arzeletta, her wings fluttered slowly.
The wings, transparent like thin glass, shimmered mysteriously with faint rainbow colors even amid extreme pain.
In the human world, fairies were cursed beings.
Humans hated fairies and blamed them for all sorts of tragedies in the human world.
Ultimately, humans blamed fairies for the great famine that swept the continent for about two years and launched a massive fairy hunt that would be recorded in history forever.
Six years ago, that’s how fairies were exterminated from human lands.
And now, the few surviving fairies became prey for professional fairy hunters. It was a highly secretive trade.
Fairies were above all expensive prey.
Because humans feared fairies, fairy power was useful.
Fairy bones, meat, blood, and even heart and soul—all were useful materials for humans.
Humans, who always exploited even the fur, skin, and marrow of livestock, did the same.
“Fairies can only make one prayer in their entire life, they say. And they live only for the one they prayed to.”
“……”
“Is that true? Or just a made-up story?”
Arzeletta quietly listened to his words.
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