Chapter 93
‘When the Sun Falls, She Became a Witch’
Turning page by page while listening to the explanation, they quickly reached the final page.
There, in the middle of a blackened sea, sat a red ‘witch’ crying tears, and a man holding a small glass cup trying to steal those tears.
That wasn’t all.
Endless thorns appeared to be wrapped tightly around the man’s arms and body, preventing him from getting close to the ‘witch’, and the entire picture was contained in a cracked frame, giving the feeling of peering through a broken mirror.
Most shocking of all was the familiar emblem faintly drawn on that ‘traitor’s’ clothes.
“It’s the current Sun God’s Order.”
It was indeed the emblem of the Sun God’s Order.
Everyone’s eyes there grew round.
As they were too shocked to speak, Yansen continued her explanation.
“The Sun God’s Order wasn’t always like this. Long ago, they were a group that served the Sun God and protected the Saint. But betrayers blinded by greed appeared……”
“They were after the Saint’s power.”
“Yes. All the noble ones died, and the current Order is made up of those traitors from back then.”
After telling the story, Yansen observed Angelina’s reaction and added.
“Seeing that you’ve come this far, you must have already suspected this much.”
“I knew the Order had ulterior motives. But I didn’t know it would be this blatant.”
Angelina stared at the last page’s illustration for a long time with a furrowed brow. It was an unsettling image that made one feel like insects were crawling on their skin.
“Is the reason no Saint has appeared to the Order until now because they aren’t true Sun God believers?”
“That’s right. What god would want to send their child back to a twisted group that branded their child a witch and murdered their companions?”
“Is this the truth you spoke of? And everyone in this village knows this?”
“Not everyone in the village knows. This book can only be accessed with the village chief’s permission.”
At her words, Haley quietly added an explanation to Angelina.
“I can sense magical power from the book.”
She hadn’t noticed anything unusual when Yansen opened the book earlier, but there seemed to be hidden mechanisms.
“If they wanted to hide this truth, why did they take all the adults instead of just taking the village chief?”
“As you can see from the lyrics of the song you heard earlier, even if not the exact truth, similar content circulates throughout the village in various forms – songs, pictures, oral traditions. So everyone who grew up here has been exposed to the truth in small ways since childhood.”
At her words, Blake recalled the story about the witch and the sun that the village chief had told him. That fairy tale must have been one of those.
“So it would seem like the whole village knows the truth.”
“Then… it’s a terrible hypothesis, but why didn’t they just massacre everyone?”
Though an uncomfortable thought, given what they knew of the Order, they were capable of such things, so taking only the adults didn’t make sense.
“Taking everyone would be one thing, but leaving the children behind is quite peculiar too.”
Aren’t they the ones who kidnapped children from the slums to use them in the Saint project?
Wouldn’t it be more like the Order to just take all the children and use them while claiming righteousness?
“There are some aspects we can speculate about regarding that.”
Yansen answered, understanding Angelina’s doubts.
“First, they need that truth to reclaim their former glory. They probably thought they could get information if they could make anyone talk.”
“So their actions came from not knowing that only the village chief knew the truth.”
“Yes, and as for not touching the children… it’s probably because of the curse that’s been passed down since this book was created.”
“Curse?”
“They say there are words left by the Saint who became a witch: ‘If I’m truly a witch, then I could lay a curse instead of a blessing upon you.'”
[If I’m truly a witch, then I could lay a curse instead of a blessing upon you. So I say this:
Touch my children no further. Do not let my sorrow turn to rage.
If you violate this, I shall surely appear again and drag you all into the fires of hell.]
Yansen spoke while caressing the illustration on the last page. Perhaps because the picture was somewhat grotesque, it really did seem like a curse.
“Whether it’s a real curse or not, they probably didn’t want to risk finding out.”
“Really… they’re a group that knows one thing but not two.”
Angelina sighed.
It was laughable that they were cautious about ‘children’ just because she said ‘my children,’ and if they really feared that curse, shouldn’t they have left the slum children alone too?
Moreover, they even tried to create false Saints by selecting children who showed signs of holy power.
They were such inconsistent people. Perhaps they were too focused on solving immediate problems to see the bigger picture.
“This approach won’t last long.”
Blake spoke, sensing what she was thinking.
“The Duke is right. This kind of thing is bound to collapse eventually.”
After confirming that Angelina’s uncomfortable expression had eased, Blake asked Yansen.
“Then are you… perhaps the next village chief, since you can see this book?”
“No, that’s not it. Actually, there was someone else designated as the next chief. But they were also taken by the mercenaries.”
“Then how are you able to see the book?”
“As I mentioned earlier, the story itself is passed down from chief to future chief. But the book’s structure allows anyone with permission to view it.”
“I thought it would have been kept much more secretive, but apparently not.”
“Yes, because we are intermediaries and narrators, passing the truth to future generations is more important than keeping it secret.”
So it could be seen as an insurance measure – if something happened, at least one person could escape with the book to ensure the story would be passed down to future generations.
“While being known to have access to and knowledge of the book increases the risk of being targeted by the Order, truthfully, even if I went around spreading this content, neither the village chief nor the villagers would object.”
She explains there’s only an implicit agreement to stay quiet for safety’s sake.
“So it’s less about having permission to read the book, and more about the responsibility to protect it if something happens.”
“That’s right. Originally, there were two or three others besides me, but they were all captured… I was the only one who wasn’t an adult, so I dug into the ground and hid, clutching the book.”
At her words about having nowhere to run and hiding by digging into the ground, Angelina’s heart sank.
In her occasional nightmares, when chased by monsters with nowhere to run, she would dig into the ground and hide.
Suppressing the fear that dominated her entire body and staying completely still without even breathing, going against the instinct to run away – she knew well because she had experienced it.
A fragmentary piece of memory.
That time, which now returns as nightmares.
She had no memory of how she got there or how she escaped.
She only remembered being abandoned in what was practically a monster field, without a single safe corner, desperately hiding from the monsters.
It was a terrible memory, yet strangely it wouldn’t fade away – clear yet hazy at the same time.
There was another peculiar aspect to that memory.
While hiding, she had endlessly waited for someone. Even while thinking death might be better, she had waited for something.
What she had waited for changed every time she had the nightmare, so she no longer remembered what she had really been thinking then.
Only the trembling in that fear remained vividly in her mind, visiting her as different nightmares each time.
“Miss Flaubert, what’s wrong?”
Angelina snapped back to consciousness at the force shaking her shoulder.
She felt air rushing into her stiff lungs, as if she had been holding her breath.
“Haa……”
A trembling sigh escaped.
“What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?”
Blake rummaged through his pockets for a while, but unable to find his handkerchief, he pulled down his sleeve to wipe the sweat from her forehead.
It was the moment when Angelina looked up and met his bewildered face.
‘…staying. I’ll be back soon.’
A small voice flashed through her mind.
“…!”
That voice.
The same little boy’s voice she had heard in the Magic Tower and at the Flaubert villa.
When that voice she had been so desperately trying to hear again finally came, Angelina hastily grabbed Blake’s hand.
Discussion
0 CommentsReactions
No comments yet.