CHAPTER 63……………………………………………………
With the event schedule moved up by more than a week, the priests were exhausted even on the day of the ceremony.
“This lacks dignity! Too flashy is no good, too plain is no good either!”
At the critique of a senior priest, a trainee priest glanced around nervously.
“But yesterday we thought this was fine…”
“Don’t argue—just move!”
The trainee and junior priests had to tiptoe around the senior priest’s hysterical screams for a long time, until they heard that the royal family had departed.
“Ugh…”
Finally free from the shrill voice, a junior priest muttered curses under his breath as he watched the senior priest walk away. A fellow priest beside him covered his mouth with a finger, scanning the surroundings.
“Hold it in, hold it in.”
He quickly pulled the junior priest along and merged into the group of priests who had come to greet the royals.
“Why are they like that?”
“Because of that. The rumors.”
The junior priest, still fuming, asked with curiosity:
“Is it true? Did the Hero really die?”
His companion checked several times to make sure no one was eavesdropping before speaking.
“From what the higher-ups said, he’s been missing for quite some time.”
The junior priest’s eyes widened.
“What? Then why didn’t we know until now?”
His colleague clicked his tongue.
“Of course they hid it. Donations apparently plummeted as soon as the rumor spread.”
A drop in donations meant that the portion reaching lower-ranking priests would also shrink.
The junior priest asked with a worried look:
“…Do you think he’s really dead?”
The colleague shook his head.
“They said it was touch-and-go from the start.”
But his next words practically confirmed the rumor, leaving the junior priest flustered.
“So what happens now?”
“There’s the Saintess. Things should work out somehow, right?”
The mention of the Saintess lit a hopeful expression on the junior priest’s face. In fact, wasn’t the Saintess more revered than the Hero? Feeling a bit more at ease, he brought up another worry.
“What about the demons…?”
For him, whose family lived in the imperial capital, this was irrelevant, but in other regions, the situation was different.
Following the temple’s teachings to care for the weak, he asked cautiously—but it wasn’t a matter he cared about much, and neither did his fellow priest.
“Don’t worry. The Hero never did this alone. It’ll work out somehow.”
“I guess so?”
“Yeah. It’s not our business anyway.”
Once reminded that affairs outside the capital were not their concern, the junior priest’s face relaxed again.
Just then, the commotion ahead signaled that the royal family was arriving.
The priests straightened their robes and aligned themselves. With faint smiles, they awaited the guests—completely transforming from the complaints and gossip that had filled the air moments ago.
“Form ranks!”
As senior priests appeared and lightly radiated their sacred aura, a serene and holy atmosphere unique to the temple settled over the commoners and some nobles who always praised it.
The timing was perfect. The royal carriages entered the temple, and from the most elaborate one emerged the Emperor.
Suddenly, the junior priests who had cursed their superiors and the senior priests who had insulted the juniors all united as one.
No, the temple could never lose to the royal family.
With shared resolve, the priests greeted the royals with gracious smiles.
From the moment they had ridden in the carriage, Jeremiah had felt queasy and uneasy. Standing for the long prayers sent her heart racing.
Still, she endured it, digging her nails into her palms.
Countless eyes watched them, and beneath those gentle faces, everyone was calculating what would come next.
‘Where will the pendulum of power swing from here?’
The ceremony was meant to give thanks for divine protection and to receive blessings for the future. Yet no one genuinely prayed.
‘Maybe someone actually will pray.’
What she felt now, however, was nothing but greedy, covetous stares.
- “Doesn’t the Emperor look unusually well?”
- “And the Empress? Look at that elaborate outfit.”
- “The Princess…”
- “Maybe she’s a bit thin because she heard about her fiancé’s death.”
- “Nonsense, she looks the same.”
- “Probably just pretending to be sick.”
- “Well, like father, like daughter.”
- “Power is all that matters.”
The priests, who outwardly appeared friendly, remained silent. Yet strangely, it felt as if their mouths opened and those words spilled out.
The hallucinations cascaded beside her ears like a waterfall. Jeremiah blinked, focusing her eyes and biting her tongue, but nothing improved. Her body strained toward its limit, still barely past the halfway point of exhaustion.
Then, her mother, standing ahead, looked back at her.
“Jeremiah, are you all right?”
Ah. The auditory hallucinations vanished. Jeremiah straightened immediately and replied:
“…I’m fine.”
Her voice cracked and trembled from the tension in her throat, which she rubbed lightly with her hand.
Despite seeing all this, her mother merely nodded, a reminder not to show weakness rather than worry.
Her father, who must have heard the exchange, didn’t even glance at her.
Impossible, yet a cold wind seemed to blow through her chest.
‘Pathetic… what did I expect?’
Something inside her mocked her mercilessly:
- “So naive. Still so innocent.”
- “That’s why you’re still like this.”
- “That’s why your father looks at you that way.”
- “Way too sentimental.”
- “Fragile to the core.”
- “Keep it up, and you’ll be abandoned.”
- “Ha! You’ll be left behind!”
Jeremiah ignored the noisy voices circling beside her, focusing solely on her identity as the ‘Princess.’
Her father’s attention was only on her, and her mother’s on nothing.
Accustomed as she was, her weakened state made everything hit harder than usual.
“This feels strange.”
Was it because of the dream she had recently had? Beyond hallucinations, it felt like she could see visions.
A prim, stubborn-looking cousin, the same age as her, looked at Jeremiah curiously, exuding the air of someone fully loved.
“Why are you so cautious around your parents?”
Why cautious? Because I’m different from you. I’m not loved like you!
“What did I do wrong? Sorry, I won’t talk about it anymore. Want to go out to the garden? We brought some beautiful flowers recently.”
Even in the face of Jeremiah’s sharp response, the cousin apologized calmly. That composure was enviable.
So when that cousin lost everything, Jeremiah had told them: now you’ll have to be cautious like me; your shine will fade too.
And then the cousin disappeared. No trace left behind—not even a body.
“Ah.”
No wonder she had felt so foul these past few days.
It was a premonition that the Hero’s end would be like Astria’s. Different life and upbringing, but the same outcome.
No one cared for the death of a person. Everyone was only concerned with how to use that death to their advantage.
And like Astria, the Hero too would eventually be forgotten.
Jeremiah let out a bitter laugh and straightened her posture, staring at Astria, still standing before her.
She discarded the pretence of prayer, clasped her hands, and for the first time in a long while, genuinely prayed for Astria.
Though she hadn’t liked her cousin, if it helped cast her out, she could pray sincerely.
When she opened her eyes again, the surroundings were calm, and Astria was gone.
Yet Jeremiah remained, unmoving, hands clasped, until the ceremony concluded.
As the wide chimes rang, the woman with golden eyes remembered the first day she saw the child.
‘…No name.’
She had sensed the latent power within the frail child and felt exhilaration. Seizing the child, she executed her plans seamlessly.
How to use the child’s power, how to raise the one who would become the Hero, how to act toward the child—all meticulously planned.
She gave the child a name and honed the child’s future. That child became the Hero, Lumiere.
As in the past, Lumiere’s future was predetermined.
‘But nothing ever goes entirely as planned.’
She had prepared for Lumiere’s disappearance, but never expected it to happen so soon. It was too early.
Yet the event had occurred, and if it couldn’t be undone, a new plan was needed.
“Saintess.”
The woman didn’t even glance at the priest bowing deeply behind her.
“Only the results.”
She had no patience for excuses. Moreover, hearing the voices of the incapable irritated her.
‘Should I scrap the lower-ranking ones while drafting a new plan?’
The priest inhaled sharply at her cold tone and spoke with a shaky voice:
“Still no trace at all.”
Even after exhaustive inquiries, the result was the same.
“And those… what did they say?”
Her expression neutral, her tone casual, but the contempt and scorn in the word “those” revealed her true feeling.
Those.
The term for the Hero’s companions, laced with derision and mockery.
