Ash drifted down like snow, yet far darker and deader than snow.
A fair hand reached out from the carriage and caught a few strands of ash. The pale fingertips formed a stark contrast with the gray, ruined dust, yet somehow gave rise to a strange beauty.
"How beautiful..."
At least, to the owner of that fair hand, this destroyed city was far more beautiful than it had been in its prosperity.
"What a pity. The Goddess would not like such a view."
With a wave of her hand, the Judgment Archbishop brushed the ash away and calmly returned inside the carriage.
There, the leader of the Church, the person closest to the Goddess, was silently watching her.
Anger? Doubt? Disbelief?
None of them.
What the Judgment Archbishop saw was an equally calm gaze, so calm it almost made one feel there was nothing in those eyes at all, only warm yet indifferent Holy Light.
"Your Holiness, you’ve arrived."
The Judgment Archbishop bowed her head with a smile. "You set out personally faster than I imagined."
"The Goddess’s children are weeping. How could I possibly ignore them?"
Candlelight flickered inside the carriage. The sacred light did not spread outward, yet still illuminated the ruins and wreckage in the distance. Pope Hezekiah’s tone was just as gentle, without the slightest trace of emotion.
"It seems I came too late. Even the weeping is gone."
"After all, it was already decided long ago."
The Judgment Archbishop said, "Even Your Holiness cannot change a result that has already become established fact, can you?"
"I cannot."
Hezekiah admitted it calmly.
"Human strength is sometimes this insignificant. The thing one wants to save is clearly right before one’s eyes, yet one can do nothing. Even the Pope, who bears responsibility for humanity’s continuation, is still this weak before a fate that is truly vast."
"I never imagined... that one day I would hear Your Holiness say such words."
A trace of astonishment flashed through the Judgment Archbishop’s eyes. She studied that aged face, which seemed not to have changed for centuries, from the very distant beginning of her memories.
Before, she had never dared be so presumptuous. Instead, only after doing that sort of thing did she truly look at that face for the first time, and finally see something hidden even deeper.
"Your Holiness... are you actually angry? Are you... pitying them?" the Judgment Archbishop asked in surprise.
"Pity? No. Pity is the Goddess’s duty. As Pope, I never speak of pity, nor do I possess pity."
A trace of coldness finally appeared in Hezekiah’s voice, yet the meaning expressed by that coldness instead left the Judgment Archbishop somewhat unable to grasp it.
She had some guesses, guesses that did not quite match her consistent impression of this Pope, yet she did not dare confirm them.
With such blazing divine majesty before her, with endless radiance reflected upon her, how could she truly see clearly?
"Is that so? As expected of Your Holiness." The Judgment Archbishop no longer dared peer into that scorching radiance and quietly lowered her eyes.
"Then what about you? What do you feel about the innocent people who died in this city?" Hezekiah asked in return.
"Feel? Your Holiness, do you want to hear the truth?"
"Since I came today, naturally, what I want to hear is the truth."
"The truth is..."
The Judgment Archbishop paused.
"I feel nothing."
"..."
Hezekiah said nothing. He merely stared silently at the Judgment Archbishop, those eyes filled with the dignity of Holy Light seeming as if they would see through her very soul.
"That is the truth, Your Holiness. I feel nothing."
The Judgment Archbishop propped her cheek on one hand and looked out the window again.
Ash was still drifting down, gradually covering the shattered remains.
A mighty city with several million people had become a dead land in the blink of an eye. No matter when, it would be enough to shake a person’s soul.
But the Judgment Archbishop admired the scene, simply admiring that deathly beauty, without the slightest ripple appearing in her eyes.
She did not know why His Holiness was so calm, but her own calm... was exactly as she had said. She simply felt nothing.
Toward all of it, she felt nothing at all.
Like a complete and utter bystander.
"Your Holiness, how long have I sat in the position of Judgment Archbishop?"
"One hundred thirty-one years."
"Yes. One hundred thirty-one years."
The Judgment Archbishop sighed.
"In truth, many outsiders, and even people within the Church, all think the Judgment Archbishop is a very young archbishop, because when she became an archbishop, she truly was very young. She even broke the Church’s record of a thousand years. The youngest archbishop in history, and the most special Judgment Archbishop at that."
"But... even I have already remained in this position for one hundred thirty-one years. That is several generations for ordinary people. The rise and fall of a small border country. And I, too, went from the youngest archbishop everyone looked down on most to the strongest and most feared Judgment Archbishop."
"One hundred thirty-one years. Thinking about it now, it truly has been long."
"Yes. Very long."
Time seemed to flow backward. In her words, Hezekiah, too, seemed to recall what the Judgment Archbishop before him had looked like when she was young.
She had been a lovely child.
Lively, cheerful, hating evil as though it were her personal enemy, gifted with exceptional talent.
From the moment she was born, she seemed to have received all the Goddess’s favor. Her affinity for Holy Light, even compared with the current Saintess, was not the slightest bit inferior. In talent as a warrior and in magic, she was even slightly superior.
The entire Church had treated her as a child of God and spared no effort in raising her. She had also completely lived up to the Church’s expectations. Under the personal teaching of the previous Judgment Archbishop... that is, the current Holy Lord of Salvation, Kaya Gaius, she had grown at a speed that astonished everyone.
And yet, before the young bird had learned to fly, she suffered a tremendous blow that should never have belonged to her, all because of fate’s joke.
That turmoil, whose wounds the Church had still not fully healed from even now, completely rewrote her future. The poison called rebellion had sunk deep into the Church’s bones to this day, difficult to remove completely.
Before that, she had possessed a future brighter than anyone’s. The Five Great Temples, the Nine Great Churches, the Supreme Engine, even the position of the next Saintess... she could have walked proudly into any place of light. The Pope himself had stated clearly that she was innocent and severed her from that shameful traitor.
But in the end, she still chose to support the Temple of Judgment with her frail body, the temple that had suffered the worst damage in that turmoil and was already on the verge of collapse.
Some said she was atoning for Kaya Gaius’s sins.
Some said she had been dazzled by the title of archbishop.
Others said that, like Kaya Gaius, she was a demon born to love blood and slaughter, someone destined to be abandoned by the Goddess.
But no matter which version it was, everyone agreed on one thing.
Her choice at the time had been extremely foolish.
Yet she still made it.
She became the youngest archbishop.
And over the course of a century, she restored that crumbling Temple of Judgment to the fearsome name it once held.
Only now, people remembered her fame, her strength, her terror, yet had forgotten...
That the person she had once been had trembled all over when she passed judgment upon her first sinner.
"Your Holiness, in these one hundred thirty-one years, how many people do you think I have killed?"
The Judgment Archbishop spread her five fingers, admiring her own hand.
It was a fair, clean hand without any trace of time.
The hand was beautiful. Her nails, dyed a vivid red, were even more beautiful.
Yet that very beautiful hand had been stained with the blood of countless people. Even those red nails were because too much blood had soaked them, because the bloodstains in the gaps of her nails could no longer be fully washed away, and so she had simply dyed them an even brighter red.
"Enemies. Friends. Traitors. Heretics. The guilty. The resentfully guilty. Those who disrespected the gods. Those who blindly worshiped the gods... all kinds of people."
"Over these one hundred thirty-one years, I have killed too many, too many, far too many people. So many I can no longer count them. So many I have become completely numb."
"Your Holiness, do you know? During the first period after I became Judgment Archbishop, I had nightmares every single night. The moment I closed my eyes, I saw the suffering faces of those who died by my hand."
"They grabbed my feet, their faces streaming with blood, questioning me why I killed them. Their corpses piled into mountains. Their blood gathered into seas. Their wails completely drowned out the Goddess’s soft whispers."
"But now... I have not dreamed in a very long time, let alone dreamed of those people."
"No. Even if I did dream of them, what would it matter? I stopped hiding under the covers and crying like the old me long ago. If they question me, curse me, spit on me, then I will kill them again. Once, twice, three times, until even their souls can no longer wail."
The Judgment Archbishop lowered her hands and looked at Hezekiah again.
"So, Your Holiness, regarding the question you asked just now, my answer is... I feel nothing. Not only toward this city, and not only toward the several million people in this city. Even if everyone in the entire world died now, I might still feel nothing at all."
"I would not grieve. I would not suffer. I would not blame myself... because I have already experienced those emotions too many times. So many that I have completely lost them."
A wind blew past, like someone’s sob, only to be mercilessly scattered by the Judgment Archbishop.
She raised her head and met Hezekiah’s gaze.
"...So, Vanessa, in the end, you still chose to betray the Church?" Hezekiah asked after a long silence.
"Vanessa... I have not heard that gentle name in a very long time. Not since I became the Judgment Archbishop."
The Judgment Archbishop shook her head.
"No, Your Holiness. Although I have said so much, I have never once thought of betraying the Church or betraying the Goddess. I still love the Church, still believe in the Goddess, and pray that after death, I may return to the Goddess’s embrace. From that moment one hundred thirty years ago onward, I have never regretted my choice. I am still proud of my identity as the Judgment Archbishop."
The Judgment Archbishop pressed a hand to her chest, carefully feeling that faint emotion.
"Yes. Proud."
"But your actions are unquestionably betrayal."
Hezekiah said, "You have walked onto the same road as your teacher."
"I have never thought of betrayal. I merely..."
She looked into the distance.
"Want to see whether my teacher was right after all."
"Why?"
"One hundred thirty-one years ago."
The Judgment Archbishop pondered for a long while, then slowly began, "Before my teacher raised his rebellion, he once came to find me, told me that laughable theory of his, and asked me to leave with him."
"You refused."
Hezekiah said, "You were one of those who reported him. If not for you, the Church would have suffered even greater losses."
"Yes. I refused. Back then, I thought my teacher must have gone mad. He was a believer of the Goddess. How could he have such terrifying thoughts? That was practically blasphemy against the Church, blasphemy against the Goddess. But..."
The Judgment Archbishop turned back. What was reflected in her eyes was not the ruined scene outside, but emptiness.
"When I began to feel that the deaths of all living beings in this world were not such a serious matter, I suddenly discovered... my teacher’s theory was not so wrong after all."
