“Deus nobiscum est (God is with us),” Veronica whispered as she clasped the gnarled hand of an elderly man whose face was ravaged by festering sores.
The crow’s feet around his ancient eyes quickly gathered tiny teardrops of reverence, glistening like morning dew.
The prayer gathering in the square was merely the continuation of her daily ritual from the past week. All she needed to do was move among the citizens, grasp their outstretched hands or place her palm upon their bowed heads, then ascend the elevated platform and perform the pretense of prayer. It felt strange without Oscar and Joachim flanking her sides, but no one seemed troubled by the two knights’ brief absence. There were plenty of other guards surrounding her.
“Do you truly believe that?” a voice rasped. “Do you honestly believe He watches over us?”
The question came from a painfully thin woman standing beside the old man. Veronica glanced quizzically at the figure shrouded in a midnight-black robe. It wasn’t the woman’s words that caught her attention, but the hauntingly familiar cadence of her voice.
She sounds familiar, but who is she?
At that moment, the woman lunged forward, bony fingers seizing Veronica’s arm and yanking her close.
“Hasn’t God already forsaken humanity?” she hissed. “Abandoned us to our suffering?”
Crimson eyes gleamed from within the hood, several strands of once-lustrous golden hair falling limply around a gaunt face.
Veronica’s eyes widened in horror. “Impossible,” she gasped. “How can you still…”
It was Johanna, the princess who had assassinated the emperor at the royal banquet just one week prior.
But an entire week had passed since then, so what is she doing here?
“How am I still alive, you mean?” Johanna’s lowered voice resembled the venomous hissing of a serpent. “Don’t pretend ignorance. Of all people, you should know precisely what sustains me the best.”
Johanna must have shared a bed with someone from the nobility or imperial family. However, the horrifying truth was that, unlike Veronica, who had remained mostly untransformed, the face beneath Johanna’s robe had undergone a grotesque metamorphosis.
“Tell me your secret,” Johanna demanded, her words tumbling out in desperate, frantic whispers. “Why am I still this… this abomination, no matter how much holy power I devour? Why isn’t my corruption complete like yours? What divine favor do you possess that I lack?”
Her face, once the pride of the empire, was now skeletal and hollow, with no trace of her former ethereal beauty. Her once-magnificent hair hung like brittle straw around her ravaged features. As that nightmarish visage drew closer, Veronica instinctively recoiled with a strangled cry, shoving the princess away.
As the crowd’s attention converged on them, Johanna’s eyes gleamed with feverish intensity. She rose abruptly to her feet and cast aside her concealing robe with a dramatic flourish. It seemed she intended to force Veronica’s hand through a different strategy.
“Listen well, citizens of Karta!” she proclaimed, her voice ringing across the square. “I am the Daughter of the Golden Sea, Princess Johanna von Kaisenmier! This woman before you is not the beacon of hope the church proclaims! She is the Devil’s own daughter who corrupted me and orchestrated the assassination of His Imperial Majesty! If you don’t stone her to death where she stands, this calamity will never end!”
She had clearly expected the citizens to rally to her cause once she revealed her royal identity and displayed her legendary golden tresses. However, her appearance had transformed so drastically that even those who had glimpsed the princess from afar shook their heads in disbelief. Their beloved princess had been a vision of perfection with honey-gold hair and sapphire eyes that sparkled like the deepest ocean. Unfortunately for Johanna, Joachim—who would have recognized her despite her altered state—was absent from Veronica’s side on this fateful day.
“I swear upon my royal blood to reward those who heed my command with riches beyond imagination!” Growing increasingly desperate, Johanna’s face contorted with rage as she shouted her promises to the skeptical crowd.
The citizens exchanged glances, their murmurs far from what the fallen princess had expected.
“What nonsense is she spewing?”
“She claims to be Princess Johanna, and she says the emperor was assassinated.”
“Just another madwoman touched by the corruption…”
“Bloody hell, look here. If fortunes could be made just by making wild claims, I’d have abandoned my shoeshine stand years ago.”
Ripples of mocking laughter erupted through the gathering.
“The Daughter of the Golden Sea? What delusional ravings.”
Johanna’s face flushed crimson with fury at this contempt—a sensation she had never before experienced in her privileged existence. Her eyes darted wildly around the crowd in confusion before she stomped her foot violently against the cobblestones, her composure shattering completely.
“You worthless, ignorant peasants!” she shrieked. “If you don’t obey me this instant, I will ensure every soul at this gathering meets a terrible end! I’ll have you all rounded up and burned at the stake by His Majesty’s—”
In her frenzied state, Johanna habitually began invoking the emperor’s authority before freezing mid-sentence. Revulsion and crushing despair simultaneously washed over her emaciated features as reality crashed down upon her.
Veronica watched the unfolding tragedy with a strange, hollow feeling in her chest. The pale face trembling under the crowd’s hostile gaze eerily mirrored her own past experiences. Though the circumstances were entirely different from her ordeal in the imperial dueling arena, something about Johanna’s desperate isolation struck a painful chord within her.
“What are you all whispering about?” Johanna snarled, her voice rising to a fevered pitch. “How dare you judge me! I, who was born with divine purpose, blessed with the noblest bloodline in the empire!”
At that moment, she unleashed an inhuman scream and fixed her burning gaze on a man who had been snickering at her claims. Veronica sensed the air ripple with malevolent power, and before anyone could intervene, the man’s head violently exploded in a shower of crimson. The woman standing beside him, drenched in blood and fragments of flesh, released a soul-shattering scream while the headless corpse crumpled lifelessly into the horrified crowd.
Veronica stepped forward, the blood draining from her face. “Stop it! If you keep doing this—”
“A witch!” someone screamed, cutting off Veronica’s warning. “A servant of the Bahamuts has infiltrated our holy city to destroy our blessed Saint!”
The next moment, a jagged stone emerged from the crowd and struck Johanna’s temple with brutal force. When Johanna, momentarily stunned, raised her head and surveyed the assembly with wild, bloodshot eyes, the terrified citizens scrambled backward.
Veronica instinctively attempted to control the Bahamut’s power surging within Princess Johanna, intending to prevent further bloodshed. The tragic mistake was that she had misjudged who needed protection in that critical moment. Since it was one against many, she should have controlled the crowd, not the one.
When no further attacks came from Johanna, the citizens began hurling stones at the fallen princess with savage abandon, as if seized by a collective madness.
“Quickly, we must destroy her before she obliterates us all!”
“Kill the witch! Crush her!”
The frenzied crowd surged forward like a tidal wave while the soldiers desperately formed a protective barrier around Veronica, blocking her view of the horrific scene unfolding before her.
No matter how desperately she shouted for them to stop, her pleas were swallowed by the roar of the mob. The people were consumed by blind panic after witnessing the gruesome murder. Their emotions, already heightened by the fervor of tearful prayers, had transformed into something darker—a primal, murderous rage. They believed that if they didn’t destroy Johanna immediately, they would all perish as she had threatened.
Veronica couldn’t believe that those same gentle souls who had wept with gratitude moments earlier could transform so rapidly into a bloodthirsty horde. Everything happened in the span of heartbeats, leaving her in a state of stunned disbelief.
A viscous pool of crimson spread in an ever-widening circle beneath the feet of the swarming mob. Seeing the bloody footprints staining the cobblestones, Veronica covered her mouth as violent nausea overwhelmed her. The sickening sensation wouldn’t subside.
The princess who had once commanded Kaisenmier’s adoration met her grisly end at the hands of Kaisenmier’s own people.
They said those of noble lineage had “blue blood,” but in death’s final embrace, all blood ran in the same crimson hue—a stark reminder that no human, regardless of station, could escape their ultimate fate.
Veronica closed her eyes and offered a silent, fervent prayer that with this brutal sacrifice, Johanna had paid the full price for all her wicked deeds.