“By the way, how did you recover the helmet?” she asked while lying languidly beside him, her body still humming with aftershocks of pleasure.
The damp cloth in his hand brushed tenderly below her navel. Despite the water shortage plaguing the city, Leon insisted on using precious bottled water to cleanse her—even though the sleeping draught must be taking effect by now, making his movements increasingly sluggish.
“I asked the woman who delivered your letter.”
“Ah, Johanna’s handmaiden?”
Leon nodded and set aside the cloth, his movements becoming less coordinated. Seeing him lie down immediately beside her, she noted how the powerful lines of his face were softening with encroaching sleep. In truth, Veronica had also spent an exhausting day, but knowing that tonight was their final hours together, any trace of sleepiness had long since vanished from her vigilant mind.
“Am I permitted to feel jealous?” she asked.
“What?”
“You seem to bristle with jealousy when I so much as breathe near another man.”
When she sighed dramatically, he managed a drowsy chuckle and pulled her into his arms.
“Feel free to be jealous,” he murmured against her hair, “but save it for tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow…?” she echoed, her heart constricting. “Why? Are you surrendering to sleep already?”
“Mmm,” he confirmed, his eyelids growing heavier by the second.
But for them, there would be no tomorrow. Whatever they did tonight—be it sharing wine, feeling jealousy, or making love—today was their final chapter together. Her throat tightened painfully, but Veronica obediently nodded against his chest. Tonight had to appear ordinary, like any other night they’d shared. It couldn’t seem suspicious or special in any way that might alert him to her plans.
“Okay. I will,” she whispered.
When Veronica fell silent, the world quickly descended into hushed stillness. Listening to the rhythmic breathing beside her ear, she quietly synchronized her own breath to his, treasuring these final moments.
I should have died that day in the flames, but I’ve survived all this time because you lent me your breath. Now it’s time to return what I’ve taken.
“Leon,” she whispered to the sleeping knight. “Thank you for saving me that day.”
There was still nothing but the sound of his deep, even breathing.
“You may not realize it, but I changed quite a lot since that day. For the first time in my life, I felt grateful to have been born. Now I understand how to help others, how to care for something beyond myself. Perhaps I truly was reborn from those ashes.”
As expected, no answer came from the slumbering knight. In the profound silence of their final night, Veronica parted her lips to whisper her last confession—words that were solely for him, a confession that no other soul would ever hear.
Her lips formed the words as crystalline tears sparkled in the moonlight before trailing down her cheeks.
Having surrendered her heart completely, her soul felt hollow and empty. How did ordinary people endure this vast emptiness and still find the courage to face each dawn?
✦ ✦ ✦
Whenever she stepped onto the stage to dance, she was reminded of the fact that life was something she had to face alone, in the end.
Focus, Veronica, she’d tell herself, no one else can do this for you. They might be able to offer encouragement from the sidelines, but in the end, you alone must command your limbs and force your body to move with precision.
That same crushing solitude enveloped her now as she faced what lay ahead.
There was no escaping destiny’s call.
“Sleep well until morning,” she whispered, “and dream of pleasant things.”
Veronica prayed with clasped hands at Leon’s bedside before rising and taking the divine sword. Before quietly closing the door, she allowed herself one final glimpse through the narrow opening at the man who had fallen into a deep slumber for the first time in ages.
With a practiced flick, she struck flint against steel to light a lamp and moved swiftly through the shadowed corridors and down the winding stairs. The chapel on the first floor glowed with candlelight, and four knights standing vigil raised their heads at the whisper of her footsteps. Veronica recognized one face among them and her lips parted in surprise.
“Oscar?”
The man, looking hauntingly gaunt compared to her memory, silently brought over the reins. The other knights stood at rigid attention, their eyes fixed forward as though she were invisible.
“Your complexion… are you all right?” she asked, concerned.
“I’ve received instructions from the vice commander,” he replied, his words clipped and cold. “I’ll escort you to the foot of the Blasen Mountains so you won’t be delayed leaving the city.”
Veronica froze at his frigid tone. There was an unsettling aura emanating from the man as he secured the saddle—something that she couldn’t quite name. She recalled his silhouette on the stairs yesterday, rushing up the stairs to avoid her. Anxiety crept around her feet like tendrils of mist.
Why is he avoiding my gaze? Why has his demeanor transformed so completely?
“Oscar,” she murmured as he helped her mount the horse, immediately withdrawing his hands as though her touch burned him. “Did you… see?”
Oscar froze, foot hovering above the stirrup, his body suddenly rigid as carved stone. She hadn’t even specified what he might have witnessed.
He mounted behind her as if nothing had happened, but his body betrayed him—trembling like a leaf in autumn wind. His hands, white-knuckled on the reins, spoke volumes.
In the eerie silence that followed, Veronica suddenly felt her mind go blank, a canvas wiped clean by horrific realization.
He definitely saw it. Oscar witnessed the Pope’s corpse. Then the person who set the fire was…
Just then, the cathedral door creaked open unexpectedly, letting in a sliver of dawn light, and the horse walked through with rhythmic hoofbeats. A bloodless whisper brushed past her ear.
“He was my father.”
There was a dull thud behind her—she couldn’t distinguish if it was the door closing or the sound of her heart plummeting to the stone below.
“But I also know… that he wronged you,” Oscar continued, his voice hollow. “Probably that day as well.”
Suddenly, the memory of that day crystallized in her mind: bumping into someone on the stairs, emerging to see black smoke billowing from the window, then Leon’s face—knowing, grim, unsurprised. What crucial piece had she missed that Leon had understood? What dark truth had driven a devout knight to commit the sacrilege of burning the Pope’s mortal remains?
“I had no choice,” Oscar whispered. “I am… the only human still alive who heard your prophecy.”
The dawn air caressed her face with icy fingers. Veronica gazed across the desolate plaza. The Bahamuts passing before them turned their heads one by one, sensing her presence. Black hair had begun to sprout on their inhuman forms, but they all still wore identical faces—empty and hungry. For now, at least.
“The small sword shall be stolen,” Oscar recited, voice trembling.
Veronica reflexively drew Genesis. The horse neighed fearfully and walked backward, hooves clattering against cobblestone.
“The Bahamut bearing God’s blade shall lay waste to Karta and strip away its glory.” Oscar’s voice quavered like a plucked string. He continued in a barely audible whisper, “When one receives the position of Pope, all earthly ties are severed, and one inherits the divine surname. Do you know what that surname is?”
A shiver of dread slithered down her spine like ice water. In the next heartbeat, Veronica’s eyes widened as the terrible truth dawned on her.
“It’s Karta,” Oscar breathed. “The full name of His Holiness the 222nd Pope, who departed this world two days ago, was Julio von Karta.”
The Bahamut bearing God’s blade shall lay waste to Karta and strip away its glory.
Goosebumps spread like creeping frost from the nape of her neck across her entire body.
The Karta to be destroyed might not have been the name of the city, but the Pope himself. If so, the Bahamut wielding the divine sword was… herself.
A Bahamut lunged at her from mere feet away. With one swift motion, she cleaved its head from its body with a sickening sound.
Oscar whispered from behind in a voice barely above a breath, “I know that God sent you. Go. Go and fulfill the divine will.”
With those final words, Oscar spurred the horse forward, and Veronica cut down every Bahamut that blocked her path, Genesis singing through the air with each swing.
Feverish dizziness from her sleepless night clouded her mind, her vision swimming with unshed tears. But she knew that the moisture streaming down her cheeks came from a profound sense of loss. She’d just realized that she’d lost the first friend she’d made in Karta.