No!
Veronica plummeted through the empty air, her terrified scream scattering into the wind.
As her body hung suspended for one terrible moment, raw terror crystallized into reality. I’m going to die. I’m falling to my death. After all my determination to reach this place… I don’t want to die like this!
A violent jerk arrested her fall, leaving her dangling precariously above the abyss. The mountain winds whipped around her as she forced her eyes open—suspended between heaven and earth.
Her tattered dress had snagged on a gnarled tree clinging to the cliff face. Twisting her head, she glimpsed the dizzying drop below that promised certain death. As she hung there, the sickening sound of fabric tearing thundered in her ears. Just before the dress could tear completely, survival instinct took over, and she lunged for a nearby branch, her fingers closing around rough bark.
She had thought herself exhausted beyond measure, but with death’s breath upon her face, strength surged from somewhere primal within her. She climbed with frantic determination, every muscle screaming in protest. By some mercy, a large cave opening yawned above the twisted tree. Veronica, who had barely managed to hook her trembling legs over the edge, gasped for breath before summoning her final reserves to drag herself into the cave.
She collapsed in an ungraceful heap, limbs splayed, chest heaving.
“I nearly… died just now,” she murmured, panting hard.
As those words left her lips, the absurdity struck her like a slap.
How utterly ridiculous—I came here seeking death, yet now I’m relieved to have escaped it.
Veronica lay motionless for a while, drained of all energy. She watched the rose-tinted twilight deepen into sapphire, turning her head just enough to witness the transformation.
What is Leon doing right now? Has he found proper food instead of that wretched oat porridge? Or is he sitting alone, cursing me for abandoning him?
As these thoughts drifted through her mind, the sweat cooling on her skin sent a shiver through her body. Veronica slowly pulled herself upright.
Night would claim the mountains soon. She might have no choice but to shelter here until dawn.
She peeled off her ruined dress, standing only in her chemise as she unsheathed Genesis. She wondered how the divine blade would move to point upward.
But to her surprise, the gently vibrating sword pointed directly into the darkness of the cave.
Veronica stared at the cave entrance, which resembled nothing so much as the maw of some ancient beast, her eyes wide with apprehension. Impenetrable darkness stretched before her, with only the mournful howling of wind echoing from within. She shuddered at the consuming darkness that seemed to promise no return, and a sudden gust from behind sent her hair dancing around her shoulders. Yet Genesis remained fixed, its blade pointing unwavering into the abyss.
“I suppose there’s no other way, then,” she muttered to herself, heaving a resigned sigh before squaring her shoulders.
The mountain air bit at her exposed skin. Suppressing another shiver, Veronica clutched the sacred sword and began her descent into mystery, tapping the blade before her like a blind woman’s cane, each metallic click echoing into the unknown.
Time lost all meaning in the darkness.
The cave system was vast beyond imagining, her footsteps echoing into distances she couldn’t fathom. Her sense of time dissolved completely, with only the occasional moonlight piercing through ceiling fissures suggesting that night had claimed the world above.
“How strange…”
Veronica, moving as if in a trance, halted where a perfect circle of silvery moonlight pooled on the stone floor.
A powerful sense of déjà vu washed over her, as if she had witnessed this exact scene before. More precisely… as if Genesis belonged right here, in this moonlit circle.
When she placed the divine blade in the center of the silvery pool, fragmented visions flashed through her mind.
The visions were of a Bahamut sprawled before her, its eerie mimicry of her movements—as well as the gleam of the divine sword entering her vision, and the memory of her fingers closing around its hilt.
Just as goosebumps rippled across her flesh, a distinct splash echoed from nearby. Startled, Veronica snatched up the sword, her knuckles white around the hilt.
Her heart hammered against her ribs as realization crashed over her.
This is it. The First Bahamut is here.
The rockfall that had nearly claimed her life and the miraculous snag of her dress—perhaps these were not mere coincidences, after all.
Her body trembled, but her mind felt clear. Holding her breath, Veronica crept toward the source of the watery sounds.
In a vast, luminescent azure lake, a humanoid figure glided through the waters with unnatural grace. It didn’t look like a monstrous Bahamut—it was unmistakably human in appearance.
Who is this? A captive? No, even if that were true, why would they swim so freely in these waters?
“Excuse me,” she called out, her voice echoing across the lake. “What are you doing there?”
After waiting with no response, she called out again. The figure in the center of the lake regarded her briefly before slipping beneath the surface. Initially, Veronica waited patiently, but when the swimmer failed to resurface long past what any human could endure, tendrils of worry coiled around her heart.
She cautiously approached the edge where the water lapped against the stone and tentatively dipped her foot into the water. In that instant, the surface erupted, and a woman’s head emerged mere inches from her feet. A scream tore from Veronica’s throat.
She stood paralyzed, unable to move a single muscle.
I understand now the true meaning of being frozen with terror—when you’re so utterly horrified that your lungs forget to breathe, and your heart forgets to beat.
This was exactly her state as she beheld the naked woman rising before her.
The creature wore human form, female without question.
“This… can’t be…”
The face grinning up at her was her own.
“No…”
With lightning speed, the doppelganger lunged forward, seizing Veronica’s ankles and dragging her violently into the depths. Plunging into the frigid waters, Veronica thrashed desperately, but the creature’s strength was overwhelming. The deeper they sank, the more her lungs burned for air. As she fought with fading strength, It positioned itself above her, skeletal fingers closing around her throat, forcing her downward.
As they spiraled toward the abyss, bubbles erupted from her nose and mouth. The searing pain in her chest ignited something deeper—memories of her lost week flooded back with crystalline clarity.
Veronica had awakened in that pitch-black cave, disoriented and alone. The divine sword standing nearby had gleamed with hypnotic allure—in retrospect, she understood that Genesis had been seeking a new wielder after losing its previous master. When Veronica’s fingers had closed around the hilt, white-hot agony had exploded in her throat.
The Bahamut, which had been mirroring her every movement like a grotesque shadow, had wrapped its fingers around her neck from behind. The act was calculated—terrifying her to the edge of oblivion without granting the mercy of death.
Veronica had twisted violently, kicking and clawing in desperate resistance. The creature’s intentions remained a mystery. If it had truly wanted her life, it could have taken it instantly. Instead, It had repeatedly brought her to the threshold of death before pulling her back. Then, as the solitary beam of moonlight illuminating the cave had vanished, plunging them into absolute darkness, Veronica had heard a haunting whisper.
It had been a sound like the mournful song of ancient whales, crying out: “God, God, God.”
Finally, the fragments aligned in her mind with terrible clarity—the obscured light, the pitch-black darkness, the mortal threat to the vessel housing divine essence…
It mirrored conditions in the wilderness two decades ago.
The sun had been veiled by an eclipse back then as well, and in that moment of perfect darkness, God had judged that the divine statue stood in peril.
The Bahamut had been attempting to extract the divine power from her mortal form by recreating those same sacred conditions—by manufacturing a false eclipse in this underground sanctuary.
Only she and It had been in that cave, and if the divine essence abandoned her endangered vessel, it had only one possible refuge.
They said that God possessed two eyes and opened His eye of mercy toward the weaker and more pitiful being.
Between the human and the Bahamut, why had the Almighty found the Bahamut more deserving of divine mercy than the woman who was being strangled by it?
That day, the Bahamut had claimed the divine essence for itself. Humanity had been cast aside. Veronica’s amnesia was the stark evidence of that.
Of course, the Almighty could never have been truly deceived by that counterfeit eclipse—which meant that He had willingly surrendered Himself to the Bahamut.
Veronica gritted her teeth, jaw tightening.
Do You extend Your compassion even to this nameless abomination? If so, why send me here at all?
Her contemplation shattered the moment It unfurled its lips beneath the water’s surface. The smiling face visible through the rippling depths was her own, yet something about its expression was fundamentally wrong—a grotesque mimicry that sent ice cascading through her veins.
It seemed to sense she had regained her memories and released its choking grip on her throat. Then… it embraced her with possessive fervor.
Veronica sank to the lake’s depths, eyes widening in horror.
Why? Why is it doing this?
That was the only question swirling through her mind. Though she yearned to voice them, the watery prison prevented her lips from parting. It was then she realized she had been holding her breath far beyond human capacity—as if she had already begun transforming into something like the Bahamut. A fresh, more insidious terror swept through her.