And Thus… It All Comes to an End - Chapter 34

One by one, I descended the stairs leading to the dungeon.

The tips of my fingers registered the coldness of the stone walls. At that sensation, my memories throbbed.

Ah, it’s so similar—this coldness. The stairs leading to the punishment room in the orphanage where I grew up were just like this: damp, dark, and suffocating.

The weight of those memories coiled around my ankles, causing my pace to falter slightly.

Then, past the final step, I found her—Lady Sara, curled into herself. In the shadows, she clutched the hem of her dress, her shoulders trembling. Sensing my footsteps, she slowly lifted her head.

“…It’s you. Anne, wasn’t it?”

Her lips twitched as she forced a strained smile.

“Heh… what is it? Did you come to enjoy the show? No, that’s not it. You’ve been laughing inside this whole time, haven’t you? Thinking, ‘Look at that pathetic fake.’ Thinking I’m a fool. Because you are the real one.”

There was still a lingering trace of her former haughtiness in her voice. But it was shaking. As she hugged her knees, only her eyes flashed with a frantic light.

“If you had the crest, why did you hide it?! You’re an ‘Apostle of the Goddess’ too, so why were you content to degrade yourself as a common maid? I don’t understand you!”

I quietly removed my glove. In the dim light, the crest engraved on the back of my hand was faintly visible.

“Say something!”

Her scream struck the stone walls, echoing before fading into nothingness. I steadied my breath and searched carefully for the right words.

“I was thinking about the difference between you and me.”

Lady Sara stood up unsteadily. I couldn’t tell if the look in her eyes was rage or despair. The chill of the dungeon flowed between us.

“Hah! You don’t even need to think about it.”

Her spitting voice trembled slightly.

“It’s that. That crest. Whether one is real or a fake, that is the great difference.”

Her gaze pierced my hand. I slowly lowered my arm and looked down at the crest once more.

“…In the place where this crest sits, when I was small, there were marks that looked as if I had rubbed the skin until it bled. Only one of my hands was terribly rough and covered in scars.”

With every word I spun, a small pain flickered in my chest. There is no trace of it now. Lady Emilia healed it with her magic.

Lady Sara’s eyebrows twitched ever so slightly.

“I have no memory of it, but I heard from the Headmaster that I was abandoned in front of the orphanage with cloth wrapped tightly around my hand.”

Lady Sara frowned, looking suspicious.

“What about your parents? Why were you abandoned? If a child had the Goddess’s crest, wouldn’t they usually be overjoyed?”

I shook my head slowly.

“Even if people know the legends of the Apostle, no one actually knows the shape of the crest. To a mere commoner, it must have looked like a strange blemish—a ghastly, ominous pattern.”

I let out a quiet breath.

“That is likely why they tried to erase it. But even when the skin pulled tight as it tried to heal, this crest surfaced over it again, like a branding iron. Over and over. So, they became afraid, and they left me at the orphanage. Most likely.”

“Why… if they had taken you to the Temple, they would have known immediately,” Lady Sara said, her voice like a sigh.

“True. But they were likely not very devout believers.”

The gears only have to slip a tiny bit for a person to fall easily into misfortune. Through someone’s negligence, or someone’s ignorance. And just like that, a single destiny is driven mad.

“That is why I hid it. All this time.”

I gently touched the crest, awakening old pains. Not even the adults at the orphanage had noticed this pattern.

“I wore long-sleeved clothes and kept my hands dirty… so that I wouldn’t lose anything else. I thought that if people found out, they would look at me with disgust again.”

As I spoke the words, cold memories resurfaced.

“But when I met Lady Luciana, for the first time, I was able to think even if only a little that ‘this mark is not a curse’.”

I closed my eyes. Behind my eyelids, her gentle smile appeared. In the silence, only the sound of our breathing drifted.

“—How did you meet her?”

Lady Sara asked in a flat voice as she leaned her back against the cold wall.

“That day, I was sitting in the corner of a room at the orphanage, just as I always did.”

As I spoke, the landscape of a distant memory slowly came to light.

“I was making myself invisible, simply praying for the day to end quickly. That was how I spent my time back then.”

A dim room. Damp blankets. The sound of children’s laughter echoing from outside.

“That was when the door opened. A light so dazzling poured in that I reflexively lowered my eyes.”

The light of that day remains, even in my memory, a searing, brilliant white.