The escorts at the head of the procession, seeing the rear being attacked, quickly turned their horses and rushed back. They probably didn’t even think that it was a trap for massacre.

A different group ran towards the nowempty front. The unarmed, unarmored crowd of priests were slaughtered in an instant by their swords as they charged on horses.

“E, Elicia, my lady. My soul…”

They were true servants of the gods.

All of them, in the moment of their death, hoped that Elicia, wellknown as the next Chief Priestess candidate, would pray for their souls to go to the Five Supreme Beings and Oder.

Those who had reluctantly played the part of false priests, longing for the original world, seemed to truly believe in the doctrine they had forced themselves to memorize daily to recite to the empire’s people, even in the moment of their death.

But Elicia herself was frozen, trembling at the tooshocking sight.

The question arose then.

‘Why aren’t they killing me?’

As her brethren, with whom she had grown up in the temple like brothers and sisters, fell one by one, and her priestly robe became vividly stained with red, none of the mob raised a sword against her.

Eventually, after all of the mob had died, those who came to her tightly bound her mouth so she couldn’t bite her tongue and threw her tightly bound into a large barrel.

‘No way…’

Though she thought it impossible, shortly after they sealed the lid, they pushed the barrel containing her off a cliff.

“Uuuuuuuu!”

With her mouth shut tight, Elicia screamed wildly at the sensation of falling through the air.

The rapids of the gorge were fast and wild.

As the wooden barrel bumped and scraped here and there, Elicia wished it would break.

So that sharp rocks and deep water might take her life instead.

That she was not the one who survived alone in the face of her siblings’ deaths.

“Uuh! Uuu!”

She couldn’t understand what had happened to her.

Or why it had to happen.

She felt like going mad.

But the real horror was yet to come.

When she came to her senses, Elicia was on the deck of a large ship. The sailors had fished out the barrel with her inside, rescuing her.

“Th, thank you.”

When she regained consciousness and drank a bowl of water they gave her, Elicia thought, ‘I’m alive.’

But soon after, she was dragged to the prison below deck.

After being trapped there for three days, when she finally got to breathe the outside air again,

“If you hadn’t acted so expensively, it would have been nice. Because of you, twentythree young and innocent priests lost their lives. Elicia.”
The Crown Prince’s vile face had to be confronted.

The imperial trash that had been obsessing over her while roaming the temple prayer meeting approached with a sniggering laugh.

“This insane bastard!”

When Elicia cursed, he seemed even more excited.

“It would be nice to just yield.”

Then Mariella’s words came to mind.

“Shall I tear it apart for nothing?”

That Elicia’s predestined fate is a life ruined by Saviel.

‘I hate it.’

I reject such a fate.

Thump.

Saviel momentarily loosened her wrist to undress, and almost simultaneously, she stabbed him with a short knife hidden in her hair ornament.

“Ha, ha.”

Tears poured out.

Is fate something so inescapable?

No matter how much one runs away, no matter how much one flees, is it like a shadow that darkly clings from beneath the ankle?

I wanted to give up everything…….

(This is a time separator.)

“Cough! Cough cough!”

Elicia barely came to her senses.

She had fallen asleep from a drug, and when she woke up, she found herself in an unfamiliar place.

Luxurious furniture and unparalleled luxury items.

Such precious items that she had never seen before, not even in her own ducal house in the Empire, nor in Archduke Elleon’s house.

‘Wh, where is this….’

And those expensive and splendid things were visible beyond the iron bars lined up at regular intervals. Elicia, wobbling, stood up and shook the iron bars with both hands.

“What is this?”

With her strength, it did not even budge, and no clanking sound was made. It was a time when she didn’t know what to do with her confusion.

“You’ve awakened.”

A spinechilling voice was heard from a dark corner.

Slowly, slowly.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, Elicia let go of the iron bars she was holding and dodged to the other side.

“Crown Prince… Your Highness.”

Saviel placed a candle he had been holding onto the floor. The light that brightly illuminated from below made the giant golden cage that surrounded her shine brilliantly.

“You may call me by my name. You can call me Saviel.”

His cunning and vile face overlapped with that horrifying scene from her recent dream.

‘Could it be. Was Elicia really subject to such a thing….’

It was before she could even recollect her thoughts.

Clank.

Saviel opened the door hung on the iron bars with a key and entered.

“You won’t know how much I’ve longed for this day.”

“What do you mean?”

With a bad premonition, Elicia asked, trembling. Yet her eyes were drawn to the large golden key that Saviel joyously tossed into the air and caught, a key he had just reached through the iron bars to lock the door.

‘I have to snatch that key if I want to escape from here.’

As if reading her transparent thoughts, Saviel threw it far between the bars. Staring in despair at the key that flashed as it flew away, Elicia soon turned pale.

Trapped.

Now trapped inside this narrow cage with Saviel, just the two of them. Instinctively, Elicia avoided him.

“Wwhat are you going to do?”

“You should know well. What we will do.”

Saviel approached, unbuttoning his shirt.

“Elicia!”

“……Ggo away.”

She was too scared for her voice to come out properly.

Elicia’s memories, Elicia’s trauma.

What she saw in the dream was not a dream.

It was something buried in her unconsciousness that her body had experienced without her knowing. Elicia wanted to run away, but her body, paralyzed with fear, did not move as she wished.

The second time.

Although she tried to avoid it, she had come to this moment again.

“I hate it…….”

Saviel mocked Elicia like that and took out a small pouch from his bosom and shook it over the golden cage’s candle, illuminating their prison.

Whoosh.

A bizarre green light transformed the flame, and a stinking smoke spread.

“Cough.”

Elicia, trying her best to stay away from the approaching Saviel, accidentally inhaled the smoke.

‘What is this?’

The moment she inhaled, her vision blurred, and her body gradually weakened. Stumbling and trying to avoid Saviel, Elicia soon slumped down, leaning against the iron bars.

Saviel slowly lifted her chin.
“I have prepared a lot this time. I cannot afford to lose my prey again.”

Tears dripped down Elicia’s cheeks.

“N, no.”

Then it happened.

Screech. Thud.

A slender light seemed to pass diagonally, and the upper part of the massive birdcage’s iron bars was cut off and flew aside, falling down as if distorted.

It was an unreal sight.

Whack!

Saviel, who was just reaching out to her, was sent flying beyond the cut iron bars with a tremendous sound. And instead, a large black shadow loomed over her.

“You should say it louder if you don’t like it.”