Having finished the ritual bathing and purification, Cairens appeared in a clean state and looked very sacred.
The pure white garments he wore suited him well, but to Abrisius, who knew the circumstances, they inevitably looked like a burial shroud put on someone about to die.
“…….”
Cairens said nothing. He merely followed along as the two priests led him. There was no choice. His expression was calm, as if he had already resigned himself to his fate.
“We greet the High Priest who serves the great World Tree Zeyaom.”
The priests who had brought Cairens bowed their heads toward the High Priest. She casually accepted their greeting.
“Yes, now everything is prepared.”
Kneeling on one knee toward Cairens, who had finished the ritual bathing, she met his gaze.
Not a trace of guilt could be seen in her as she looked at Cairens.
“You are doing a great thing, Cairens-nim.”
“……I’d be grateful if you thought so. I hope my sacrifice won’t be in vain.”
“That goes without saying. You are destined to become a hero. There is a reason Zeyaom gave this oracle. A hero who will protect us from this calamity. Everyone will be grateful for your sacrifice and will honor you as a hero. Do not fear death. Even if your flesh disappears, your soul will reach your great father and you will become a god.”
Such bullshit.
Abrisius barely swallowed the curse that was about to burst out. How could a person be so shameless?
Destiny to become a hero, son of a god, the reason that he would become a savior—for these reasons alone, she treated Cairens’s sacrifice as a matter of course.
The opinion of the person involved didn’t seem very important.
“Yes.”
Knowing this, Cairens said nothing in response. Would their suffering truly be relieved if he died?
Actually, it wasn’t his concern. Whether it was relieved or not, the fact that Cairens would die remained unchanged.
“Um……. Archbishop-nim. Until you depart, may I at least…….”
A familiar voice.
Cairens’s pupils, which had been losing vitality, dilated.
Raising his slightly bowed head, he turned toward the voice. The white priest’s robe wrapped around the head making it hard to see, but the slightly visible black eyes—he was certain.
‘How did you…….’
He was speechless, unable to make a sound.
‘……You’ll arouse suspicion acting like that, you fool.’
Abrisius deliberately avoided his gaze, which was so intense it felt scorching.
“Yes, you escort him well.”
“Yes.”
Briefly admiring Abrisius’s innocence, the High Priest didn’t even suspect anything.
“Have that child stand in the middle of you all.”
Thanks to that, fortunately Abrisius was able to slip in among the other priests.
“……Excuse me.”
The moment Cairens, sensing something strange, opened his mouth to say something.
Clang—!
The final bell rang.
The massive door blocking their path opened with a grinding sound, and the outside air rushed in.
“Let us go now.”
Without looking back, the High Priest took the lead and stepped outside the door.
Following her, the priests also moved forward, standing behind Cairens.
“Waaah—!”
The path connected to the central altar. Seeing Cairens appear with the Archbishop in the middle of it, people began to cheer.
A reaction even hotter than the heat of a festival. What was so good that everyone was making such a fuss? Abrisius glanced at the crowd with a bitter gaze.
The day the guards had dragged Cairens away, he recalled what Lily had said. That even with such a cruel revelation, they just wanted to believe. Because they received salvation in the words of a god who responded to their pain and suffering, the content didn’t matter to them.
‘But that can’t justify the sacrifice.’
Even if the hope they found in that despair was someone’s sacrifice, they were filled with anticipation that countless humans could live with just that one thing.
Grotesque.
He felt nauseous watching what seemed like humans who had gone as far as they could go. But Cairens wouldn’t be sacrificed.
‘I absolutely won’t let that happen.’
Finally, they reached the top of the central altar. Abrisius looked at Cairens, who had stopped abruptly, and the High Priest.
The High Priest, who had stopped in place, silently observed the prepared relics and the high priests who had come from each temple.
Everything was perfect. Checking everything one by one with her eyes, she shouted in a loud voice toward the masses below.
“Holy brothers and sisters of this land, we are now in the midst of the most terrible calamity in history—!”
At her words, the noisy voices of the people quieted down.
“But now all of that will end. Today we will be saved through the sacrifice of the hero sent by the great Henelion…….”
“Wait—!”
Before she could finish speaking, Abrisius stepped forward.
“Do you all think this makes any sense?”
“This, this child…….”
“Are you crazy?”
The two priests on either side panicked and tried to stop Abrisius, but his mouth was faster. Before they could stop him, Abrisius stood beside the High Priest and shouted toward the people.
“……The god said the youngest and most precious life in Atlante, right? But is that really Cairens’s own life?”
Shouting before the masses, Abrisius glared at the High Priest.
“Can you explain why it has to be Cairens himself? Is it really Cairens?”
“Stop…….”
“How dare you!”
Before Cairens, who had been standing still, could step forward, the High Priest’s loud voice echoed throughout the central plaza.
“So are you saying I’m wrong now?”
“I can’t say you’re right.”
“Ha, I have served Zeyaom for the past 30 years. Do you think I wouldn’t know his will?!”
“……You didn’t hear that revelation directly yourself.”
The story he heard before the knights fell asleep last night. The miracle of Zeyaom. A god possessed the body of a child who had been a young beggar and recited the revelation.
But in this cruel ceremony, the child who was said to have received the divine revelation and become the new Iaom was nowhere to be seen.
“Did the kid who received the revelation say that? That the protagonist of the youngest and most precious life to be offered was Cairens?”
“…….”
At Abrisius’s words, the High Priest was momentarily speechless. As he said, all the interpretation of these revelations and prophecies had been done by her.
“……Then if it’s not his own life, what do you want to say it is?”
But there was no other way to explain it. The youngest and most precious life in Atlante was none other than Cairens himself.
“……The youngest and most precious life in Atlante is a deer.”
“What?”
The expressions of the crowd watching this scene, including the High Priest, turned cold.
They stopped this great undertaking now because of a mere deer? That the youngest and most precious life in this city wasn’t Cairens? Nonsense. The ritual ceremony was ruined by the words of an immature child.
“……Did you cause this commotion just to spout such nonsense?”
The jeering voices of the people rang out noisily. From voices demanding to drag that brat out immediately to horrible voices saying to put him on the guillotine right away…… the curses of the angry masses pierced Abrisius’s ears.
But Abrisius wasn’t afraid of any of it.
“No. It’s the truth. Because I am that deer.”
Eyes flashing, Abrisius threw off his priest’s robe.
Jet-black hair and black eyes. Abrisius, boldly revealing his appearance, looked at the people and shouted.
“So watch carefully. What I transform into. And who you truly must offer to the angry gods.”
Simultaneously with those words, a red light—no, a red light churning under the weight of black light—began to envelop him.
A moment later, people were stunned by the unbelievable sight.
“……Squeak.”
Where the child had been standing, there now stood a single black deer. A small, young, frail deer.
“Th-that deer was definitely in Cairens-nim’s palace……!”
“That’s right. I saw it too, I clearly saw it together with him at the hunting competition. They said they caught it that day……!”
“Good heavens!”
Voices erupted one after another from here and there. Everyone from the palace servants who had seen Cairens and Abrisius until now, to the nobles and knights who had been at the hunting competition that day, was shocked by a sight they saw with their own eyes but couldn’t believe.
“What on earth is going on here!”
And the King of Atlante, who witnessed this fact directly, also raised his voice, unable to contain his shock.
‘As expected, there’s no way he’d stay still.’
He was looking at Zeyaom’s High Priest and the other priests with a complicated expression. And for good reason—unable to resist the words and pressure from the temples, he had tried to offer his nephew and son of a god as a living sacrifice, but before his eyes, the child who had been arguing about the credibility of the prophecy had transformed into a deer.
‘They’re probably the most confused right now. Because the temple might have been wrong.’
Murmuring sounds could be heard from everywhere. From the common people below to the nobles, royalty…… even the priests.
“High Priest of Zeyaom, what is the meaning of this!”
“This deer……. No, is what this child said true? That we should have offered this child, not Cairens?”
“Try making some excuse. Didn’t you arbitrarily interpret the prophecy and misjudge who should be offered in the ceremony?”
“You clearly said it was Cairens……. We almost killed the son of a god!”
At the increasingly boiling public opinion, Zeyaom’s High Priest’s expression distorted. The most confused person right now was her.
‘Why on earth……. From where and how did things go wrong?’
The youngest and most precious life in the nation where the son of a god resides. Offer that.
Zeyaom’s oracle was unchanged. But that child couldn’t properly understand the oracle, so she stepped forward and followed the god’s will. And yet…….
That’s not it?
That can’t be. That can’t be. She had served Zeyaom for 30 years. Her achievements were recognized and she served him closely, enjoyed that much glory, and took the lead in conveying his will even more.
She had definitely…… definitely.
Eyes filled with confusion and madness turned toward Abrisius, who had become a deer.
How dare—this wicked beast of the world who put her, a high priest, in a predicament.
“No, that’s…… a wicked demon!”
Zeyaom’s High Priest refused to acknowledge until the very end that she had made a mistaken judgment stemming from her own selfishness.
