In a room filled with thick, lingering incense.
A man dressed in pure white was kneeling before the altar.
His name was Raonel.
He was once a priest who had sworn to follow only the will of God.
But when death came for him, it was not God who reached out a hand of salvation.
It was Gawin Kardel, descendant of the hero.
Raonel’s younger brother had been cursed with a curse that even divine power could not cure, and was slowly dying.
Just as all his prayers and blessings were about to end in vain…… he appeared.
He completely lifted the curse that everyone had said was impossible to cure.
From that day on, Gawin became a god to Raonel.
“……Is a mission finally being given to me as well?”
His eyes were red with emotion, and his trembling hands were held out as if offering them to God.
Footsteps approached from the other side.
The one who finally appeared was Gawin Kardel, the eldest son of the Kardel family, wearing a white cloak.
He smiled quietly.
“The time has come for God to test you.”
His voice was endlessly gentle and merciful.
Raonel squeezed his eyes shut.
The moment he had long prayed for.
The moment when his faith would finally be proven.
“The place you must go is Bellader.”
“Bellader…… the port city?”
Gawin gently placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Humans are foolish creatures who only regain their faith when a miracle occurs. You must open the beginning of that miracle.”
“……Are there people I must save?”
With a gentle smile on his lips, Gawin placed a small bottle of medicine in his hands.
The bottle was sealed two or three times over, and it looked extremely important at a glance.
“This…… is medicine?”
“No. It is a ‘disease.’”
“……What?”
For a moment, Raonel wondered if he had heard correctly.
But Gawin continued with the same expression.
“Spread the epidemic.”
Raonel’s pupils shook violently.
The bottle in his hand trembled.
“This is a trial from God, Raonel. You are carrying out God’s mission.”
“B-But…… many people will die. Innocent people…….”
At those words, Gawin let out a deep sigh and shook his head as if he were disappointed.
His smile imitated kindness, but there was a subtle hint of mockery hidden within it.
“Oh dear. It seems that even someone who calls himself a servant of God still has such short-sighted thoughts.”
Gawin continued in a low and convincing voice.
“Raonel, you will become the one who ‘opens the path.’ People only remember God when there is pain and despair.”
“…….”
“When a miracle finally appears in that despair, people will praise God. And the beginning of all those miracles…… will be you.”
Raonel swallowed hard.
The man who had performed a miracle before his eyes when his young brother could have died, a miracle that even the priests had failed to achieve.
From that moment on, he believed that Gawin was a being who carried God’s mission far closer than the priests did.
Surely, God’s will must reside within this man……
“To awaken true faith in the foolish……?”
“Yes. As expected, you understand what matters most.”
When Raonel nervously bit down on his lip, Gawin gently added his final words.
“Go to Bellader. Use your status as a member of the temple you have served for so long and naturally blend in with them. Then quietly pour this liquid into the village well.”
Raonel swallowed nervously and looked down at the small glass bottle in his hand.
A green liquid swayed inside.
Gawin smiled calmly.
“This is a trial from God, Raonel. And do not forget that you are an instrument of God.”
Clutching the bottle to his chest, Raonel staggered to his feet.
As his footsteps gradually faded away, silence once again settled over the room.
That was when it happened.
The smile slowly disappeared from Gawin’s face.
Without leaving even a trace of his previous expression, his cold eyes gleamed in the icy silence.
“Come out.”
From the darkness, where there had been no sign of anyone, a man dressed in black quietly stepped forward.
He was an agent carrying out the secret orders of the Kardel family.
“That priest loses all reason whenever his younger brother is involved. If he does anything different from the orders, make him carry them out by any means necessary.”
Gawin gave a quiet chuckle.
“Make sure he clearly understands what price he is paying.”
It meant threatening him with his family’s lives if things went wrong.
The man understood without Gawin needing to explain any further.
That was his everyday life, after all.
“And take care of it before I arrive. Make it look like an epidemic.”
“Yes.”
“If anything unusual happens, report it immediately. If things go wrong…… we can place the blame on the temple.”
He quietly looked toward the door through which Raonel had disappeared, then slowly raised the corners of his lips.
“It is time to save the foolish people once again.”
His eyes were already turned toward Bellader.
****
Odely endured the rattling of the wheels throughout the night, hiding inside a supply wagon.
When dawn was just beginning to break, she arrived at the outskirts of Bellader, quietly climbed down from the wagon, and followed the route she had planned in advance.
The official routes had all been blocked by the lockdown order, but there was an old drainage passage that merchants had used long ago and eventually forgotten.
It did not appear on any map, and even the soldiers did not know about it, but Odely remembered it.
‘More precisely, it was Rudvil’s memory.’
Holding her breath, Odely lowered her body and squeezed herself through a crack in the ground.
The smell of damp earth, mold, and rotten water filled the passage, but she paid it no attention.
She headed straight for the ruined heart of Bellader.
The port city was already eerily silent, as if it were dead.
Every window along the alleys was tightly shut, and the streets were empty.
Fear and resignation had spread across the faces of the few people peeking through their doors.
Corpses had been left lying in the streets because they could not even be collected, while a faint evil aura drifted through the alleys together with the stench of decay.
That was when it happened.
Someone’s crying could be heard from far away.
“Ugh, please……. I’m still alive. I’m alive…….”
A boy staggering out from the entrance of an alley tripped and collapsed onto the ground.
His face was covered in blood, and his skin was flushed red with fever.
The evil aura surrounding him wrapped around his body like black vines.
Odely did not hesitate.
She ran straight into the alley where the boy had fallen, knelt beside him, and checked his condition.
His breathing was so faint that it seemed as though it could stop at any moment.
When she placed a hand on his forehead, scorching heat like a burn spread across her palm.
“……It’s okay. You’ll be okay now.”
At that moment, something began to writhe.
The evil aura thrashed like a living creature, trying to bite into her fingertips.
‘Get away.’
Odely drew out the power of purification.
The purifying force that bloomed from her palm slowly began to contain it.
The flow of air shook violently before gradually settling down.
The boy’s trembling stopped, and his slightly ragged breathing became steady.
Odely carefully laid the boy down on a bench before heading toward the center of the square, where the evil aura was thickest.
A street sunk deep in despair.
Into the center of chaos, where black smoke and evil aura rose into the air and screams erupted without end.
‘It’s not too late yet.’
The evil aura was feeding on fear and growing larger, but if she responded correctly, she could suppress it immediately.
Because this was……
‘An epidemic that had been deliberately spread.’
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