Chapter 1: The 15th Life |
Annie’s eyes, when she heard the voice, were dazed.
—Come on, now!
Dania quickly ordered Annie one more time. Annie wasn’t aware of the situation. Under Dania’s command, she released her hands from her body.
Dania didn’t miss this moment. No, she couldn’t miss it. This was the only girl who could hear her command.
There was no hesitation because it was a moment that she had been eagerly waiting for.
Squeezing all her strength, she bit her own tongue hard. Subsequently, a frightful, unbearable pain hit her.
‘That’s it.’
Only then did a hazy smile dawned on Dania’s face, which had been expressionless all this while.
“Oh my god! Annie! What have you done…! No! Call the Saintess right now!”
Dania’s condition worsened beyond control. It didn’t take a long time.
In just a few seconds, Dania completely stopped breathing.
“No way—”
Rachel sank to the floor with a puzzled expression. Helen also stared blankly at Daina, trembling because didn’t know what to do.
Under their gazes, Dania turned on the hard prison floor.
A lonely and pitiful death.
It was the 14th death of the real saint who was thoroughly concealed.
★★★
“Dania?”
Dania woke up to a voice calling her name.
As she blinked my eyes a couple of times to get rid of the blurry focus, the voice came closer.
“Daina? Are you all right?”
She turned my head slowly toward a voice that was resented by the depths of her heart.
‘Rabienne.’
The moment she saw her, her heart fell to the floor and was crushed. Though it was the young Rabienne who called her Dania, an indescribable anger wound around her whole body.
“And…”
It didn’t take long for her to realize that she had regressed. She choked up with nausea.
“Dania, are you sick? Do you want me to take you to the treatment room?”
Rabienne looked at me worriedly and she turned pale. The friendly and amiable appearance of Rabienne was quite different from the version of her that Daina saw in prison.
“Oh, no. I don’t feel well. Thank you for your concern, Lady Rabienne.”
Daina barely managed to open her lips to respond.
“Dania, I’m disappointed if you call me that. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Friends.”
Daina smiled bitterly at Rabienne’s words. At the same time, an old memory from her time in prison came to mind.
“Lady Rabienne! Please let me go! We’re friends! Yes?”
“What? Ahahaha. Friend? Are you crazy? Am I supposed to be friends with something like you? Did you really think so? How stupid.”
“But-but… we’ve been friends—”
“Dania, listen carefully. I never thought of you as a friend for a single moment. How can you, an orphan, and I, be friends? You and I live in different worlds.”
The current appearance of Rabienne was all pretense. Now that Daina knew the true nature of Rabienne so well, she was just disgusted by her.
“You’re so weird today. Why don’t you tell the nun and take a rest?”
“I should.”
Daina didn’t want to interact with Rabienne if she could, but she forced herself to smile in order not to raise suspicion.
Looking around belatedly, it seemed like it was time for the class to strengthen divine power. She could see the faces of the female candidates who she had been training together with as a child.
“I don’t know why Lady Rabienne even talks to such a girl.”
“I know. There are levels even among the candidates.”
Even from far away, she heard them grumbling. But she turned away from them with a face that was as if she had heard nothing.
[Rabienne de Braons.]
The only daughter of the Braons family that had produced the most female saints in history. Rabienne was the foremost among the saints candidates, not only because of her noble origin, but also her divine abilities.
She was someone who was born with everything under god’s love. No one doubted that Rabienne would be the next saint. Everyone wanted her to be the saint for the peace and prosperity of the temple.
Daina did, too. Rabienne was once a kind person who paid attention to Daina. The orphan.
Daina stopped thinking and stood up.
As Daina approached the nun who was watching another candidate, she turned her head and frowned.
“What’s the matter?”
“I have a bad headache, can I go get some medicine?”
“I told you, you don’t have talent, so you should try twice as hard as other candidates.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Puh. Go ahead.”
Daina’s heart throbbed under the gaze of Sister Laura, who was not happy to see her like she saw a bug.
It was a familiar gaze to Daina, an orphan. She, whose divine power was ignored because of her origin.
She bowed silently and left the training room.
As soon as she came out into the empty hallway, her legs wobbled. It was because the tension was eased late.
“Haa.”
Daina leaned against the wall and let out the breath she had endured all the time. When the sense of reality returned, she felt angry.
‘I am alive again.’
She wanted to die, but she couldn’t. The world seemed to inculcate that it’s impossible to escape from Rabienne.
Every time she was captured by Rabienne and was put in prison, she had the same end, biting her tongue and dying. Without knowing the reason, she regressed several times and repeated the same past.
“Ha….”
Daina closed her eyes and tried to calm her anger. She had learned enough from her past experiences that nothing would change even if she gets angry.
All she could do now was go back to her room.
“I have to check the date.”
With a resigned look, Daina walked heavily. Upon returning to her own room, she strode through the door quickly and locked it.
★★★
The room Daina hadn’t seen in a long time was still small and narrow. As one of the remaining rooms in the temple, it seemed as if it was about to collapse.
Nevertheless, it was the only sanctuary given to her. All she had throughout her life was this room.
“……”
Daina stopped looking around the room and approached the desk. The only drawer contained a diary that she had used every day. Her small hand carefully flipped the diary. The page that was turned over quickly stopped at the place where the last entry was written.
Radoanian calendar, August 4th, Year 381.
“Year 381?”
For the first time, Daina’s eyes, which weren’t panicked even when she saw Rabienne, shook.
It was because the date in the diary was not what she expected.
The return that she had gone through so far was the same. In Year 382, in April, when she was 13-years-old, it was always the same year, the same month. There was no time to run away from the temple because she returned when the former saint was about to die.
However, this time, it was a year earlier.
The only thing that had been repeated countless times was different this time.
‘Is something different?’
Daina grabbed the diary tightly. Her expression did not change, but her lips were slightly trembling.
Perhaps this was the last return. A little hope was about to rise in Daina.
But she shook my head. She had been looking forward to it so far, and she had to despair as much as she expected. She didn’t want to experience that feeling again.
‘Don’t expect anything stupid.’
It was better not to expect it in the first place.
Daina leaned her head back and looked at the ceiling. There was no lamp, so she was sad because the dark ceiling looked exactly like jer.
She would feel a bit relieved when she cried, but her tears refused to fall. She cried so much in the past that it had dried up.
“What did I do so wrong?”
Self-help adjustment was made.
She was Daina, who was still 12-years-old on the outside. It was a dark, gloomy statement that made her feel uneasy.
After staring blankly at the ceiling for a long time, she clenched her fist as if she had made up her mind. Then, she left the room with a stiff face.
The place where Daina headed to was a temple dedicated to the goddess. At the moment the temple was empty. Even the priests who maintained the entrance thoroughly for some reason were absent.
The temple was a place where only permitted people could enter and leave. It was a place where she could not enter as a junior-level candidate.
In the past, she kept the rules of the temple strictly because she was afraid of being punished by the goddess.
However, she was not afraid of the temple’s rules anymore. The goddess did not respond, even to Daina, who was her saint.
The expressionless Daina approached the goddess’ statue at a rapid pace. As the statue reached a well-visible position, she looked up at the statue.
The statue of the goddess standing tall in a noble manner.
Daina stared at the statue with empty eyes, unable to feel alive. The long-forgotten emotions had filled her heart with pain.
“I just liked being here…”
Daina, an orphan, entered the temple when she was 5-years-old. Until then, she lived her life mixed with beggars. It was her daily routine to get robbed. Then, she accidentally caught the eye of a priest.
Recognizing that Daina had divine power, the priest bought her at a low price and brought her to the temple. The people of the temple were not kind to Daina, but she was grateful to have a place to stay. Every day was fun.
However, she lost everything because she gained the saint’s power by chance.
“Why was I born?”
‘I was not loved by anyone. I was betrayed by everyone who I gave my heart to.’
‘Rabienne, who I cherished. The nuns and priests, who I respected. And Khalid, who I liked.’
After repeating her numerous regressions, Daina realized that she was a cursed being, a being that should not be in the world.
If she had to live like this, it was better not to be born into the world.
“I want to stop.”
She didn’t want to be used anymore. Even though living for Rabienne was her fixed destiny.
However, the situation was not very hopeful for her.
Daina had tried numerous self-inflicted attempts to kill herself, but failed. If she tried to harm herself after returning, she was healed immediately and could not die. No, rather than healing, the body seemed to have changed so that it couldn’t kill itself. She was only able to do self-harm when she was being locked up in the prison and tied to a magical tool that blocked her divine power.
‘I couldn’t even try to get killed by someone else.’
It was because the period she returned to was always a period when outsiders were blocked, and murder was prohibited for people inside the temple.
“You can’t go out of the temple…”
Even though Daina had a year’s worth of time, her origin was a problem. Orphans were forbidden to leave the temple before reaching adulthood. It was in the name of protecting the temple’s property.
“Wait.”
Daina, who had been pondering for a long time, raised her head. Her dark expression had brightened up a little.
“There’s a celebration coming soon!”
Ame: I forgot to mention in prologue that I’ll be editing through the tls that the previous tler did, so most credits go to the original team (Kushi + Lev)!
