Chapter 6

“When lowly creatures like us don’t know our place and mingle with those above us… it brings bad luck.”

006

The Bird in the Cage (Part 2)

If only Anne had laughed at my words, calling them nonsense, or even scolded me like an Inquisition Judge should, I might have felt a little relieved.

But Anne said nothing.

I couldn’t interpret her silence as anything but affirmation.

“Answer me, Anne.”

“……”

The paradoxical situation of a prisoner inside a cell shouting at the guard outside.

Instead of answering, Anne lowered her head. Her platinum hair cascaded down like a veil, hiding her gray-blue eyes, making it impossible for me to see what emotions lay beneath.

“Answer me!”

Her lips, pale rather than red, beautiful yet frail, finally parted. But the answer I wanted didn’t come.

“Even if washed by the waves, can salt erase the emblem engraved on the shield?”

Her tone was archaic, her response a riddle out of context. I knew she was quoting Scripture, but in the heat of the moment, I couldn’t grasp its meaning.

Yet, I could sense something in Anne’s demeanor. A boldness, a shamelessness meant to mask something.

A fragile pride, or perhaps a defense mechanism. Either way.

“You…!”

“It’s time to go.”

As if trying to escape the situation, Anne stood up, her tone awkward.

All I could do was shout in anger. I couldn’t leave this cell, couldn’t reach through the bars to grab her. All I could do was scream with a heart full of rage.

“Don’t run away! You despicable traitor, you murderer! You deserve to burn in hell…! Ugh, cough! Khelok.”

I couldn’t continue and bowed my head. My throat felt like it was tearing apart. When I opened my mouth, pink saliva stained the unnaturally white and clean room.

“Louis.”

“Ugh, cough, huuuh…”

Anne called my name again, but I no longer had the strength to respond.

As if she knew I couldn’t answer rather than wouldn’t, Anne looked at me with a pitiful expression as I gasped for breath. But her actions remained cold as ice.

“If you ever find your fiancée’s place, let me know. If you remember, that is.”

I don’t know. Damn it, I don’t know!

“Then, goodbye.”

In the end, I couldn’t speak, and Anne didn’t listen.

As if she couldn’t bear to see me clutching my throat in pain, she closed her eyes tightly and turned her head away.

Ironically, it was at this moment that I truly realized Anne had changed. When she killed the villagers, framed the innocent, and ultimately turned her back on me.

The ghostly white figure faded beyond the bars. I no longer shouted, reached out, or tried to stop her. I realized it was futile.

Her will, though twisted, was as unyielding as diamond.

What on earth changed you so much?

Life in the countryside. For the people of our small village, life in the big city was always an aspiration. Even knowing the shadows beneath the light, even the sensible adults were often enchanted by its glow.

I was no different. After Anne left for the city, going there became my life’s goal. I didn’t know where she went or what she became, but I still hoped for a fateful reunion someday.

A dream I hadn’t even thought of in a long time. Why did I give it up?

Thud.

I collapsed, my strength gone. My head drooped naturally, and I caught a glimpse of myself.

Though I realized it late, I wasn’t wearing prison clothes but an outfit I’d never worn before—luxurious, pristine white fabric with subtle decorative borders. But I felt no joy.

The robe, impossible to remove or tear due to its sturdiness, bore a golden cross at its center, as if branded there. The cursed symbol of the Religious Order, mocking my imprisoned state with a crown of thorns wrapped around the cross.

Unconsciously, my hand clawed at my chest. But the emblem wouldn’t tear, and my soul’s struggle only left wounds on my body.

“Tch.”

Even if I endured greater pain, lesser pain wouldn’t diminish. As my nails pierced my chest, I withdrew my hand, my fingers and robe now stained with spreading red spots like a plague.

Under the blinding white light, the blood seemed black rather than pink.

Exhausted, I lay down on the floor. There was a bed nearby, but I had no strength to reach it, and it looked as hard as a rock anyway.

There was a ceiling, and I could sense this was underground, yet the light streaming in was brighter than the midday sun. I turned my head, closed my eyes, and sank into thought.

‘What happens now?’

The situation was clear. This was a prison, and I was a prisoner.

But the peculiarities of the Religious Order and the events leading up to my arrival here made me uneasy. Thinking about it, this cell was excessively luxurious for a prison. The clothes I wore, too.

Even the chamber pot and bed were adorned with intricate carvings, as if to flaunt their extravagance. The bed’s hardness was likely intentional. Clearly, this wasn’t the treatment of a mere prisoner.

As Anne had said, it was too lavish for heretics or criminals, yet too chaotic for the treatment of nobles or guests.

The mismatched elements left me unable to judge. Whether I was being treated as a prisoner or a noble, either seemed plausible.

“Reformatory, huh…”

I pondered the clue Anne had left. Reformation for heretics? In what way?

I didn’t know. It wasn’t a question I could answer now. Trapped as I was, I couldn’t escape the bleak future ahead. So, rather…

Rather what? The past was corrupted, the present ruined. Looking back at any moment, it was all just painful now. Because those times were so beautiful.

The more I reminisced, the more the past you and the present you overlapped, bringing me to tears.

“Why, why…?”

I dared not fathom the depth of your love.

If only you had directed your resentment at me. Blamed me, hated me, cursed me—I would have accepted it all humbly. It was my fault. I was the bad one.

But this… Your hatred wasn’t just for me. It swept up the entire village in a way I could never have imagined.

Killing an entire village to claim one person isn’t a plan even a madman would easily conceive. Especially not for a devout follower who must always stand righteous before Ailim, not just for me but for the village where you were born and raised, for the people who knew you.

You killed them all.

Those who begged for mercy, those who screamed in agony, not strangers but people we once shared life with.

I had long known of the Inquisition Judge’s bloody reputation, but who could have predicted it would descend upon our village?

And that the Inquisition Judge would be Anne, who was once so kind and harmless.

“Whyyyyy!”

I cried, laughed like a madman, and screamed until my throat tore.

This space had nothing. The light was painfully bright, but beyond that, nothing. The shabby Scripture didn’t even carry the scent of an old book, and when I closed my mouth, the prison fell into a deathly silence.

I hated the quiet, the numbness. Tears streamed down my face under the bright light, but closing my eyes plunged me into a dark world where I felt nothing, driving me to the brink of madness.

“Take me back.”

I muttered, not knowing to whom. Take me back.

To the beautiful past, the days with Anne, the village of spring roses… If not that, then my hometown, my house. Anywhere but this cage of madness.

Is the sin of forsaking love so great? The weight of trampled and defiled faith was too much to bear. Crushed and suffocated, I groaned.

The longer the silence lasted, the louder my heartbeat became, its irregular rhythm mingling with unsettling voices. The voices of our villagers, now dead, struck my mind.

‘Aaaah! Sa, save me…’

‘Don’t do this. You were always the pride of our village.’

‘Stop, please… Brother, brotherrr!’

Even as hallucinations, they felt vivid, as if spoken right beside me. Countless names floated in my mind before sinking back into the dark abyss.

I was drowning in the delusions I had created. If not for the real voice that broke through at that moment, I would have vomited everything inside me. If there was anything left to vomit, that is.

“What’s this, a newbie?”