Chapter 29

“Why aren’t Anne’s parents coming to see her?”

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because of some high-ranking people’s circumstances that I can’t understand…?”

“You’ll understand if you hear it. It’s a simple story.”

“Huh…?”

“Anne is going to die soon. They probably don’t want to get attached to a child they’re going to lose.”

*

029

Light and Darkness (Part 2)

*

Even a river frozen in winter melts when spring comes. Glaciers that seemed eternal shrink as the world warms, and even if the bright sunshine persists, dark clouds cover the sky after a few days as if nothing happened.

From the hazy, gray-blue eyes, teardrops formed like raindrops.

“How could you say such a thing…?”

As the glacier cracked, the cold waves hidden beneath surged. It seemed as if they would sweep away the person standing in front of them at any moment. The gray-blue eyes, filled with tears, looked as if they were flashing with anger.

As François had hoped, Anne shed her pretenses and hypocrisy. But affection is a vague emotion.

Was the reason for closing the distance to get closer to the other person—or was it to drive the short, blunt blade a little deeper into them?

Judgment and execution are entirely up to each individual.

“How dare you, after abandoning me… shamelessly!”

“Anne…”

An Inquisition Judge and a Cardinal. They could be close professionally, but it was difficult, and should not be, to be close personally.

If someone who had already risen to the highest position with mere honor were to gain actual martial power? Of course, it seemed unlikely that another blasphemous madman like Laube would emerge to defy God, but the Religious Order was still wary of even the slightest possibility.

Therefore, the relationship between Anne and François had been a long-standing secret. From the moment Anne first set foot in the Order, led by her nurse.

A girl who could barely stand on her own passed through all kinds of harsh training and trials, finally surpassing countless competitors to be chosen as the vessel to preach the will of the world’s God.

“…I didn’t abandon you.”

“To me, it was the same as abandoning me!”

The sharp cry did not spread outside. This place was an annex of the Inquisition Temple, but since it was not inside the temple, the Pope’s ‘eyes’ did not reach here, and the guards of the Holy Army were deaf.

Only the almost extinguished dark sun and the cold ground beneath, where souls rested eternally, were the audience of this passionate drama.

“I didn’t need glory or honor! All I needed, from the beginning to the end, was just one thing…”

Ailim was the surname of orphans and illegitimate children. In general cases, they either had no parents or, if they had mixed with lowly bloodlines, could not inherit noble surnames.

In rare cases, there were those who had no surname to inherit from their parents.

“When I needed you the most, Dad, you weren’t by my side.”

“…”

“There was always only one person by my side.”

Those who devote themselves to religion abandon their surnames as a sign of cutting ties with the secular world. Naturally, religious figures cannot have spouses or children. Their ‘family’ is only their fellow believers who have also devoted themselves to religion.

But does the human heart always work rationally? The bond of blood is thick and tenacious, and even a Cardinal at the pinnacle of the Order could not escape it.

The two, who were more like grandfather and granddaughter than father and daughter due to the age difference. The warm breeze of late spring created the first exception to the principles they had upheld all their lives.

“Anne. I did everything for you…”

“Who doesn’t know that?”

And everything is difficult only at first; from the second time onward, it becomes easier.

“Dad. Do you know what I thought while I was training and going through trials…?”

The one flaw in the otherwise perfect iron man. That is why François, who was originally closest to the Papal Throne, had to pass the position to another and remain human.

“I should have just stayed.”

The hometown we always longed for, and now can never return to.

Yefrinse. Anne personally trampled that quaint and beautiful village until not even a trace remained. She watched with unblinking eyes as the flames she herself had set engulfed the entire village.

Without blinking once. Blaming the moisture in her eyes on the light and heat of the flames.

“I should have just lived there… and died there.”

A robust body. More than the superhuman physique or the endurance beyond life, what Anne felt most was that she no longer coughed or suffered from minor illnesses, and no matter how much she moved, she never got tired.

What it must have felt like for someone who had lived a sickly life to regain health. But Anne could not purely rejoice. The price she paid for it was too great.

It was a gift she never asked for, even when she needed it most.

“I know what you’re trying to say… I know you’re worried about me.”

Gathering her emotions, she spoke with a mix of clumsiness and skill, passion and coldness, gratitude and hatred.

A sudden wind blew through the quiet cemetery. The grass that had once bowed to François’s rebuke now lay flat in the opposite direction, and the old man’s puffy sleeves and silver hair fluttered wildly.

But not a single strand of Anne’s hair, clinging to her cheek, was out of place. She was the eye of the storm, the source of all this turbulent wind.

A human capable of causing disaster alone. That was no metaphor or praise. It was simply a plain reality.

“So, I’ll tell you while I still think of you as my dad.”

Why would a Cardinal come to see an Inquisition Judge, a father to see his daughter?

Warnings and advice. In the end, they were the same in essence. Whether it was directed at a fallen Inquisition Judge or a daughter gone astray.

“Don’t.”

And one of the eternal truths is that children never listen to their parents.

“Don’t say it, and don’t act on it.”

François had only one thing to say and do. To separate the two. Although he had allowed Anne’s visit to the Reformatory under the pressure of the moment, her actions afterward were more extreme than expected.

A girl who, even in her young body, was more of an Inquisition Judge than anyone else, armed with discipline and willpower, spent most of her days going in and out of the Reformatory? An unexpectedly radical indulgence.

Of course, Anne did not see this as indulgence or change. Strictly speaking, this was her original self.

A fragile, spoiled girl, far from maturity.

It was only natural for a girl with a childish heart to not want to be apart from someone she had just reunited with after ten years, even for a second. But even that love was not as naive as a first crush.

“Otherwise… I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Despite her calm, restrained voice, the unrestrained energy radiating from her revealed her true feelings.

If Louis was touched, she would not stay still. The unspoken declaration, already proven several times through actions, was now directed at the person sitting closest to the divine throne.

What Anne was saying in silence was, in essence, apostasy and filial impiety.

A Cardinal and an Inquisition Judge, a father and a daughter. Words that should never be spoken in any relationship.

Breaking human ethics, defying divine law. If they tried to keep Louis away from her or execute him under the pretext of heresy—even if it was her fellow Inquisition Judge or François—she would kill them.

“Devotion to God, love for humanity, the fame and honor you’ve achieved. Are all those things nothing to you?”

But her tear-filled eyes remained unwavering. Just as the flowing water would freeze even harder when winter returned.

“That’s not true.”

Even if the path of asceticism was half-forced, the things she gained along the way could not be unimportant.

Enduring and acting were done in moderation. If Anne had not possessed the virtues befitting an Inquisition Judge, she would never have been chosen.

Unshakable faith in Ailim, a sense of justice that pitied strangers and willingly sacrificed herself for them, and the talent to carry it all through without faltering.

Even if she had not become an Inquisition Judge but a priest, she could have been a defender of the gospel, and if she had entered a different field outside religion, given enough time and environment, she could have grown into a towering figure.

Who could have expected that a coughing girl would harbor a hero’s spirit as if bestowed by God? How could someone who could not even love herself become a hero loved by all?

Simply.

“Louis is just more precious to me than I am.”