A thousand years ago, the world had given birth to Profeta. To be more accurate, it had most likely been a thousand and four or five years ago, but even Profeta herself could no longer be sure, so we shall round it down and stick to a thousand.
As one of the world's proxies, Profeta was born with an intellect on par with that of a human. Thus, she'd never gotten along with her kind. After a few difficult years, she'd decided to leave her homeland behind and embark on a journey.
She hadn't had any specific goals in mind, but she'd had a destination. As the prophet, Profeta knew where the saint would be born. The only issue was that she was a turtle. At the time, Profeta hadn't been as big as she was now, so she'd been even slower. Every step she'd taken was slow and steady, true to her species' nature.
After she'd traveled for a while, Profeta had reached a place where food was scarce. Unable to sustain herself, she'd almost died alone on the side of the road.
The one who'd saved Profeta was a certain woman who, in those days, had yet to lose her mind entirely—Eve.
While she'd had an inkling that the prophetic turtle would eventually become a thorn in her side, Eve had picked her up nonetheless—she needed her. A child had been growing inside of Eve's belly, and she'd been painfully aware that her sanity was slipping away from her. She'd feared that she wouldn't be able to raise her child, so she'd hoped to leave the baby in Profeta's hands—or rather, her feet.
Profeta had ended up becoming little Alfrea's caretaker. She'd grown up by her side like an older sister—(although if you asked Alfrea, she'd tell you that the turtle was simply her favorite pet).
One day, Eve had reached her breaking point.
She'd immediately fled as far as she could, hanging on to the last thread of sanity she'd had left to make sure she wouldn't hurt her daughter.
Alfrea convinced herself that her mother had thrown her away, but the reality was a little different. Had Eve not left in time, she would most likely have turned against her greatest threat—the young Alfrea.
After her mother's departure, Alfrea had discovered her mother's true identity and all of the terrible deeds she'd committed. She'd resolved to stop her.
It was hard to say whether Alfrea had made that decision on her own or if the world had stirred her in the direction that suited it. Regardless of the reason, she'd carried Profeta—who soon became her favorite shield instead of her favorite pet—away and recruited comrades to help her fight the witch. Before long, she'd become strong enough to rival her.
She'd succeeded in defeating her once, but then she'd fallen for Eve's tricks until it was too late.
Her mother had come back and sealed her, and with her out of the picture, Profeta had made her way to a large lake in the middle of the forest. There she'd remained, watching over the world.
She'd never been able to easily travel because of her walking speed, but she'd become far too big for someone to pick her up and carry her like Alfrea used to.
In the forest, Profeta had met strange monkey-like people. At first, they'd treated her like a monster. In order to show them that she wasn't hostile, she'd taught them how to treat wounds and illnesses. From that point onward, they'd become strangely attached to her.
After a while, the royal families had started visiting her. Apparently, Alfrea had blurted out that a prophet existed during one of her drunken nights. People had been searching for her for years.
And so, for many, many years, Profeta would inform them of the birth of the next saint. With each new prophecy, though, she gradually lost track of her raison d'être.
The saints were victims to be sacrificed for the good of the world.
Whenever Profeta would give the royals information on the new saint, a baby would be ripped away from her parents and raised for the sole purpose of battling the witch...only to ultimately become the next one.
The only thing Profeta had achieved was to push those girls into hell. Wouldn't it have been better if she stopped with the prophecies altogether? As the years passed, she'd found herself asking that question more and more often. Besides, the hard-won period of peace would almost never last more than five years—they'd just delay the problem, not solve it.
Still, if they were to have stopped fighting, the current witch would have never known peace, Profeta realized. Only the next saint could set her free by taking her place.
To bear with her guilt, Profeta had continued to make more predictions, hoping that the witch would be freed from her suffering as quickly as possible. She'd continued the cycle, dropping another saint into hell to save the previous one.
Seventeen years ago, Profeta—who'd by then pushed dozens of girls into hell—made a terrible mistake.
She'd prophesied that the next saint would soon be born and saw that her parents were thinking of naming her Ellize. She'd told Aiz and informed him of the location of their village.
She hadn't expected that a huge problem would arise, though.
There was another couple in the same village. They were also expecting a child and were on very good terms with the parents of the future saint's—so much so that the two couples often discussed baby names together.
The saint's parents had eventually changed their minds and decided on the name Eterna for their baby girl. Since they'd given up on the name Ellize, their friends—who liked the name very much—had decided to use it instead.
That was how the two babies had been mistaken at birth, resulting in the worst mix-up in Fiori's history.
Profeta had realized her mistake right away. Though she'd wanted to warn the king, she was too slow to make her way to the royal capital on foot and too big to fit inside the steam train. She'd contemplated tasking the guardians with the mission, but they couldn't understand each other!
The turtle had been left with no choice but to wait for the royals' next visit. The thing was, they didn't visit her often. She was stuck and soon fell into despair.
Profeta had always been good at making predictions, and she could already see the bleak future that awaited humanity because of her.
Saints were practically living sacrifices, but they were also revered and carefully brought up as saviors. They'd always be forgiven no matter what they did, and there were always people around them at their beck and call.
People raised in such environments usually became twisted. The previous saints had mostly turned out to be all right, but that was only because they were somehow born with a heart purer than most other human beings. They also seemed to have a natural and unconscious need to fulfill their duty.
Ellize would be different. She was a regular person with no God-given duty, so she'd surely grow up to become an arrogant girl. A chill had run through Profeta as she'd imagined how terrible the fake saint would become.
To make things worse, Ellize suffered from the same birth defect as Eve—her mana naturally circulated at a much higher rate than that of regular people. That meant that the negative emotions she took in would slowly taint her heart as she'd be unable to process and dispose of them fast enough.
Nobody who'd suffered from that illness—Excessive Circulation Syndrome, as Profeta called it—had turned out to be decent human beings. In fact, they'd all ended up being scoundrels of the worst kind. Many had even left their mark in history as notorious villains.
Profeta had ended up putting the worst possible person in the worst possible position.
The prospect of their grim future had weighed heavily on her mind. She'd been convinced that soon, the royals would march an army into her forest and execute her for her mistake.
However, Profeta's predictions had proven to be wrong.
The fake saint, Ellize, grew up to become saintlier than any saint before her. No matter how much she circulated her mana, her heart showed no signs of darkening. Her mana pool, on the other hand, skyrocketed. She started exterminating monsters left and right. She healed the sick and the wounded, restored nature, and even found a way to fight starvation.
Before she knew it, the baby she'd mistakenly pointed to as the saint had become the greatest saint in history. Although Alexia the witch was still alive, Ellize had succeeded in bringing peace to the world.
What in the world was going on? How had that happened? Profeta wondered.
She was utterly shocked by this unpredictable development, and she found herself clinging to a new hope. Perhaps she, the fake who'd surpassed the real saints, could change the world for good.
Saints were sacrifices bound by their heavy duties, but they could only save the world for a very short amount of time. They were just cogs in an unstoppable wheel of suffering and pain. Ellize, however, wasn't part of this system. She was free of their constraints.
That was why Profeta had made the decision to come out of her forest and stand on the front line—something she hadn't done in nearly a thousand years since she'd fought alongside Alfrea.
She'd hoped that something would finally change, and her wishes came true. Ellize removed the source of the pain.
Thanks to her, there would never be another witch. Thus, there was no need for any more saints.
The origin of all their pain was the darkness in people's hearts, which had corrupted each witch. Saints had never been the answer—as it turned out, the only way to rid the world of the curse was for the light inside each person to shine through.
All that was left, Profeta concluded, was to bring about the happy ending Ellize hoped for—a future where everyone could smile.
Ellize was on the verge of dying after using all of her strength. If that happened, no one would smile, so Profeta decided to nominate her as the next prophet. Unlike the saints, Profeta had the right to pick her successor herself. By doing so, she'd transfer both her power and the rest of her lifetime into them. She supposed that the world had made it that way so there'd never be two prophets alive at the same time.
That meant, of course, that Profeta would die. She felt herself grow weak, but she smiled nonetheless. With this, she'd been able to prevent the worst future—the one in which Ellize died.
"Profeta... Why?" Ellize asked. She seemed puzzled by the fact that she'd just escaped death.
"Why are you even asking? If you die, everyone will fall into despair once again. The cycle of suffering has finally ended. I can't let this world's light die out at the very end, can I? Better I die than you. I've already had a long life, you know? Besides, I got to witness the end of this tragedy when I thought I never would. If I can give you a little more time, this longevity of mine will finally be of some use. Most people don't get to die such a satisfying death, Ellize."
Profeta wasn't putting on a brave front. She had no regrets; she truly believed that she couldn't have asked for a better ending. Besides, if she hadn't, she suspected she'd be stuck living out the end of her needlessly long turtle life in boredom and regret.
"I don't even have much longer to live, so what does it matter?" Profeta continued. "I've got, what? A hundred years at best?"
"That's an awfully long time, actually," Alfrea quipped.
As far as Profeta was concerned, a hundred years was nothing. For a human, though, it was tremendous. Instead of dying young, Ellize would get to enjoy a full life.
"Ellize, you need to keep on living," Profeta said, ignoring Alfrea. "You rescued so many people. You even saved what was left of Eve and the others. So how could I let you perish like that? From now on, I want you to live for yourself. Find someone you like...or stay celibate, that's fine too! What matters is that you do what you want to do and live happily. You don't need to keep being their saint any longer."
The era in which the saint was needed had ended today. Just like Ellize had said, it was time for a new era—and she was needed to welcome it.
What ought to disappear is the millennium-old relic of the bygone days, she thought to herself. Then, she said, "Your era starts now."
Having entrusted her dreams to future generations, the turtle who'd watched over the world for a thousand years closed her eyes.
◇
What a nostalgic dream, she thought as she opened her eyes.
The sight that greeted her was the same as always: the ceiling of her bedroom. As she woke up from her nap, she mused to herself that she hadn't dreamed of her past—or rather, of her previous life—in a while.
She slowly got up, smoothed her disheveled black hair with her hands, and woke her computer from sleep mode.
Her desktop appeared on the screen. The wallpaper—a scene from the game she'd written, Kuon no Sanka—showed Ellize surrounded by the entire cast, smiling. One look at this picture was enough to warm her heart.
"I wonder how Ellize is doing these days...?" she asked herself out loud. "According to Niito-san, there's a pretty big discrepancy in the timeline. Considering what he said, I should have just died on the other side."
The young woman—Yamoto Tamaki—smiled.
After her death in Fiori, Profeta's soul hadn't passed to the other side. Instead, she'd been reincarnated into this world. Compared to the millennium she'd lived out in the other world, her time here had been rather short. Still, she'd already accomplished something—she'd turned her memories into a story.
She didn't mind that everyone else thought that her story was just fiction. All she wanted was to make sure as many people as possible would hear of it, to have them know about the saints who'd disappeared in the gaping pit of history. And she wanted them to know about the fake saint who'd brought an end to it all.
She'd sent her story to an online contest on a whim, and it had been picked up and turned into a game. At that point, her novel hadn't been completed yet, but since she'd had to focus on the game scenario instead, she'd left it hanging.
The game version, she'd figured, would attract a wider audience, and even more people would learn about Ellize's awesomeness.
Just as she'd hoped, the scenario had been okayed by the game company. However, they'd requested a ton of changes. They didn't want the story to be linear, so they'd forced her to add all the other routes. They'd also ended up going with Verner as the main character instead of Ellize. In the end, Kuon no Sanka had become a dating sim.
"A linear game with an overpowered female protagonist won't sell!" they'd told her. Tamaki realized later that they'd been planning on going the dating sim route from the moment they'd offered her the award.
God damn it! Just thinking about it pissed her off.
And to add insult to injury, they'd removed Ellize from the heroine lineup because she was too powerful compared to the other characters. That was when Tamaki had spoken up and vehemently opposed the cut. She'd picked up the pen because she wanted to tell Ellize's story. Omitting her was completely out of the question. After long rounds of negotiations, Tamaki had succeeded in saving Ellize's storyline—on the condition that it became a hidden route. It would overshadow all the others if it wasn't, the company had said.
Curse you, Ijuuin!
The discovery conditions had ended up being so far-fetched that no one had found the route for literal years.
Damn you, Ijuuin!
"Now then... They wanted me to write about what happens at the end of Ellize's route as a DLC, huh? They just keep shoving requests down my throat! I also wish I knew what happened afterward! I can't believe they kept telling me that Ellize's route was useless, yet now that it's popular they want to make money off it!" Tamaki grumbled to herself as she thought of the new scenario Ijuuin wanted her to write.
Speaking of Ijuuin—she'd met up with him only a few days ago along with a man named Fudou Niito. They'd had a very interesting talk, but for some reason, Ijuuin had forgotten all about it. She'd tried asking him about it again, but all he'd answered with was "The scenario changed? What are you talking about? It was like that from the start!" He also seemed to have no idea who Fudou Niito was.
She hadn't been able to get in touch with the man who claimed he'd met Ellize either. He'd looked like he was about ready to kick the bucket, so it was likely he'd already passed away.
If everything he'd told her was true, it left her with one question: why was he, out of all people, able to contact Ellize?
A couple more mysteries also remained.
The biggest of them all was the alternative story Tamaki had seen when she was still Profeta—the one in which Ellize was a horrible person.
Tamaki had called that story "scenario A," but she still had no clue why or how she'd been able to see it. Had some sort of memory filter impacted her to prevent her from seeing the real future? Or had the world tried to give her a hint in an effort to change an upcoming tragedy?
Fiori itself had most likely been trying to break the chain of suffering, and that was why it had brought Ellize to them. Tamaki was pretty sure that was just wishful thinking on her part, but it'd be nice if she was right.
No amount of rumination would give her the answer, though, so she decided to settle on the theory she liked most.
"What would Ellize have done after? She'd probably step down from her role as the saint. She always seemed pretty hellbent on giving Eterna back her rightful spot, after all. In that case... I can picture her building a little cottage in the forest and retiring. Yeah, she'd totally do that. Little Verner and Miss Layla would surely follow her... I'm writing a dating sim here, so there needs to be some romance, after all. To be fair, I'm not sure if Ellize ever had romantic feelings for anyone at all, but the players will be happy if I write her together with Verner. Now, the thing is that Verner tends to do the most unexpected things. Instead of following her to her cottage, maybe he'd blurt out something like, 'I'll leave to become a man strong enough to protect you!' and go on a journey to train..."
Tamaki casually typed away, imagining Fiori's future after her passing.
Things may have turned out exactly as she'd predicted...and they may have ended up being completely different. All she knew was that a happy tomorrow was waiting for them all. After all, they had the strongest fake saint with them. Better than that, they had the one-and-only Great Saint who'd made her raison d'être the people, not the world.
Tamaki smiled fondly at her screen as she lost herself in thought.
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