-Even though I walk through the dark valley, I am not afraid, for I know He guides me.
Each person's voice was different, but they all memorized a prayer.
A faint scent of incense wafted along with the sounds of prayers recited by the Orthodox priests.
There was only one stick of incense in the censer, but the smoke it produced was thick and still filled the area around the bed where Vlad and Jean lay.As if trying to dispel the fog that filled the surroundings.
"…!!"
At that moment, Gunther, who had been memorizing the prayer for a while, opened his closed eyes.
'What's this?'
A sinister feeling that cannot be described in words.
Before I knew it, the hairs stood up on the back of my hand as I held it tightly to pray.
It was a warning issued by the instincts I had developed throughout my life.
"…Captain!"
Gunther's assistant approached, shouting, piercing through the clear sounds of the prayer.
He, who had decided to stay outside the door during the ceremony, was now looking at Gunther with a very anxious face.
"Outside is unusual. I think you should go out right now."
"…"
He was an assistant who always faced situations calmly, but now the end of his words trembled.
It was as if he had seen something he couldn't handle.
"…I understand."
In a few words, Gunther was not the only one who heard the assistant's report.
Justia, who was praying beside him, looked at Gunther trying to get up with a perplexed expression.
"Do it for me. The only person who can replace me now is you."
There was a starlight that followed Vlad into Jean's dream.
It was a signal indicating to people not to get lost, a thread that should not be let go of, but now the starlight was trembling slowly.
The fog in the city of Moshiam was thickening.
With small shadows suddenly emerging from inside the carriage in which the woman traveled.
-Go find him. To your home.
The children who jumped from the carriage were happy to see Moshiam for the first time in a long time.
This was the children's hometown and a place they longed for.
***
Kuuuung!
"Tsk!"
Vlad stumbled at the sudden jolt.
"What happened?"
[It has sunk.]
Kihano, who had blocked the chapel door with his back, began to click his tongue as he saw the dust falling.
"What has sunk?"
[You saw it too, didn't you? The tree floating in the air.]
Jean's dreams were slowly being eroded, and above them rose the Qliphoth tree, the subject of the curse.
And the tree's branches, which were completely upside down, slowly approached Jean's dream.
"You said it would be fine for three days, didn't you?"
[Things in the world don't always go as calculated.]
Bang, bang, bang!
Vlad wanted to express his complaint about the suddenly worsening situation, but he felt a vibration behind him and bit his tongue again.
"How many people were inside in total?"
[The physical number doesn't matter much, apparently.]
Like the sound of hail falling.
Countless small palms continued to bang on the chapel door tirelessly.
To get out, or to capture the two.
"If I get out of here, I will definitely kill the son of a bitch who made this curse."
[…Anger can sometimes be a great motivation.]
Even without being an expert in curses, he could imagine how many children had died, as much as the sound of the palms resonating in his ears.
Feeling every vibration from his back, Vlad's gaze grew fiercer.
[You didn't find the deacon you were looking for in there. So, where could he be?]
"..."
But the burning anger would only be effective at certain appropriate times.
Asked by Kihano about the nature of the situation, Vlad quickly turned his head, scanning the surroundings.
But unlike the first floor or the basement, Vlad, who had never been in other parts of the church, could not point out with certainty where.
[The boy named Jean is too terrifying and difficult to handle. If you were that boy, where would you go?]
Kihano already knew who to look for, but at that moment, Vlad was the connection to Jean.
To find the young deacon in his dream without a path, he had to think of the threads that connected them.
"...If it were me, it would be Andreas."
[Alright.]
And Vlad remembered well why he was standing here.
In Jean's twisted dream, there would only be one person who would be where he should be.
"But I don't know where he is..."
[As you've already thought, the deacon's dream will tell you the rest.]
"Yes?"
Kihano's finger pointed to Vlad's chest.
"What?"
Following Kihano's finger, there was something small that now glowed slightly on Vlad's chest.
[Vlad of Soara. Follow your name.]
A precious name given by a true priest and witnessed by a young deacon.
In this place where everything was distorted, Vlad's ID card was shining brightly.
It was a name he held deep in his heart because it was precious.
***
"Get all the torches and lanterns out! We must drive away the fog!"
With a loud voice echoing through the mist, the Moshiam church began to glow like fire.
Inside the torch, which burned brighter than its original firepower, there was a divinity created by the priests as a congratulatory symbol.
'Shit!'
Gunther is one of the only two knights of the Orthodox Church of the North.
However, what he was seeing now was a wave of malice he had never experienced in his entire life.
"Dad! Mom! I'm here!"
"Open the door! Mom! It's me!"
There were black shadows wandering through the thick fog.
Although they were small and weak, they still had the energy to knock on the door and remained at the door following the memories of when they were alive.
Waiting for the parents to open the door.
Hoping someone would hug them as they cuddled.
"This is pure malice... Damn bastards."
He couldn't see it, but he could hear it.
The sound of parents rushing to open the door at the sound of their children's voices.
As the doors opened one by one, the lights shining through the fog began to fade one by one.
"You finally crawled out."
Gunther, with his left eye closed and a fierce expression, saw a strange shape rising beyond the fog.
What came to mind, twisting, was a tree split exactly in half.
An upside-down sky tree, completely ignoring all the laws of this world.
Just like in Jean's dream, the tips of the tree's branches began to slowly descend below the city.
As what was supposed to reach the sky sank into the ground, the laughter of the children who finally found their parents began to spread.
***
As time passed, Jean's dreams became increasingly distorted, disorganizing the Varna church more and more.
The chandelier, which should have been on the ceiling, rose from the floor, and the stairs, which were supposed to be silently fixed to the wall, twisted like living snakes.
"I think I'm going to get dizzy!"
[That's because physical things don't mean anything!]
Vlad had never felt dizzy, not even at sea, but the staircase twisting like a snake's spine was an exception.
Even Kihano, who said physical things didn't matter, seemed unsteady like Vlad.
"How many floors do I have to climb!?"
[Don't shout! It hurts a lot!]
It was only when Vlad and Kihano, following the golden thread pointed out by the ID they held in their hands, discovered the hallway in front of them, that they could jump from the stairs.
"Oh... damn."
[...It seems like I'm getting old. It wasn't like this in the past.]
With his head still spinning, Vlad looked down to the first floor where he had been moments before.
Despite having climbed the stairs for quite some time, the children's gazes looking up at him from below were close enough to see them clearly.
"Keuok."
Vlad swallowed the sour liquid that had filled his esophagus and looked towards the hallway in front of him.
"This place seems intact too."
[It hasn't been corroded yet.]
Toc, toc, toc...
However, suddenly, black cracks began to appear on the walls of the hallway, causing fear in Kihano.
"..."
["…"]
The two looked at each other with pale faces, and without needing to say who would go first, they began to run in the direction indicated by the golden thread.
"You have a loose tongue, don't you!"
[...It was just a coincidence that I said it.]
Damn it!
The crack in the wall was widening, as if a mouth were opening.
Located between the black cracks were tree branches that had suddenly sunk into Jean's dreams.
Strange leaves began to bloom from the branches falling from the sky.
[There it is!]
As the two ran to avoid the crack, a small door began to appear in front of them.
Above the bright door with golden threads, there was a plaque that said Priest Andreas.
"If the door doesn't open this time...!"
Vlad, remembering what happened underground, quickly closed his left eye.
As Vlad's world moved away from Jean's dream, the cracks that followed began to diminish little by little.
[Wait a moment!]
But this time was different.
The basement door was the door that blocked Jean's fear.
-Go ahead!
And the door in front of me now was the door where the real priest was.
When the small door opened, there was an old priest in a robe of pure white.
As always, he gestured for Vlad to enter.
"Let's go!"
At the end of the hallway, a golden and white figure exactly like him began to run towards the small door that the priest had opened.
The black crack that followed did its best to extend its branches, but in the end, it couldn't capture the unexpected things that could be seen through the battlefield.
The golden color entered first into the arms opened by the priest.
[Sigh!]
As the white, which had been following like protecting him, entered, the old priest closed the small door as if he had been waiting.
A huge impact came, causing the small door to barely bear it.
But as Kihano said, physical things were of no use inside.
-It's okay. Everything is fine.
A memory of Andreas embracing a trembling Jean.
He was small but sturdy, faithfully protecting the young man's last barrier.
It was such warmth that even the black cracks breaking like waves couldn't easily break it.
-You've made it this far.
Vlad, who had slipped inside and was still lying on the ground, saw Andreas smiling at him.
Dressed in robes of pure white instead of bishop's garments, he looked the same as when he distributed white wheat bread on a cold winter day.
"I told you I would protect you."
Andreas laughs at Vlad's response.
Behind him, Jean could be seen clinging to his robe of pure white.
The young deacon, who for some reason seemed a little younger, smiled faintly as he looked at the knight who had come back for him.
Finally, I found him.
The young deacon at my request.
The knights who entered the dream of the young Jean, who had potential, smiled faintly.
***
The corpses were scattered all over the gates of Moshiam.
The cross-section of the corpse was deeply cracked, as if it could fall apart at any moment, and the internal organs were still visible.
A man silently bowing his head in front of those corpses.
Not a single drop of blood flowed on the tip of the sword, which held skill instead of power.
"...There's a dragon."
There's something in front of me that needs to be slain.
"There are spirits..."
Moreover, there's something that needs protecting.
The man, seemingly lost in the mist, began to walk slowly upon seeing the church lights burning brightly ahead of him.
And the knights start to follow him.
Headless men.
A woman with hair starting green but ending black watched them and clasped her hands as if in prayer.
"If there's something I can't finish, I have to come back."
Like a tree floating in the mist, a man with white hair and a headless knight walked along an inverted path.
To finish something left unfinished or to correct something you regret.
"All of you deserve to return."
An unidentified woman smiled as she listened to the sound of children playing all over the city.
A city shrouded in mist where pure beings, free from life and death, from pain and agony, run freely.
She had been dreaming of a world like this all along.
This isn't a city burning bright red like the tip of a matchstick under God's will.
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