Prologue
“Ah… my daughter! Vivian!”
A man forced his way through the line of holy knights blocking the entrance. His voice broke as he shoved his head between them.
“How can I possibly send her off like this, huh?!”
He howled like a wounded beast.
When the knights refused to let him pass, he tore off the cloth wrapped around his mouth and the gloves on his hands. At that sight, the knights recoiled as though he himself were a walking infection, drawing their swords in alarm.
“Back off!”
“Don’t come any closer!”
“Please! Let me see my daughter one last time! You can’t just turn her into ashes like this!”
Behind the knights, bodies lay in a neat row, faces covered with cloth. They were infected corpses—soon to be burned together for purification.
“Now that he’s removed his gloves and mask, he’s probably infected too. Kill him—”
“No, don’t!”
Just as one of the plague-masked holy knights raised his sword to strike, a voice cut through the chaos.
“Bring him here.”
It was Maria, the High Priest, who had been silently observing the situation.
“But Your Eminence, this man—”
“Bring him. It’s fine.”
Draped in a mantle of crimson and gold across both shoulders, she wore a gentle, almost merciful smile. The man, momentarily reassured by that expression, staggered toward the pit.
“May I ask your name?”
“G-Garick…”
“I see, Garick. I cannot begin to imagine the pain of a father who has lost his daughter. However, we cannot leave potentially infected bodies unattended. This is the divine duty bestowed upon us by the Goddess Mayat.”
“Just… just let me say goodbye. Since she was taken to isolation, I haven’t even seen her face once.”
As Garick pleaded, Maria smiled and spoke coldly to the holy knight beside her.
“Burn it.”
At her command, one of the knights took a torch from the brazier and stepped toward the pit.
“Stop!”
Someone shouted from afar.
There, standing in the distance, was a woman in a white dress. On her gloved hand of lace, she held a strange silver bell—and a blade.
“Ugh… that stench.”
Elisia frowned as she stepped forward in her shoes.
The holy knights moved to block her path.
“Step aside.”
“Madam, we are about to incinerate the bodies of the infected. You may not approach.”
“She is the Duchess of Albrecht! How dare you block her way!”
Her maid, Betty, who had been following in small hurried steps, raised her voice.
At the mention of the duchess, the knight flinched. But his orders from the High Priest came first.
“I apologize, my lady. We have been ordered by the High Priest to allow no one near.”
“You’ve got a weak constitution, don’t you?”
The sudden remark made the knight’s eyes widen.
The tip of Elisia’s blade shifted slightly—from his throat to the region of his heart.
“You suffered severe asthma as a child. After that, you trained relentlessly with the sword… and your mother passed away two years ago, didn’t she?”
The knight stumbled back.
Her voice dropped, strangely calm yet heavy enough to crush the air itself.
“Look me in the eyes before I make you reunite with your dead mother in tears.”
Her violet eyes flared like embers.
It felt as if he were being pulled into a deep amethyst cavern filled with ancient mystery.
“W-what…?”
For a moment, the ground beneath him seemed to collapse. His mind went blank, as if stripped bare and thrown into darkness.
When he came to, the woman was gone.
Instead, a purple mist shaped like a tiger loomed right in front of his face.
“Aaaah!”
The knight screamed and collapsed backward. His comrade rushed over in confusion, but the man had already fainted, foam at his mouth.
Elisia stepped past him without a glance and approached the bodies.
Massaging her stiff neck, she murmured,
“To declare the living dead… how do they intend to bear the karmic consequences of such a violation of destiny?”
Garick, meanwhile, still clung desperately to his daughter’s body.
His daughter, Vivian, lay on the rough soil, wrapped in nothing but a thin shroud—no flowers, no offerings, only a wasted frame of a girl he thought he would never see again.
Then—
Kiik!
A centipede-shaped shadow writhed and let out a strange cry as it was drawn into her pendant.
At that same moment, the girl who had been thought dead drew a trembling breath, as though surfacing from deep water.
“Hah…!”
“Vivian!”
Garick pulled her into his arms, trembling violently.
She had opened her eyes.
“She’s alive…!”
“Did you see that?! She brought the dead back!”
“What did you say?”
“The rumor is true! The Duchess of Albrecht… she’s a saint!”
Whispers erupted through the crowd.
Maria’s expression hardened.
“Th-this is unacceptable! This is heresy!”
Elisia ignored her completely.
“My back hurts…”
She stood and reopened her blade.
The wound that had been cut earlier split open again, and blood dripped heavily to the ground.
“Wandering things… now that the gate is open, come forth.”
At her words, black shadows shaped like centipedes began crawling out from beneath the cloth-covered corpses.
“They’re moving!”
“It’s the wrath of the goddess!”
Panic spread like wildfire.
Elisia shook a silver bell in her other hand. The clear ringing cut through the chaos.
The shadows twisted and grew—forming into a massive centipede that lunged toward her.
Now… just a little more—
When it opened its jaws wide in front of her—
Elisia opened her pendant.
The creature let out a human-like scream as it was sucked inside.
One of its limbs lashed out and caught her hair, but a white-robed female figure appeared behind Elisia and struck it away with a fan.
How dare you touch that body!
The centipede struggled, but in the end, its entire form was swallowed into the pendant.
Click.
The locket shut.
At that moment, the supposed corpses began to move.
One by one, they lifted their heads as though waking from sleep.
“Mom!”
“My brother!”
“My son!”
The crowd erupted in tears and chaos, pushing past the knights.
“Saintess… she saved them!”
“My daughter is alive!”
Elisia raised her voice over the commotion.
“To conduct funerals is a sacred rite of passage for the dead. Yet you attempted to burn those who were never dead in the first place!”
Maria turned sharply, realizing she had lost control.
Even if she ordered the knights to arrest her now, the people would only turn against the church.
There was no way to stop her.
“From this day forward, I will personally oversee all funerals in this territory.”
In an era where even coffins differed by social rank, Elisia boldly declared reform over funeral customs—and in doing so, she earned the title of “Saintess.”
The atmosphere shifted in an instant.
Maria shouted in desperation,
“This… this must be the power of a demon! According to the sacred doctrines of the temple—!”
“Don’t call this kind of thing a funeral.”
Elisia tilted her head slightly, her blade hanging loosely at her side.
Her violet gaze pierced Maria like ice.
For a moment, Maria could not breathe.
Was this truly the infamous wicked duchess… Elisia?
“I will ensure that nothing like this ever happens in this land again.”
She looked slowly over the people who had risen from what they thought was death.
The burial ground, once filled with despair, now pulsed with trembling life.
“No more desecrating the dead. No more abandoning the living. No more ruling over people in the name of gods.”
Finally, she turned her gaze to the High Priest.
“From this day on… the order of this land will no longer belong to you.”
