Human beings are creatures who instinctively accept the things they love in the best possible light.
This stems from the psychology of "I do not wish to believe the things I love are bad."
But this tendency is proportional to one's goodwill toward others. For those we cherish, we forgive flaws, never suspect ill intent. Yet toward those we dislike, even the smallest slight feels deliberate, as if meant to bring us trouble.
As for those we feel indifferent toward—this mechanism does not even activate.
But for one particular girl, it was different. To her, whether fellow humans or beings not of humankind, all things upon this star were equal.
An abandoned child of unknown parentage, raised in a church orphanage. A body once ravaged by illness, restored through the Holy Scripture. A community of the faithful who upheld a pure, untainted creed.
To those who revered her as a girl gifted with the talent of salvation, the world she dreamed of was nothing less than Eden itself—a paradise where none would ever know suffering.
The greatest pessimism and the greatest optimism in the world are, in truth, one and the same.
"Their lives, within this world, have no value to me."
"But I live in this present. Countless lives live not in the age when gods still walked the earth."
"Ah, yes. So it should be, so it must be. This world, this cosmos, everything beneath this sky—none of it need be confused by my incomprehension. There is no need to demand answers of it. The truth is, to live contains within itself a depth that encompasses even the inexplicable. A depth equal in weight to the Lord's own being… a beautiful hymn, a wondrous phrase."
"Therefore—their pain is my pain. It is not suffering I cannot feel."
"The pain felt here and now is not something that belongs only to others… and that is precisely why it matters."
For that truth, she could surrender her life. She could renounce her role as savior. She could abandon her very self.
Until—
In the year 300, during the Millennium City's joint crusade to strangle Crimson Moon, the girl, as the Church's representative, encountered a woman who wielded illusion.
"Well, what a delightful find. Will you plunge into the abyss of pitch-black despair—or be consumed by a raging inferno? Ah, I can hardly wait to see which!"
The purple-haired magus radiated a miasma of mana, like a swarm of flies swaddling the girl's body.
The girl raised her eyes to the blood-red moon above. Somewhere in her consciousness wavered, faltering between illusion and reality. A sinister black light flooded her vision—countless geometric forms overlapping endlessly, as though she had stumbled into a mirror-hell of infinite reflections. Illusions upon illusions, ad infinitum.
The magician's spectacle was mischief refined to an extreme. A farce of surreal theatrics—yet deliberately so. It was crafted to anger her, or tempt her.
The girl knew little of Pope Novia's actual deeds. The Church's own records were pitifully sparse. Yet by observing Kaubeck, the one entrusted with the Holy Scripture, she could feel clearly how exalted, how righteous, how charitable Novia must have been.
Though separated by two centuries, the girl had heard the sayings left behind by saints, had seen Kaubeck's reverence when recounting the past. That alone was enough to engrave in her heart the impression: a holy man.
In sum, the illusions sought to tarnish that sanctity—not by painting Novia as a sadistic butcher, nor by portraying him as a petty villain. No, in these visions he was indeed noble most of the time.
But the final image shown was this: the noble one, struck down by the Lord's own might. That "reality."
For not all his deeds were pure. At times, Novia's actions diverged from the Church's God. A rebel. A heretic.
"Oh my, oh my… you're crying already? But this is fact~"
"…Francesca."
The magus—believing she had succeeded—looked closer. The girl's face was still gentle, but her eyes, strangely, seemed to shine with unearthly brilliance.
At first Francesca thought those were tears of despair. But the truth was the opposite.
The girl maintained her posture, performed the Church's highest gesture of reverence before the end of this illusion-world, and spoke words from the depths of her soul:
"I see. Thank you—for showing me this unknown truth."
When others sensed the emotion welling within those words, Francesca herself was taken aback.
That emotion was not grief.
It was overwhelming joy.
If her eyes had gleamed with tears, then those were tears of gratitude. Of exultation.
"...What are you saying…?"
At that moment, Francesca—who had hidden herself among mankind for centuries, who since witnessing that miracle on Britannia in the first century had absorbed and imitated the concepts of Ate's false humanity, mingled with Beelzebub's essence—felt fear again. For the first time in centuries.
Seeing Francesca's unease, the girl smiled.
"Life is filthy, foul, terrifying. But once a person has tasted comfort, they never wish to return to poverty. So too with life itself. Once it has known cleanliness, it never wishes to return to chaos."
"...What?"
What nonsense was this?
Francesca wished to retort, but fell silent—sensing something strange stirring in the girl.
"I often wondered: no matter how radiant, one day it fades. No matter how cherished, one day it is forgotten. If in this world there is no absolute, if all must end, then what meaning does living here and now truly hold?
Scant the traces we leave. Time erodes them all. One day even the stars will fall. What then of trembling mortals? What, what indeed?"
...What was this girl even saying?
And yet, Francesca had the feeling that the Church's "saint" was letting something sealed within her heart speak directly to her.
"Now… at last, I have found what is eternal."
The girl pressed a hand to her chest, eyes enraptured. She bowed deeply to the magus who had cast the illusions upon her.
Had her heart not been so taut with rapture, she might have wept then and there—from joy.
Francesca herself could not yet grasp what she had truly unleashed.
For this savior—who had separated herself from others, who bore the pain of all in silence—now realized that humanity were but unripe beasts. Creatures who consumed desire, who drowned in it, who melted into bubbles of craving. Restrained only by fragile bonds. And in that recognition, she found something—something akin to herself—that had endured until now.
In other words: to her, all humans she had met since birth were incomplete. Only the primordial source—the origin—was whole.
At that moment, the Holy Scripture upon her body began to shine.
"Ah… how detestable."
She caressed it as one would soothe a nursing infant.
"Ah, how detestable. The countless lives that should have ended two centuries ago. All of them… mere fragments."
"And if so, who could possibly refuse that immense love? That eternal love?"
Her voice dripped with a seductive magic, intoxicating, as she cradled the Scripture like a babe at her breast.
"You—"
And in the next moment, the magus simply collapsed, consciousness extinguished.
"The great work you could not complete—I shall carry it forward. Until the day it is fulfilled, I will forever raise my voice in blessing for you."
Thus it was that the savior anointed by the planet itself, Mabel the Famine, rejected the holy sword that should have been hers. With the Scripture, and with the bond between Ate's false humanity and Ate herself, she conquered from within the human spirit—through covenant and faith.
In the Millennium City she overthrew the Magus Marshal and the King of the Moon. And from both, she claimed their armaments.
Time passed. A hundred years later—
After the Battle of Châlons, as Western Rome reeled from catastrophic defeat, panic spread across the provinces. Even the Roman Church itself should have been no different.
In the Eternal City, refugees from every land gathered. Fearing death, they prayed desperately for the Lord's salvation.
But then—no one could say when—it was as if in an instant, the entire city was plunged into eerie silence.
A crushing, suffocating "black tide."
From the city's heart it spread—slowly, inexorably—black winds unfurling, smothering all around.
Every living thing fell unresponsive. Bodies still stood, but minds were gone. Rome became a city ruled by silence alone.
"Well, how fitting. At last, the Church, drunk on indulgence, meets its day of ruin."
At the center of the Papal Hall, Mabel the Famine sat. Behind her, space warped and twisted.
A roar—stripped of all feeling—filled the hall. Not a sound but a presence, a cry that seemed itself a living being.
"Beelzebub's power is nearly spent. And now… gods from beyond the stars?"
Mabel smiled gently.
"You are different from the gods of the Age of Gods."
For the gods of that age—first came the deity, and then the myths.
But the gods she spoke of now were the reverse. First came the myths, and then—out among unknown galaxies—beings appeared who conformed to those yet-unborn myths.
"In that case, perhaps this too fulfills a part of Revelation."
The savior sat quietly. Her words were brimming with feeling, as if a declaration of love:
"I shall wipe from this planet every species defined as human. Not a single one shall remain."
"After all—there are truly only two of us in this world."