Chapter 582: The Holy Voice (I)

The people of Sorex only knew that Edmon was the one who kidnapped Rose and took her away from the Holy Temple.

Even so, they believed that Rose was no longer pure and that she had become a taint upon the Holy Temple.

For that very reason, the Holy Temple decided to revoke her title as the Saintess and pass that title to a woman they considered purer than her.

"This is your home now," the Cardinal said.

He was still looking at Rose with that same smile on his face. The longer she looked at it, the more disgusted she felt, but Rose was too numb to show it.

She was too numb to be angry, too numb to care about anything happening around her. After everything she had lost, none of it seemed to matter anymore.

"Every morning and every night, you will pray at the temple," the Cardinal continued. "If you miss even a single day, someone will punish you."

Rose didn’t say anything in response. Her gaze remained fixed on the ground, feeling hopeless and wanting nothing more than to follow her husband and daughter in death.

"Do you understand?" The Cardinal suddenly grabbed her face with one hand and forced her to look at him. "I won’t know whether you understand or not if you don’t say anything."

Rose finally shifted her eyes toward him, but instead of feeling afraid, she simply laughed. "Actually, what do you want from me?"

The Cardinal straightened his back, and the smile disappeared from his face as he said, "Your devotion." He added, "And to make you realize that every sin has consequences, so now you must atone for everything you have done."

Rose laughed even louder. "Sin? And what kind of sin is given to people who use the Gods to torture others? Hypocrites? A bunch of demons dressed as ang—"

Slap!

Rose’s head snapped to the side when the Cardinal slapped her cheek so hard that her head began to spin slightly.

"Please mind your language on this holy ground, Rose." The Cardinal said her name as though it were something forbidden to speak. As though her name were something worse than the devil itself.

Rose took a deep breath and didn’t even have any intention of responding to the Cardinal.

After all, what was the point? No matter what she did, the Cardinal would always find a way to inflict pain on her.

"Remember what I told you before," the Cardinal continued as he wiped his hand with a clean handkerchief. "You have to climb one thousand steps barefoot, and you are not allowed to skip even a single one."

"Be grateful that I’m only giving you such a light punishment instead of hanging you in front of the public."

His tone sounded so cold and heartless. At that moment, Rose wasn’t even sure if she truly shared blood with him.

"Do you understand?" the Cardinal asked once more.

This time, Rose had no desire to argue any further, so she simply said, "I understand, Your Holiness."

"Good." The Cardinal smiled again. "I have asked the holy maidens to place your belongings in your room."

He then stepped aside, revealing two holy maidens who had been waiting several steps behind him.

"They will show you where you will be staying."

Rose glanced at them briefly before lowering her gaze again.

She didn’t say goodbye because there was nothing left for her to say to him.

The Cardinal seemed equally uninterested in dragging out their conversation. He simply turned around and began walking away, his white robes trailing behind him across the stone floor.

Rose watched his back for only a moment. Once, when she was still the Saintess, she had followed that same back countless times through the halls of the Holy Temple.

Now, as she watched him walk away, Rose felt nothing but emptiness.

"Lady Rose," one of the holy maidens quietly called. "Please follow us."

Rose finally looked away from the Cardinal. "All right."

She turned in the opposite direction and followed the two holy maidens without looking back, neither did the Cardinal.

===

On the other side, Primrose didn’t even pay attention to anything the Cardinal said. It was because her attention was completely focused on the thousand steps in front of them.

The steps led to a temple at the top of the hill, but that wasn’t even the only thing that caught her attention.

It was because these very stairs were the same stairs she and Edmund had climbed when they wanted to visit the Moon Goddess’s temple in Noctvaris.

Was this the same temple, or did it simply bear an extraordinary resemblance to it?

However, if this really was the same temple as the one in Noctvaris, didn’t that mean this place had been part of the Noctvaris Kingdom in the past?

Primrose finally understood everything.

She understood that Rose was the very reason the Mourning Veil statue had been built inside the Temple, and the Lycan warrior who was said to be her lover wasn’t a warrior who had died on the battlefield, but someone who had been killed by the Cardinal.

And the reason the Saintess climbed the thousand steps every day wasn’t because she wanted to pray to the Gods to bring her lover back to life.

Rose only did it because she was ordered to, and because she wanted nothing more than to curse all the Gods inside that temple.

There were fifteen Gods worshiped inside that temple, yet not a single one of them had tried to help her.

None of those Gods cared how much pain Rose suffered in this world.

Not one of them spoke to her as she climbed those thousand steps every morning and night, carrying a wooden box that had been sealed with magic so that what was inside would never rot.

Until one day, Rose heard someone speak to her, not in the holy Temple nor in her dreams.

That voice came to her when she stared at her husband’s severed head in the middle of the night, when everyone had fallen asleep and the light in her room had gone out.

"Do you hate them?"