The girl and her father faced a problem.

Death visited as seldom as its weight was great, and deaths that left an intact body were rarer still. Those carried off by beasts or drowned left not even a corpse behind.

Only deaths from illness left bodies, but those posed another problem. Ever since the villagers had begun rushing to her father with every minor injury or ailment, ordinary illnesses no longer proved fatal.

Even when someone happened to die of a severe illness, the problem remained. Followers of Mother Earth preferred burial, but the poor who could not afford to bury their dead accepted the cremation encouraged by the Holy Church. Her father bit his lip as he watched the bodies burn away.

He could hardly dissect a body reduced to pale dust, nor could he neglect his patients and let them die. There was simply no way to obtain a corpse nearby.

In the end, growing impatient, her father decided to take a risk.

“Tyr, I shall be going a little farther afield today.”

An obsession in which means and ends had now reversed ruled him. It seemed he would not stop until he knew everything about the human body.

The girl felt a vague unease, but it went no further than worry. She was already an excellent healer who had surpassed her father.

“I’ll help too.”

“No need. It is a long, difficult journey.”

“That’s all right. I like walking at night. And you know, don’t you? No matter how far I walk, I never get out of breath.”

“It is a long journey over two passes. Taking you along would only attract more attention. Stay and look after the house today.”

Her father was firm, and his reasoning sound. She soon accepted his decision. Her displeasure must have shown on her face, however, for as he gathered his coat, he smiled kindly and said,

“Instead, would you wrap Ralion’s hooves in cloth? It is a long way, so I will need the mule to pull the cart today...”

It was a dark night.

Since the villagers must not see him leaving, her father set out long after evening had passed. The girl sat on the largest rock in the village to see him off, then waited for him in that same spot.

Glittering stars drifted across the sky. The moon sank so slowly it made her yawn. Watching the setting moon and sparkling stars, she lost herself in endless thought.

Her father was not wrong.

That cruel illness. That heartless death. Without them, her mother would still be alive. Then her father would have been happy too, instead of becoming consumed by delusion.

So her father was not the one at fault. What was truly evil was the cruel disease that had made him this way...

[“I’m sorry, Tyr.”]

The sound of a passing breeze woke her. She must have dozed off. Dawn was breaking in the distance, and birds were chirping in the trees.

She hurriedly straightened up and looked around.

Had her father still not returned, even though the whole night had passed? Surely he would have woken her if he had seen her.

No, perhaps he had been too exhausted even to glance aside...

After watching the road for a while, she decided to go home. If he was not there yet, she could simply come back out.

As she retraced her steps and neared the little cottage where she lived alone with her father, an ominous premonition swept through her.

A large horse stood tethered near the house. It was a beautiful steed, twice Ralion’s size, with a magnificent mane. Its white saddle, expensive at a glance, bore the cross that was the Holy Church’s seal...

The moment she recognized it, she rushed inside.

Bad premonitions were never wrong.

The metallic smell of blood greeted her as she opened the door. The house was small enough for her to take in everything at a glance.

Three strangers in cold steel armor.

A blade dripping blood in one of their hands.

And beneath it, her father, collapsed and bleeding.

“Father!”

Pale with shock, she sank to her knees beside him. Her dying father’s eyes briefly regained their focus.

They softened with joy for an instant, then widened in horror and fear.

“Tyr... Run...”

“No! Father!”

His voice was so faint it seemed about to fail altogether. Yet, on the verge of death, he mustered every last scrap of strength and spoke through bloody froth.

“Whatever... it takes... Live... My... hope...”

“Father!”

The wound was grievous. Anyone, healer or not, could tell there was no hope.

Could she do it? She did not know. She had never used so much of her power on someone still alive.

But she had to succeed. Otherwise, her father would die. She closed her eyes and began exerting her control over the blood spilling out of him.

“Father, what shall we do with the girl?”

“Leave her and return. We are punishers, not murderers. We have obtained everything we need...”

The priest abruptly fell silent in the middle of his murmuring.

Blood moved with the girl’s fingers. Under her guidance, the blood gushing from her father’s chest returned to where it belonged. Blood surged through empty air.

Spilled water could not be gathered up again, but blood could. Desperately, she drew her father’s blood back.

“... Father. That is...”

The priest sharply raised his hand. A heavy silence bore down on them.

In a voice as weighty as the heavens pressing down, he addressed the girl.

“Little one. What is your name?”

The voice behind her brought her to her senses. These people had surely come to punish her father. They would not stand idly by and watch what she was doing.

But if she stopped now, her father would die. She could not let that happen. Still wielding blood manipulation, she pleaded desperately.

“T-Tyr. I’m sorry. We won’t do it again, so please, spare my father...”

“Tyr. Yes, Tyr. A lovely name. Did your father give it to you?”

“Y-yes. Father is a good man. He’s helped so many people. So, from now on, I’ll stop him...”

It was the plea of a devoted daughter. Had the stranger before her possessed even a trace of mercy, he might have turned and left.

But he was a priest. Mercy could not seep through armor forged of faith and duty.

“I cannot save your father. However...”

SHUNK.

Without any warning, the priest’s sword plunged into the girl’s chest.

A bewildered “Huh?” escaped her. Cold metal parted her skin, the blade quivering against the tip of her beating heart.

Then came terrible pain. Coughing up bloody froth from her pierced lung, Tyr crumpled onto the wooden floor.

The world blurs. Only pain shakes her mind. Her consciousness sinks deeper and deeper.

Around this point, the girl’s memories grew hazy.

Above her fallen body, she heard the priest murmur.

“I shall send you to the same place as your father.”

He flicked his blade. Blood traced the sword’s arc across the wooden floor.

That was the last thing the girl remembered from her life.

“I must reflect on this. Needless sympathy nearly ruined our work.”

“Shall we purify the place? Should I fetch a torch?”

“No. We must leave a warning. Let us uncover the bodies beneath the building before we leave.”

“Yes, Father.”

“That was dangerous. To think a seed of the Demon God lay in a place like this...”

“Sir, my arm’s been aching today... Aaaah!”

“Murder! Murder! The healer’s dead! Tyr too!”

“Huh? A... corpse?”

“Wait, this is the woman who died last month...”

“Here! There are lots of other bodies too...!”

“Could all those graves dug up lately have been the healer’s doing? No, this devil’s...”

“A devil...”

“Heaven punished him...”

“This place is cursed. Don’t let anyone near...”

“...”

“Tsk, tsk. They may have committed the grave sin of desecrating the resting places of the dead, but their flesh and their sins alike came from the earth. Is it not a pity that they cannot return to it? As a servant of Mother Earth, I cannot leave them like this to be cursed.”

“Father and daughter, facing each other even in death. Surely they were kind to one another as a family. Phew. Perhaps it is time I performed a funeral again.”

“There. All buried. Phew. It has been so long since I exerted myself. How exhausting.”

“May you find peace in Mother Earth’s embrace.”

Yet neither the priest who had stabbed the girl through the heart, nor the villagers who had abandoned them, nor the one who had buried her with her father realized a thing.

Despite the wound to her heart, the girl was not yet dead.

It was a time of endurance. Without even knowing why she had to live, the girl desperately clung to life within her grave. Even as she watched her father’s corpse rot before her eyes, she could not let go.

Was it because of the words he had left her? Or merely a primal instinct?

Holding fast to the blood that threatened to leave her body, she stubbornly pushed approaching death away.

‘It’s dark...’

Of course it was dark. She lay beside her father in a coffin buried underground. It had been so until now, and would remain so forever.

Then did she need color? Pigments made to ward off light?

No. Erase every color.

‘Hun...gry.’

The only thing to eat was her father before her...

The thought was horrifying. Eat him? Her father’s corpse? She could not. She could only resent the hunger that demanded such an unfilial act of cannibalism.

It would be far better not to feel hunger at all.

‘Thirs...ty.’

Without hunger, did she need saliva? With nothing left to lose, did she need tears?

None of them were necessary. Discard them.

‘It hurts...’

Why must she feel pain? Had some old philosopher not said that pain was proof of life? Then pain was meaningless to a girl who had already lost her life.

She resented the pain that pursued and tormented her to the very end. She had to discard it.

She needed no color. Erase it.

She needed no desire. Cut it away.

She needed no tears. Drain them.

She needed no pain. Scrape it out.

And so the girl endured long years of suffering, lying beside the blood she had possessed and the traces of life seeping from her father’s body.

Through it all, her blood manipulation approached its ultimate height with each passing day.

Every activity necessary for survival ceased. Only her blood moved to maintain her body. The girl who had once struggled so fiercely to keep her household running became a merciless tax collector exacting dues from her own body.

Thus, discarding everything she did not need, the girl slowly gained dominion over every blood vessel down to the tips of her fingers and toes.

Gradually extending her reach, she claimed all the blood spilled upon the earth.

And at some point, she opened the coffin lid and emerged into the world.

“Ah.”

A dry murmur escaped her. She had thought she had forgotten how to speak after so long without using words, but even after discarding everything else, language had apparently remained.

Darkness lay all around her, but her eyes were accustomed to it. She had lived in darkness every day.

By the time she awoke, so much had changed.

The village.

The world.

The people.

Only the girl remained unchanged...

No, perhaps she had changed most of all.

She had discarded countless things, but something still remained. A refined rage that burned cold. Because it had remained before her eyes in the form of her father’s corpse, she had never forgotten that emotion throughout those endless ages.

She moved her blood to make her body walk. Her steps were awkward, like those of a puppet on strings, but she grew accustomed to them relatively quickly.

Walking a road with no destination, only a purpose, she repeated the task she had taken upon herself.

She would take from the apostles of the Sky God as much as she had lost.

—Such was the story.

The girl gathered what she had discarded and forged it into one whole. Memories of endurance so ancient and painful that she had been forced to forget them. She gathered the time she had spent facing her father’s corpse, stripping away her body piece by piece, and placed it within a single card.

Magic was the manifestation of one’s own world. Recalling the self who had vanished twelve hundred years ago, the girl made a relic of the deceased.

The red heart drawn on the white card glowed the color of blood.

The girl thrust a single red card into the girl’s chest. With boundless pain, and tenderness.

Then she vanished with a faint smile.