EP.75 Book of Tirkanjaka - Old Testament (Part 2)
The girl and her father fell into a predicament.
Death visited as rarely as it was heavy, and even among those, deaths that left the corpse intact were even rarer. This was because being eaten by beasts or drowning left no bodies behind.
The only kind of death that left a corpse was death by illness, but that was also a problem. Ever since the villagers quickly sought out her father even for minor injuries or illnesses, ordinary diseases could no longer become a cause of death.
Furthermore, it was the same even if someone happened to die of a severe illness. People who followed the Earth Mother Goddess religion preferred burial, but the poor who couldn't afford the money to bury a corpse accepted cremation, which the Holy Church encouraged. Before the burning corpses, the father bit his lip.
No matter what, he could not dissect a corpse that had turned to ash, nor could he neglect his examinations and let people die. In this vicinity, it was absolutely impossible to obtain a corpse.
In the end, the father, growing desperate, decided to take a risk.
"Tir, I will go a little farther today and come back."
Now, an obsession with its priorities reversed dominated him. It seemed he would not stop until he knew everything about humans.
The girl felt a vague sense of anxiety, but it ended only as worry. Because the girl, having already surpassed her father, was already an excellent healer.
"I will help too."
"Enough. It is a long and rough road."
"It's okay. I like walking in the middle of the night too. And you know, right? No matter how much I walk, I don't get out of breath."
"It is a long road that crosses two mountain passes. Taking you along would only draw more attention, so guard the house today."
The father's will was stubborn and rational. The girl accepted it readily. However, perhaps noticing her displeased expression fully showing, the father, who was packing his coat, smiled benevolently and said.
"Instead, could you put cloth over Rallion's hooves? Since it's a long trip, I need a mule to pull the cart today..."
It was a dark night.
Because his departure must not be seen by the villagers, the father set off long after evening fell. The girl sat on the largest rock in the village, seeing her father off, and waited for him in the same spot.
Across the sky, twinkling stars flowed past. The moon set at a pace slow enough to make one yawn. The girl gazed at the setting moon and the twinkling stars, endlessly lost in thought.
The father was not wrong.
The cruel disease, that merciless death. If only that hadn't existed, her mother would still be alive. Then her father would have been happy, not caught in delusion.
So the bad one is not father. What is truly wicked is the cruel disease that made him this way...
'I'm sorry, Tir.'
A sound of a breeze woke her. She must have dozed off. Dawn was breaking in the distance, and the sound of birds singing in the trees could be heard.
The girl hastily gathered herself and looked around.
Had her father still not arrived even though the night had completely passed? If he had seen her, he definitely would have woken her.
Or perhaps he was too exhausted to even look to the side...
The girl, who had been watching the path, decided to head back home. If her father wasn't back yet, she could just come out again.
As she retraced her steps and was about to reach the small hut where she lived alone with her father.
An ominous premonition brushed past her.
A large horse was tied up near the house. It was twice the size of Rallion, a beautiful stallion with a magnificent mane. On the white saddle that looked luxurious at a glance was a cross—the seal of the Holy Church...
The moment she recognized it, the girl frantically ran into the house.
Bad premonitions were never wrong.
As she opened the door, the metallic smell of blood wafted out. The house was not very large, so the girl could grasp the entire situation at a glance the moment she stepped inside.
Inside the house were three thugs wearing cold steel armor.
And the blood-dripping blade one of them was holding.
And below that, her father, collapsed and bleeding.
"Father!"
The girl dropped to her knees beside her father, her face pale blue. For a brief moment, focus returned to the eyes of her father, who was on the brink of death.
His eyes, which had briefly grown hazy with gladness, widened greatly, filling with shock and terror.
"Tir... Run..."
"No! Father!"
A faint voice that seemed ready to fade away at any moment. But the father, drawing upon every last ounce of strength right before death, along with a foam of blood,
"Survive... somehow... My... hope..."
"Father!"
It was a fatal wound. Even without a healer's eye, one could tell there was no hope for survival.
Could she do it? She didn't know. She had never used her power to such an extent on a living person before.
But she had to. Otherwise, her father would die. The girl closed her eyes and began to exert her control over the flowing blood.
"Father Priest. What shall we do with this girl?"
"Leave her and return. We are punishers, not murderers. We have obtained everything we needed..."
The priest, who had been muttering thus, suddenly clamped his mouth shut.
The blood moved along the girl's fingers. The blood surging from her father's chest returned to where it belonged under the girl's guidance. The blood welled up in the empty air.
Spilled water cannot be gathered again, but blood could be. The girl desperately pulled her father's blood back.
"...Father Priest. That is..."
Swiftly, the priest raised his hand. A heavy silence pressed down on them.
In a heavy tone that seemed to bear down from the heavens, the priest spoke to the girl.
"Little girl. What is your name?"
The girl snapped back to her senses at the voice from behind. Those people were definitely the ones who came to punish her father. They wouldn't just stand by and watch what the girl was doing.
But if she stopped now, her father would die. She couldn't let that happen. Still sustaining the Blood Manipulation Art, the girl pleaded desperately.
"T-Tir. I'm sorry. I'll never do it again, so please, save my father..."
"Tir, yes. Tir. What a good name. Did your father give it to you?"
"Y-yes. My father is a good person. He has helped so many people. So, I'll stop him from doing this ever again..."
It was a desperate plea born of a girl's utmost filial devotion. If the strangers before her had even an ounce of mercy, they might have turned back right then.
But the opponent was a priest. Mercy could not seep into armor forged of faith and duty.
"I cannot save your father. However."
Thrust.
Without any warning, the priest's sword pierced the girl's chest.
A bewildered 'Ah' escaped her. The sensation of cold metal slicing through skin, the blade thrashing against the edge of her beating heart.
Then, excruciating pain followed. Coughing up blood foam from her punctured lungs, Tir collapsed onto the wooden floor.
The world blurred. Only pain rattled her mind. The girl's consciousness slowly faded.
Around this time, the girl's memory grew hazy.
The priest's muttering drifted down over the fallen girl's body.
"I will send you to the same place as your father."
The priest flicked the blood from his blade. The bloodstains traced the sword's trajectory on the wooden floor.
That was the last memory the girl had from her time alive.
"I must reflect. I nearly botched the job due to unnecessary sympathy."
"Will you purify it? Should I fetch a torch?"
"No. We must leave a warning. Let's dig up the corpses beneath the building and leave."
"Yes, Father Priest."
"That was dangerous. To think a seed of the Demon God was in a place like this..."
"Teacher, my arm is sore today... Eek!"
"Murder! Murder! The teacher is dead! And Tir too!"
"Huh? A c-corpse?"
"Wait, this is the lady who passed away last month..."
"Over here! There are a ton of other corpses too...!"
"Don't tell me the graves dug up recently were all the teacher's—no, this devil's..."
"A devil..."
"It was divine punishment..."
"It's ominous. Don't let anyone come near..."
"...."
"Tsk tsk. Even if he committed the grave sin of desecrating the graves of the dead, their flesh and their sins both came from the earth, so isn't it a pity they cannot return to it? As one who serves the Earth Mother Goddess, I cannot leave them like this to be cursed."
"The father and daughter are facing each other even in death. They must have been a gentle family to one another. Phew, shall I hold a funeral for the first time in a while."
"Alright. I've buried them all. Phew. It's tough using my strength after so long."
"May they find peace in the embrace of the Earth Mother Goddess."
However.
Neither the priest who stabbed the girl's heart,
nor the villagers who left them to their fate,
nor the burier who interred the girl alongside her father,
realized it at all.
That the girl whose heart was pierced was not yet dead, despite that wound.
It was a time of endurance. The girl desperately clung to life in the grave, not even knowing why she had to live. Even as she watched her father's corpse rot away before her eyes, the girl could not let go of life.
Was it because of the single phrase her father left behind? Or was it merely a primal instinct?
The girl held back the blood that tried to flow out of her body, and desperately fought off the approaching death.
'It's dark...'
Naturally, it could only be dark. Lying side by side with her father in a coffin, buried beneath the earth. It had been that way until now, and it would be that way forever.
If so, is color needed? Pigments created to block out the light?
They are unneeded. Erase all colors.
'I'm... hungry...'
The only thing to eat is her father right before her eyes...
It sent chills down her spine. Eat? Her father's corpse? She couldn't do that. Yet the hunger that demanded parricide and cannibalism was so merciless.
It would be much better not to feel hunger at all.
'Throat... dry...'
If there is no hunger, is saliva needed? If there is nothing to lose, are tears needed?
They are all unnecessary. Discard them.
'It hurts...'
Why must she feel pain? If what some old philosopher said is true, isn't pain the proof of being alive? If so, pain is meaningless to a girl who has already lost her life.
The pain that chases her to the very end and torments her is cruel. She must discard it.
Color is not needed. Erase it.
Desire is not needed. Cut it away.
Tears are not needed. Empty them out.
Pain is not needed. Scrape it away.
Thus, the girl endured the years of suffering, lying side by side with the blood she possessed and the traces of life flowing from her father's body.
Meanwhile, the Blood Manipulation Art reached its pinnacle day by day.
All activities for survival ceased, and only blood moved to sustain her body. The girl, who had once tenaciously managed her household, became a ruthless tax collector over her own body.
Thus, discarding everything unnecessary, the girl slowly took control of every single blood vessel at the tips of her fingers and toes.
Gradually expanding her reach, she brought all the blood scattered above the ground under her control.
At some point, she pushed open the coffin lid and stepped out into the world.
"Ah."
A dry murmur slipped out. She thought she had forgotten how to speak from not using it for so long, but it seemed language still remained even after discarding everything else.
It was dark all around, but the darkness was familiar to the girl's eyes. It was the result of living in the darkness every day.
By the time the girl awoke, many things had changed.
The village.
The world.
The people.
The only thing that hadn't changed was the girl...
Or perhaps, she was the one who had changed the most.
Although she had discarded many things, some still remained. The refined anger burning coldly. Thanks to the sight of her father's corpse remaining before her eyes, it was an emotion she could not forget during that eternity.
The girl moved the blood to make her body walk. It was an awkward gait like a manipulated puppet, but she grew accustomed to it in a relatively short time.
Walking a path with no destination but only a purpose, the girl reaffirmed her karma.
She would take from the apostles of the Heavenly God just as much as she had lost.
-Such was the tale.
The girl gathered everything she had discarded and forged it. The memory of suffering, so old and so painful it had to be forgotten. Gathering the time she spent facing her father's corpse, stripping away her body piece by piece, she sealed it into a single card.
Magic is the manifestation of one's own world. Recalling her vanished self from 1,200 years ago, the girl crafted a memento.
The red heart drawn on the white card glowed with the color of blood.
The girl thrust a single red card into her chest. Endlessly painful, yet affectionate.
She vanished with a faint smile.