There was no time to escape. Anel struck his shoulders and finally bit his neck, but Kabir’s Emperor did not retreat. He proceeded with his intentions even as he bled.

Everything happened in an instant.

As terrible pain washed over her, Anel opened her eyes wide from the agony. Then she saw what was happening.

Outside her bedroom, beyond the terrace, light was pouring down from the sky.

Like sharp arrows, enormous, flashing beams of light rained down toward the ground like streams. The gray, writhing sky filled with white light.

‘No…! Oh Meta!’

As Anel let out a silent scream, the arrows of light struck the ground.

The light from the arrows spread with terrifying force. The light expanded in semicircles, covering everything in sight, and everything was sucked into that light.

And so the world was destroyed.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Anel opened her eyes again. But there was nothing to see.

All she could see was white light surrounding her on all sides. Just masses of light. It felt as if she were trapped inside a sphere of light.

She looked down, but there was nothing there either. Anel’s body had disappeared. Perhaps it had been caught in the white light and died with it.

‘But why is my consciousness still here?’

She couldn’t understand. She was certainly dead, yet her mind was clearer than ever.

— Anel.

Then she heard the call.

Though no sound was audible, Anel understood the call as waves rippled through the light-filled space.

That feeling of power was familiar to her.

The sacred energy that always filled the temple, she felt it in those waves.

“Oh Meta.”

Anel knelt with her already vanished body. It was a spiritual prostration, but it seemed to satisfy Meta, who continued speaking.

— Your shell has disappeared.

“I know, Meta.”

— And Ard has been destroyed.

“Meta!”

Her fearful premonition was confirmed.

When the word “Ard,” meaning the world, was mentioned, Anel was startled and raised her head.

“Because of me…? Did you do this because I lost my sanctity?”

— Ard is not worthy of bearing Meta’s child. I will create a new world. And I will have you born anew there.

“Meta, please show mercy.”

It was horrifying to think that the entire world had been destroyed because of her. In that light, newborn infants, loving couples, and the elderly with frail bodies would all have been swallowed.

Because of her, an entire world had completely vanished.

They shouldn’t have died so senselessly. Innocent people had disappeared without a trace, solely because Anel had lost her “sanctity.”

She shuddered with overwhelming guilt. She wished her consciousness would completely disappear too, and the world would return instead.

If Meta created another world, the people who had vanished would not return. Even if she were reborn in another world, the fact that Ard had been destroyed would not be erased.

Knowing this better than anyone, Anel could not bear to live with her sanity intact.

Still kneeling spiritually, Anel begged Meta.

“Please give me, no, give Ard one more chance.”

— One more? What do you mean?

“Meta. Use your sacred power to send me back to the past. Then I will strive not to repeat the same fate. That way, I will save the people of Ard.”

— Give you a chance….

“The people of Ard are innocent. Everything happened because of me… and Kabir’s Emperor meeting. If you give me one more chance, I will escape that fate. So please, bring back the innocent people of Ard.”

Meta was silent for a moment. Infinite thoughts repeated in a short span of time. Then Meta spoke.

— I create life, but I do not control them.

“I know. Meta only spins the threads of fate; weaving them is the task of humans.”

— The same thing could happen again.

“This time I will try to prevent it. Please restore me with this consciousness intact. I will change Ard’s fate.”

— Even for me, a god, turning back time is a challenging task. It goes against the principles of life I established….

The divine voice gradually faded as if hesitating.

If Meta would not bend, Ard would disappear forever. Just as Anel was about to plead once more in desperation, Meta’s voice suddenly returned.

— Very well.

“Meta!”

— I will give you and Ard one more chance. This time, ensure there is no violation of the natural order… try to escape the net of fate that unfolded in your previous life.

“Thank you…. Meta.”

— There will not be two chances. If the same thing happens again… I will annihilate Ard as before…. Remember, there will be… no more mercy….

Meta’s voice faded away. Then everything disappeared and reappeared in an instant.

The white space converged and condensed into a single point, and Anel’s consciousness was pushed away from that point like a rebound.

Her consciousness flew through space like a shot arrow.

Instead of the white space that had just surrounded her, a pitch-black sky filled with stars enveloped her, and then the stars drew long trajectories as they flew backward.

‘I’m going back!’

She could feel it without being told. Her consciousness, flying through the void toward somewhere, suddenly stuck to something with a squelch. And at that moment, Anel opened her eyes.

“Epomeni!”

A familiar voice crashed into her ear like gravel. As her consciousness, still wandering in darkness, returned, she soon recognized the owner of the voice.

It was the woman who had been the head handmaiden. Her face, full of wrinkles, looked familiar.

“Bloja.”

“Are you conscious, Epomeni? I was so worried when you suddenly collapsed.”

Epomeni was an Irensian word meaning the next saintess. So Anel was not yet a saintess but a successor.

‘Did I really travel back in time?’

As evidence, Anel was lying in a room near the sacred tower where she had lived as an Epomeni. It wasn’t very large, but befitting the room of the next saintess, it was quite luxurious.

When Anel suddenly sat up and looked around with emotional eyes, the head handmaiden and all the other handmaidens stared at her in bewilderment.

They were alive. Both she and the head handmaiden, and all the handmaidens who had disappeared in the mass of light, were all alive.

“Bloja, what year is it now?”

When Anel abruptly asked, the head handmaiden looked at her with puzzled eyes before answering.

“It is the 1,524th year of Meta’s time.”

“So… two years ago?”

“What do you mean by two years ago?”

“Ah, it’s nothing.”

Quickly brushing it off, Anel calculated the time internally. When Ard was destroyed, Anel was twenty-one years old.

Two years ago would make her nineteen. Before coming of age, and before officially becoming the saintess.

Meta had truly sent her back.

‘But why specifically to this time?’

It might just be coincidence. Perhaps this was as far back as time could be reversed.

Anel cleared her thoughts and asked the head handmaiden.

“Bloja, please bring me a mirror.”

At Anel’s request, the handmaidens looked at each other.

Exchanging glances that suggested the saintess must have hit her head when she collapsed, one of the handmaidens quickly brought a large mirror from the adjacent room.

The mirror was as tall as Anel. In the well-polished mirror, Anel’s body was completely different from her last remembered self.

She was almost a head shorter, with a flat chest, looking like a young boy.

Her build had also shrunk to that of a twelve-year-old, and if not for her blonde hair reaching her shoulders and green eyes, she could have been mistaken for someone else.

‘I’ve returned to before my awakening!’

Looking in the mirror and touching her face tentatively, Anel let out a deep sigh of relief. The handmaidens exchanged glances for the second time.

After sending all the handmaidens away with the excuse that she was tired, Anel once again examined herself in the full-length mirror.

She looked pretty enough, but her body showed no signs of secondary s*xual characteristics yet.

Since she hadn’t come of age, this was natural, but it wasn’t just her age—her development was abnormally delayed compared to others her age.

Her br*asts were the same. At her age, they should have already developed somewhat, but Anel’s chest was as flat as a boy’s.

‘It’s because my holy power was constantly suppressed… But this body completely changed when I came of age.’

Before reaching the age of twenty, the saintess is called an Epomeni, referring to the pre-awakening period.

After turning twenty and being recognized as a saintess, envoys from around the world come to pay homage to the new saintess, and only then does she truly bloom as an adult.

Her boyish body undergoes rapid growth, becoming fully feminine. She suddenly grows taller, her br*asts develop, and her appearance becomes more beautiful.

Of course, some degree of beauty is necessary for the appearance to transform so remarkably, but Anel was already pretty to begin with, so when she bloomed as a saintess, she became so beautiful that people gasped in admiration at the sight of her.

‘The crown prince of Kabir who came to the ceremonial greeting… He became obsessed with my face and came to abduct me.’

If Anel grew up and became a saintess, she wouldn’t be able to avoid meeting the crown prince.

Since a saintess was destined never to leave the temple, she would inevitably meet the crown prince the moment she became a saintess.