“Once more.”

‘Once more. If I truly possess ‘power,’ then to start everything over again.’

Once more.

In the Garden of Beginning, Freia jumped into the pond once again.

And in a cold basement of some baron’s house, a snow-white baby was born under the watch of Ceres’s representative and several priests.

It was Saint Bernadette.

05. Snow Flower

“The sun has disappeared.”

Someone murmured weakly while looking at the sky. Even though the clock hand pointed to 8 AM, the sky was still dark.

The ground was damp from days of rain. Insects that had escaped the rising groundwater wriggled all over the soil. The streets were as quiet as before a storm. No shops were open. Few people ventured outside.

The quietness was worse than anxious murmuring. A tension that seemed ready to burst dominated the silent streets.

Something ominous was about to happen. By now, everyone had more or less sensed it. Even young children who had not yet learned to speak looked around nervously with their eyes darting back and forth. They would be about to cry but then stop suddenly, startled by something.

At the end of April, when summer should be approaching, the weather grew increasingly cold. Leaves dried up and fell, leaving only dry brown branches swaying in the wind. The seasons were flowing in reverse.

Emperor Ikanel was displeased. The occurrence of strange phenomena with less than a week before his son’s coming-of-age ceremony was not something to be welcomed. Rumors of a prince abandoned by the gods had reached the Emperor’s ears.

The relationship between the Saint and the weather was one of the empire’s most important secrets. Therefore, most priests living in Santarium, the Saint’s domain, served for life, and among the nobles and even the imperial family, only Emperor Ikanel and Prince Elios, who would inherit the throne, knew the secret of the Saint.

Ikanel wanted to meet the Saint. He had his most agile knight mounted on his fastest horse to deliver a letter. However, the reply arrived only after several days.

It was a very long and courteous letter, but it contained a clear rejection that left no room for interpretation.

It had been several decades since the revelations from Goddess Amir had ceased. Ceres’s power was no match for the Emperor’s. The temple’s power was no match for the imperial family’s.

Yet the temple had sent a letter of refusal in response to the Emperor’s urgent message.

Emperor Ikanel stared at the reply before him and fell into deep thought.

♣ ♣ ♣

Snow, Freia, no, Snow opened her eyes. She rose from her white bed.

Feeling an inexplicable coldness touching her entire body, she looked around carefully.

The white room was completely covered in sharp ice crystals. With her bed at the center, everything was freezing over with a soft crackling sound.

Through the window, covered in ice and fogged with condensation, a dark sky was visible. The sun could not be seen. Whether it was hidden behind thick clouds or had not risen at all, there was no way to tell.

Snow didn’t even try to compose her emotions.

There was no time for that.

Her head was in such chaos it felt like it might explode. Her memories as a saint and as a witch mixed chaotically like drops of paint falling onto water.

Memories of her past life and her current life. The two were so starkly different. Snow felt a terrifying fear as if her head would literally split.

She screamed. Arianne, who used the adjacent room, came running immediately. Hearing the Saint’s scream for the first time in her life, Arianne forgot to knock and pushed the door open with a bang. And at that moment, she nearly collapsed.

Each strand of her disheveled hair seemed to freeze. Ice crystals were forming around Snow, who was kneeling on the floor with her head clutched in both hands.

After hesitating briefly, Arianne shook her head and ran to Snow, tightly embracing her cold body. It was like holding a block of ice; her entire body felt chilled. But Arianne did not loosen her arms.

“Snow, what’s wrong?”

Arianne barely managed to ask. Snow whimpered, squeezing her head tightly with both hands until her nails dug into her scalp.

“My head, my head hurts so much. Ugh.”

Arianne, not knowing what to do, embraced Snow with all her might. Making sounds close to sobbing—ugh, hic—Snow rambled incoherently.

“Arianne, who am I? Answer me! Who am I?”

“Snow. You are Snow.”

Snow shook her head violently.

“No. That’s not enough. Who am I?”

“…?”

“I don’t know who I am. Am I a saint? No, am I a witch? Did I save the world? No, did I curse it?”

Snow stared directly at Arianne and whispered almost pathologically. In her silver eyes, which trembled as if about to shatter at any moment, nothing was reflected except empty shadows. ‘Am I a saint, or am I a witch?’ It was a question she asked herself.

Arianne, not understanding what was happening, was struck with fear. She could feel her body growing cold from the chill. But she embraced Snow as if to crush her. She would gladly give up all her warmth if it could melt that coldness.

“What are you saying! You are the Saint, the Saint! The most noble person in Akelan. The most precious person. The one who will save everyone. The person I love most in the world!”

“No. No. I, I…”

Snow’s voice gradually faded. She wept weakly with her arms around Arianne’s back. Arianne asked the priests who had followed her in and were standing aghast at the frozen room to call for Ceres.

Even Ceres Martadia, who seemed like she would maintain her composure even if the world collapsed, paused in her steps when she saw the space covered in ice crystals and snowflakes. But she quickly returned to a calm expression and approached Snow, who was tightly embracing Arianne.

Arianne tried to release Snow and step back. But Snow held onto Arianne’s collar. It was a childlike action. Ceres told the troubled Arianne that it was fine to stay as she was. She knelt down to meet Snow at eye level. Then she placed her hand over Snow’s, which was tightly gripping Arianne’s back.

“Holy Maiden.”

After addressing her thus, Ceres Martadia pierced through Snow with her brown eyes like gentle tree trunks. Snow, feeling as if she were stripped n*ked, as if she were a small demon standing before God, blurted out in terror:

“Ceres, I had a dream, a dream. Freia Nigritia, I, no, a witch appeared in the dream. No, I’m not even sure if it was a dream, I…”

Snow couldn’t continue and just trembled like a wounded animal.

“You had another frightening dream.”

Snow couldn’t answer and looked at Ceres Martadia with unfocused eyes.

“Please tell me the content of that dream. You don’t need to bear it alone, Holy Maiden.”

Snow shook her head with a pained expression. She couldn’t speak.

Snow was the Saint. She was the one who defeated the witch’s curse, the one who brought light to the empire, the most sacred being in the temple. Everyone believed so. But she was also the witch Freia.

If this was the doing of Goddess Amir, who was said to govern the principles of all creation, then the goddess was truly a being of unparalleled cruelty and harshness toward her own saint.

“I can’t… tell you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Ceres.”

“…”

Ceres tightly embraced the pitiful Saint to her chest. She didn’t know what to do, shamefully unworthy of her title as Amir’s first servant. There were things that even she, called the wisest person in the empire, could not solve.

She believed in the Saint’s saintliness more than anyone. She believed that she was truly a representative sent to this land in place of the divine.

Martadia’s prayers had received responses from the goddess only once, with that single exception.

‘Stop the calamity, stop the calamity.’

In that prayer, which she had offered with all her might when she was young and newly appointed as the head of the temple, she received the revelation that a saint would be born, and she reproached herself for having doubted the existence of God.

Looking at the Saint, who resembled exactly the large statue of the goddess that had stood in that place even before the Grand Temple was built, Ceres firmly solidified her faith in God. Though the goddess’s revelations ceased again afterward, it didn’t matter. The Saint was adorable, vivacious, and appropriately timid and well-behaved, perhaps due to the burden of the miracle of changing the weather. But at the same time, she grew up holy, sacred, and precious. Martadia completely withdrew her doubts about the goddess while watching the lovable Saint.

The Saint is truly God’s representative. She is the being who conveys God’s will to the world. Then, everything she does is the will of the goddess itself. Even if it is not something Snow does consciously. She had thought that what was permitted to her, a mere servant of God, was to help the Saint freely express her will.

But something is not right. A cold wind is blowing throughout the empire. As if winter is returning, the land is becoming barren, and the sun is losing its light.

And now, before Ceres was the sight of the Saint in agony, clutching her head.

It was after some time had passed that Ceres opened her mouth. She nodded.

“If the Holy Maiden has decided that she cannot tell us, then we must follow. However, please know that you don’t need to bear all the burden alone. It doesn’t have to be now. Whenever you feel like sharing that burden, please call for me. You can also speak to Priest Arianne here.”