The revelation was literally a revelation. It didn’t signify the birth of a saint or anything like that. Since Amir was Snow, Snow was the one who received the Goddess Amir’s breath directly, and her smile and her anguish were the Goddess Amir’s anguish. It wasn’t a revelation referring to some kind of representative of God. It was truly a revelation meaning that the Goddess would incarnate in the world again.

—If she wishes to embrace the world, it is my will.
If she wishes to turn away from the world, it is my will.
If she wishes to punish the world, that too is my will.

Given such a revelation, Freia had intended to pass everything on to the future Snow. Perhaps it was her hope that a child who would grow up seeing only beautiful things, a child who would come to love everything in the world, would make the right judgment in her place.

As Freia was about to jump into the pond, she recalled how in her past life, her body had constantly suffered, unable to withstand the divine soul. Pain is negative. She disliked such things. Because of her illness, Freia was always alienated by her father.

This time, she took measures so that the body could adequately withstand the divine power. It was a body resembling the goddess “Amir” whom the people of Akelan believed in. God was reincarnated in a snow-white form that remarkably resembled the marble goddess statue erected in the large temple.

With the body bearing divine power, there was no longer any reason to be ill. Snow, who was called a saint, was not very robust but neither was she particularly weak like Freia. The divine power manifested as a correlation between emotions and weather.

Freia did not deny Snow’s words. Because they were all true. Snow now truly resented Freia.

“Then you should have left everything to me. You should not have interfered with whatever decision I made. Why… why did you make it so hard for me?”

Freia’s expression hardened, but she gave no answer.

“I didn’t want to cause a calamity. Until I remembered what had happened as Freia, I was the happiest person in the world. Even after the blizzards began, I always thought I wanted the calamity to stop. I didn’t want to hurt Elios either. I fought desperately with you who was screaming inside me to kill that boy. Above all.”

Snow stared blankly at the lake’s surface with a face full of longing. There were many things she had left behind on the other side.

“I didn’t want to come back here. Everything precious to me is over there. But now I can’t go there as I please. Because if I go, everything might be ruined!”

Snow saw the body of “Saint Bernadette” peacefully sleeping beyond the pond. She was lying on a soft bed covered with a very nice blanket, eyes closed as if merely sleeping.

Elios, who had been indifferent all day as if he had lost his smile, smiled sweetly only in front of Snow. He kissed her forehead. Sitting beside Snow, he told her in detail about what had happened that day. That is, he was talking to her empty shell.

Snow rather wished that Elios would forget her and find a new love. Then Snow would be devastated, would be in pain forever, but at least Elios could be happy.

The smiling face of Elios that Snow had seen in the future was actually this. The future of Elios that Snow had glimpsed was that of an Elios who had become indifferent to everything, smiling only for a single moment each day, only in front of Snow’s sleeping body.

“I kept thinking that I didn’t want to cause a calamity. Why didn’t you follow my thoughts? You said you wanted to leave the choice to me. You’re lying. You didn’t entrust anything to me.”

Snow continuously blamed Freia.

“Truly.”

Freia said. She too seemed unable to control her emotions. Snow now saw Freia, who had felt so distant all this time, as an equal being.

“Truly… I intended to leave the choice to you. Because… you are me. It’s strange to even express it as ‘you.’ Your choice is my choice, so it’s even incorrect to say I entrusted it to you. The reason your memories returned not long after your coming-of-age ceremony was because I had arranged it that way before jumping into the lake. So that you could make the choice. But after that, even I couldn’t help it.”

“You couldn’t… help it?”

Snow asked.

“I said it earlier. From the moment I began living as Freia and became stained with human emotions, I became a being that could hardly be called God anymore. Because God is a being who is not swayed by momentary emotions. Freia is Freia. Snow is Snow. The two share the same soul, but as humans, they cannot be the same being. It’s different from how God existed. The soul is the same, but how can they be the same person when the relationships, hearts, and backgrounds surrounding them are different? That’s how ‘God,’ who had eternally been one being, was split into two for the first time.”

Snow recalled her inner changes after having the nightmare. She couldn’t judge whether she was Snow or Freia. The two selves didn’t harmonize perfectly but flipped back and forth like turning over a palm. So that’s where things went wrong. If they were truly the same person, they shouldn’t have been confused in that way.

Elios was exactly right. Being the same person, they couldn’t argue different opinions. It made even less sense that they could have different thoughts.

That was what Freia hadn’t expected.

She thought that after being reborn as Snow, Snow would be able to make judgments with both Snow’s love for the world and Freia’s wounded heart toward Ikanel.

But Snow was still Snow who couldn’t fully understand Freia’s heart, and Freia was still Freia who struggled in agony without fully understanding Snow’s heart.

It was because the two beings tried to be independent as separate entities.

“Snow. For the misfortune of you and me to end, one of us had to completely give up our will. My self awakened the moment you dreamed of ‘Freia.’ And for a while, I raged, consumed only by betrayal and sadness. As more time passed, memories of longing, love, and the few kindnesses and courtesies received in life gradually revived. I think I came to my senses around that time. So I came here, to the Garden of Beginning. Because I didn’t want to keep clashing with your self and make things harder for you.”

At some point, Freia’s voice that had been whining in Snow’s head gradually became less frequent. Snow realized that Freia had come here first at that time.

“The first thing I did when I came here was to look after Ikanel.”

Freia placed her palm on the lake’s surface. Woong, the part of the lake’s edge where Freia had placed her hand brightened and vibrated. The reeds growing along the shallow lakeshore trembled together.

When the bright light disappeared, the image of Ikanel from the past appeared again. It wasn’t too distant a past. It was shortly after Snow had been strangled. Ikanel was dreaming. Freia and Snow were looking into that dream.

Freia appeared in the dream. After learning that it wasn’t Freia who had poisoned him, Ikanel had been endlessly begging her for forgiveness.

“I intervened in his dream through this lake. Snow. He needed salvation.”

Freia said. Snow carefully observed Freia’s expression. She wondered if Freia still had lingering feelings for Ikanel. It didn’t seem so. Freia just thought of Ikanel as one of the many affairs she had scattered in the world before leaving. She simply believed that since it was related to her, she herself should resolve it.

While Ikanel was clinging to Freia like that. Only in his dreams did he finally face his true feelings, unaware that his insides might be rotting black in reality.

Snow found herself thinking that Ikanel was pitiful.

In the lake, in the dream, Freia told Ikanel not to do anything anymore. Then Ikanel pleaded with Freia.

“Then what am I, what should I do? It happened because of me, yet I can’t do anything.”

“Yes. That’s right. You can’t do anything. Don’t do anything. The story where you are the protagonist has ended.”

The Freia in the dream said. Snow knew who “they” referred to. Those who were striving to stop the calamity. Those who were working to resolve the situation. Snow. Elios. Martadia. Many other priests and, more broadly, the Emperor’s second son Crusis and…

“I cannot forgive you, but in the end, I couldn’t hate the world.”

Freia and Snow are different beings, but their soul is the same. They gradually influenced each other. Snow wanted to protect the world. Freia gradually recalled her old faint emotions. Children’s laughter, praying people, brothers, sisters, friends. Freia loved the world too much to hate it.

“If that is the will of me, of Snow, and of ‘God’ who once existed.”

Freia said, but Ikanel couldn’t understand. Struggling to hold onto Freia who was becoming increasingly distant and faint, Ikanel shouted.

“Freia. Are you truly Saint Bernadette? Freia!”

And that was the end. The lake that had been glowing brightly returned to being an ordinary lake.

“Ikanel… is pitiful. He was just used by his father.”

Snow blurted out unthinkingly. Ikanel was someone driven by circumstances, driven by position, and especially driven by his own father.

“Yes. He is a pitiful person. What’s even more pitiful is that after having that dream, he desperately tried to have the same dream again. He constantly longed to meet Freia once more, even if only in a dream, to beg for forgiveness. So I visited his dreams a few more times. He begged me… that he just wanted to find peace now.”

Snow covered her mouth with her hand. She recalled what had eventually happened to Ikanel. His increasingly exhausted appearance, his inability to rise from his bed, and his separate meetings with the princes and empress at the end.

And the funeral. The largest funeral in the Empire.

Ikanel. His own funeral.

Despite being a person who valued position and honor so highly, in the end, with both body and mind completely exhausted, he had wished for eternal rest.