"It's her. Our saint is finally among us. Almighty God has answered our prayers."
Selen had never felt such fulfillment. Instinctively, she created wings made of magic to dominate the scene. Magic radiated so strongly within her that when it evaporated from her body it transformed into light, making it almost impossible to see her clearly.
"All-powerful Saint, we have worked for your return, we your servants!" shouted one of the priests as he fell to his knees.
"Bless us, Your Holiness!" shouted another.
Selen smiled as contradictory emotions overwhelmed her. She wanted to cry, scream, laugh, but more than anything she wanted to quench her thirst for revenge. She understood that these feelings were not entirely her own, but she did not care since she accepted them wholeheartedly. She concentrated an enormous amount of magic and created a gigantic sword that rose above the priests.
"What is this—" were the last words of one of the priests before the sword struck down upon them.
"More… More…" the voices repeated.
Selen lifted the sword again before slamming it down over and over until a massive crater had formed where the priests had previously stood. She then disintegrated the sword into smaller versions which she directed toward the heretics surrounding her. When all the heretics fell one by one, she then directed the swords toward the walls of the mine. She had to create other swords to destroy everything because the mine was so large.
When everything began to collapse, Selen understood that she had to release the energy she had absorbed. It was extremely difficult to rid herself of all the emotions overwhelming her at the same time and then release all the energy. She ended up on her knees on the ground coughing blood when she finally managed to free herself from all that energy, and as she struggled to walk through the collapsing mine, the blood roaring in her ears and the metallic smell of blood tormenting her nostrils, she ran into what she thought was a wall.
"You really never do things halfway."
She felt herself being lifted.
"We have to run or we're going to die!" shouted a voice she recognized as the duke's.
She tried to open her eyes slightly to see who was holding her in their arms, but she saw only dark hair that could belong either to Noah or to the duke. Her strength abandoning her, her eyelids closed, giving way to darkness.
She suddenly opened her eyes and was startled when she realized she was in an entirely white space that seemed to stretch infinitely.
"You're finally awake."
She turned around and saw a young woman with pink hair standing behind her.
"Who are you?" asked Selen. "And where am I?"
The young woman smiled at her before sitting down and taking her hand. The situation felt terribly familiar. She had the same feeling the first time she had met Layla, except that the woman in front of her was not Layla and she was not dead—at least she hoped so.
"Am I dead?" asked Selen.
"No, you're not dead," the woman replied. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have entered your mind in this way."
"My mind?" asked Selen with wide eyes.
"Yes, this is your mind. When you were releasing the energy of our souls—mine and all the others—I took the opportunity to slip in here to speak with you."
Selen looked around her. Her mind was this white place with nothing inside it? She had thought she would find a magnificent garden like Layla's, so she felt disappointed.
"Why do you want to speak with me?"
She saw the woman hesitate.
"To tell you the truth, my name is Erica. I am the first saint who was brought to this island. I am also the first to have lost my life here in the greatest indifference."
"I understand, but you know there's nothing I can do about it. You're already dead."
"That's true," she replied with a trembling smile. "I do not want to live again. What I want is for one question to be answered. A question I have asked myself for all these centuries, trapped between the world of the living and that of the dead."
Selen did not understand where she was going with this, but she felt that Erica needed to free herself in order to finally leave this place.
"I'm not really good at giving the right answers when they are needed, nor at understanding the feelings of others, but I can try."
Erica shed tears while smiling at her.
"To answer my question, I would have to tell you the miserable story that was my life. I don't know if it will interest you but…"
"Whatever you say, I will listen," Selen told her while taking her other hand in hers. "My life has been just as miserable. So if it can lighten you to pour your bitterness into mine, then I will take it so that you can finally leave this place."
"Why are you so kind to me?" Erica asked while crying.
Selen smiled at her.
"If I'm not kind to you, then who will be? After all, you chose me as the last person you want to speak to."
Erica wiped her tears.
"If you allow me, then I will show you some of my memories."
Selen nodded silently.
"As long as I can remember, I was always the unwanted one," she began. "I thought I was an orphan until the age of five. It was one day when I was sitting alone in the small room that served as my bedroom but also as a broom closet for everyone that I learned the truth."
She showed her a memory of herself as a child sitting on a tiny straw mattress in a room lit by moonlight entering through a tiny window.
"I grew up in what is commonly called a brothel in the capital. At that age I knew nothing about all that, and for me seeing men enter and leave rooms with the women around me seemed completely normal. One day as I was lying on my straw mattress, the door opened. It was one of the courtesans who, because no rooms were free, chose my mattress to satisfy her client."
"Go somewhere else," the courtesan said as she lifted Erica by the collar of the worn dress she was wearing.
Her client, very drunk, clung to her while making disgusting noises.
"I was used to being woken up like that, but that day I was particularly tired from the hard day of work I had endured, so I decided to lie down near the door so that I could return when they were finished. Lying there on the cold floor, I heard everything they said."
"Who was that kid?" the courtesan's client asked.
"She's a monster. She's cursed. If I were you, I wouldn't pay too much attention to her," replied the courtesan.
"Cursed how?" the client asked while burping.
"Her mother tried to trap a noble with a pregnancy but he beat her like plaster when she told him the news before stopping coming to the brothel. The madam was furious, but the worst part is that despite all the herbs she took the child still stayed in her belly. If that's not a curse."
"That is scary," the client replied.
"And you haven't even seen her fingers. A real monster."
When the memory disappeared Erica lowered her eyes to her hands.
"I was called a monster all my life because I had one finger too many on my left hand."
Selen also lowered her eyes to her hands and noticed that in her left hand she had five fingers and a scar at the end of it.
"It was only later that I understood that the reason for my deformity was because my mother had abused abortive herbs. But that wasn't all, because in addition to that I had fragile health which meant that I fell ill regularly, and what I didn't know at the time was that every time I got sick and they treated me, my debt at the brothel grew longer."
A memory of her appeared when she looked about fourteen years old.
"I knew my mother was still alive and that she worked in the brothel but I could not bring myself to show myself to her. She had never even once looked for me with her eyes. So I continued to live like that. I cleaned the brothel in exchange for food and a place to sleep, lowering my eyes and not daring to look people in the face for fear of reading disgust in their eyes or even worse recognizing my mother and seeing the contempt she certainly felt for me. Yet one day everything suddenly changed thanks to someone…"
Selen saw in Erica's memory a man speaking to her.
"It was the new coachman who had just arrived at the brothel. One day while I was cleaning the stables he came to speak to me. There was neither disgust nor hatred in his gaze—on the contrary, he smiled at me all the time. It was a first for me. I finally had someone to talk to, someone interested in me, and over time our relationship took on a completely different aspect."
Selen saw Erica and the man holding hands while sitting on straw in the stables.
"But my happiness did not last very long. People eventually noticed that I was spending more time in the stables than usual and very quickly our relationship was discovered."
Selen saw Erica being dragged into a room where an old woman and a man wearing glasses were present.
"That day the madam decided it was time for me to pay my debts."
"If you are old enough to flirt with the coachman then you are old enough to start working instead of slaving away all day," said the courtesan who had dragged her from the stables while cruelly pulling her hair.
"I don't want to do that work. Please allow me to keep cleaning, I want to get married…" Erica begged.
The old woman Selen assumed to be the madam signaled to the man while the courtesan held Erica on a chair.
"Do you know that the coachman you want to marry doesn't love you?" the courtesan whispered. "In reality he made a bet with the other employees to see how long it would take him to take the innocence of the little monster of the brothel."
Faced with Erica's trembling silence, the courtesan burst into malicious laughter.
"Don't worry little monster. The doctor here will get rid of all your problems," continued the courtesan.
The man with glasses approached Erica with a scalpel in his hand.
Erica showed Selen her left hand.
"When I woke up the next day, my sixth finger had disappeared."