Tanned skin with a pink hue.

On the bed is a naked woman, sitting upright. A tall woman with long, chestnut hair.

Her skin has no blemishes, no irregularities, no injuries.

Skin that was once as pale as a cadaver, now appears lightly tanned and arousing with a slight, pink hue.

Her eyes are open, looking at someone next to her on the bed, asleep. The woman appears like an angel risen from the dead.

On her face is a trail of blood that appears to have fallen from her mouth down her chin.

Why was she spitting blood?

A few seconds ago, her chest had a large, bloody opening, right through her sternum. Not anymore.

A trail of blood had flowed from that hole down to her abdomen.

A large pool of blood appears on the floor in front of her bed, the bed itself parallel to and near the wall opposite to the door.

The woman is sitting on a large, burgundy stain which also streaks over the edge of the bed itself.

Spilled blood. Her own.

Yet she only feels strength, vitality, life, power, energy. Warmth and love.

She looks over to the edge of the bed. She sees him.

“Ajax?”

The woman, Shaula, calls out to Ajax. He doesn’t respond.

At the side of her bed is Ajax. Fast asleep. Shaula looks over at him from on top of the bed. His chest and legs are covered in some soot from the clothes burned away from Gratia and...

Shaula looks at his body. His arms and legs are covered in blood. His own.

“Oh my god, Ajax!!”

Shaula grabs Ajax by the armpits and picks him up onto the bed next to her. He is as light as a feather to her.

She holds Ajax’s head in her right arm, against her large exposed breasts. She places the index finger of her left hand against the left side of his neck under his jaw, trying frantically to see if he’s alive.

...He is. His heart is beating. Strongly even.

Shaula looks at his neck and sees streaks of recently bled blood but no wounds, bumps, scars or even bruising. She makes sure there aren’t.

Shaula checks the other parts where there is blood. His arm and leg. When Ajax healed, the blood from his broken neck, arms and legs didn’t disappear. But nevertheless, he has no injury. He is fully healed.

Shaula sees that there is no injury, no wound, nothing at all wrong with his arms and legs either, including the ones covered in blood.

She checks his back, his genitals, his feet, any area where the bleeding could have come from.

“None of this blood is yours? So, you’re not hurt? Then...”

Shaula tries to wake him up. She shakes his shoulders lightly. She opens his eyelids, seeing only unfocused pupils. She lightly slaps his face.

“...why won’t you wake up?”

“Cardinal... how... how is this...”

Shaula hears a voice.

“I don’t know, Andal. This is... this is higher than my heart restoration tier... this... this is reanimation tier...”

Shaula turns her head in the direction of the two voices.

“But, th-that’s impossible! Only... only the past popes have been able to use that tier of healing magic!! Back when--”

“Yes, Andal, back when they were incarnations of Sapiora himself...”

Shaula’s eyes narrow on the two men speaking. Rage burns in her heart. She knows. She knows who is responsible for Ajax’s current state.

“You...”

“Uh, h-how... how are you... how are you alive?”

“You... you undressed me.”

“How did... how did he use that level of healing magic on...”

“You two hurt him...”

“W-Who are... y-you...”

“Not only did you touch my... my naked... you also... hurt... hurt...”

Shaula stands up slowly from the bed. She is overflowing with vitality. Vitality siphoned from another.

“You killed me.”

“Cardinal... if that boy was powerful enough to use reanimation tier then... what about her...”

“Andal, she might be--”

CRACK.

A sound rings out in their room. A sound like an explosive break.

“...Cardinal?”

Shaula remembers the dream she had. A wonderful dream, the last dream she had before being dropped into this hell.

Cardinal Gratia looks down.

When she was lying on that bed with her chest impaled and torn open, she could still vaguely feel her surroundings. She couldn’t hear anything. She couldn’t see anything. She wasn’t breathing. Her heart wasn’t beating. She wasn’t moving. She couldn’t feel the heat or coldness in the room.

But she knew she was... alive. Her mind was still working. Her consciousness was completely on. She didn’t need to breath to think.

But without blood flowing in her veins, she couldn’t activate her muscles, she couldn’t get up.

...Or, was that simply her mind working overtime at the moment of her death?

Then, she had felt... a hand on her face. A warm hand. A hand reaching out to her in sadness and pain. Perhaps the hand thought she was dead as well. Perhaps she was about to die...

But suddenly, she felt an outpouring of vitality... coming from the hand. As if the hand was God himself granting her the fruit of the tree of life.

She felt her chest wound rapidly close. She felt her heart slowly start beating. She felt blood flowing through her veins once again. Her body was tingling all over because of the lack of blood flow to her extremities.

It felt like her whole body was asleep, like how her legs would fall asleep when she crossed them for too long. But even that sensation disappeared within seconds.

She now feels her own hand in a soft place. She had struck a hard shell in an attempt to get to the soft parts underneath. She had been given the strength and vitality from the hand of God to do at least this much.

She looks up at his face. The face of Cardinal Gratia. He looks in amazement, shock and terror. Shaula’s right hand has pierced through his rib cage, through his clothes, through his sternum.

She has grabbed hold of his heart. She can feel it still beating in her hand.

Shaula had a wonderful dream. A wonderful dream.

A dream where I burned everything away.

The air around Shaula’s entire body shimmers for a moment. A visible shimmer at the sheer heat emanating from her naked body.

I want to burn you away. I won’t let people like you hurt me ever again.

Shaula’s hair starts floating.

Cardinal Gratia spits blood, still conscious and realizing what is about to happen to him.

Shaula’s eyes turn bright reddish-white.

“P-Pl-Please... please d--”

Shaula’s hair blazes in bright reddish-white flames. She appears like an angel born in the inferno, like Lucifer falling through hell. Perhaps like the wife of Hades?

“C-Cardinal!”

Andal is standing behind Gratia who is currently impaled by Shaula’s right arm. He finally notices her form which was being hidden by Gratia’s torso.

But Andal cannot do anything. His arms are gone. He cannot activate any magic to help his eminence.

Cardinal Gratia feels a numbness in his chest. He has gone into shock at his wound. This numbness only lasts a mere second as he feels a new scorching heat.

“You... undressed me... you killed me... you hurt Ajax... you’re just like... just like my...”

“S-Stop--”

Cardinal Gratia gives his last word.

“You can join my father in hell.”

In seconds, fire expands from the hole in Cardinal Gratia’s chest, sourced at Shaula’s right hand.

Shaula commands his body to burn to nothing.

Fire so hot that his clothes disintegrate.

Cardinal Gratia is a Cardinal extremely gifted in flame magic. His clothes have a magic protection that makes it difficult to be burned by any normal fire.

All of the water in the cardinal’s body turns to steam within seconds. All that’s left are the materials of his ashes, the calcium in his bones, the carbon in his body, the iron in his blood.

Before Andal’s eyes, the cardinal has died, disappearing into a blaze of weakness and pain. Andal can feel the heat of Shaula’s power on his face.

His own face is scorched by tongues of blazing fire, haphazardly released from Shaula’s excess power.

“AAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!”

“Ugh, shut up.”

Shaula, without giving it a second thought, uses the same hand that had just ended Gratia’s life to burn through Andal’s head.

Andal’s body is left intact and all of the skin and muscle on Andal’s face melts off. His brain is destroyed instantly, turning into boiled jelly in no time at all.

His skull is left, bare, on top of a melted, burnt neck.

Andal leans against the door behind him, the door itself left intact and undamaged. Shaula has a certain mastery over this power and she consciously changed the fire to prevent the door from lighting up.

Destroying the building would only bring more trouble.

Ajax is an innocent, little boy. A boy who doesn’t like killing for the sanctity of life. A boy who doesn’t like the responsibility of having killed.

What does Shaula feel having killed two men who hurt her almost as much as Creta and Kinser had hurt Ajax?

Joy. Happiness.

Ecstasy.

She revels in having taken the life of her enemies, of Ajax’s enemies. The air is sweeter to her, filled with the disgusting smell of burning flesh.

Life feels better. She had missed this feeling.

This is the first human life she has taken on Omicron.

Oromasdes had given this to her.

This power that allows her to burn away what she hates.

She can only feel happiness for this wonderful gift.

For being brought back from death.

For seeing Ajax, the first moment she woke up.