He was born a child of light.

He would be raised by a loving adoptive family that would raise him into a full-fledged noble. He'd learn from that same family the truth surrounding his commoner origins.

He would learn about his commoner parents. He'd discover he was the son of a commoner and descended from a line of smiths and a woman with a tumultuous past.

He would meet them and learn from them what should've been his name.

He would wish for more for both of his family, wishing to make the two of them proud.

He would go on and join the Paladin Order, within which he, along with his childhood friend, Armand Aubrecht, would become one of the Fourteen.

Heavily inspired by the well-known Holy Paladin Douglas, who built an empire for his commoner family, Mael also wanted to help his family build a lasting legacy.

Despire not being exactly what he envisioned as a legacy to leave behind, the establishment known as the "Rose Blanche" was born.

Under his protection, from his seat at the eastern fortress, the establishment's business would flourish.

Things were going swimmingly until the Holy Paladin and his companion received an order from their Pontifex; that day, or perhaps the day he went against the faceless one, who was revealed to be a child, was the day things went horribly wrong for the Holy Paladin Gunther Freshet.

***

Two men stood in the middle of a barren wasteland beyond the northern barrier, surrounded by a thick layer of ice that encircled the area.

From a massive ice agglomeration, which appeared to be the result of an immensely powerful ice magic attack, a boy emerged.

"Not... not a single scratch. How?!" Damian mumbled, panting and exhausted, a knee on the ground, beside his master, Gunther Freshet.

"I have warned you. You refuse to listen." Something with no shapes, colors, or forms surged out of the boy and engulfed everything in the vicinity. "You cannot win against me."

Against whatever the thing was, Damian and Gunther braced themselves, only to discover that it had no effect, at least not on them.

The ice that had previously covered the vicinity vanished, leaving nothing behind, not even unfrozen water.

The message to Damian was clear, yet he still used his spear to hold himself up and stand against the boy, who, despite his slow and casual stride, threateningly approached the two of him and his master.

"You cannot win; you know it, yet you persist; you refuse to see the truth—even your master came to acknowledge this truth, right, Holy Paladin Freshet?"

Hearing these words, Damian glanced at his master and saw on his face an expression that confirmed the veracity of the boy’s words.

"Master?"

"Yep, it's pretty much that, Faceless One," he said, averting his gaze from his disciple."I cannot win," Freshet confessed.

"Master..."

Still ignoring Damian, he announced to the boy, "But do not expect me to get to my knees and beg you to spare your life."

"I was not expecting you to. I am just here in the spirit of fairness, like the two of your fellow Fourteen, to have you dead." Speaking these words, the boy’s gaze specifically went to Damian, something the Holy Paladin didn’t miss to notice.

"I see... So that’s how it is." With a last glance thrown at Damian, the Holy Paladin said, "I’m sorry it had to go that way, but that’s the way things are. I wish you the best of luck from now on. Farewell." before requesting the faceless one, "Do it."

"Master, what are you talk—"

"Nia," the faceless one called, and a blue bubble instantly imprisoned Damian within. The bubble was the doing of the girl who came with the Faceless One and whose existence, amidst the fight, and due to her entire withdrawal from it, went entirely forgotten.

"I am aware of the bond between the two of you, as I witnessed it - I know that you care deeply for the Holy Paladin. However, I am sorry, Damian, and though your mother did not specifically request it, I am fully intent on not doing something that might break her heart. Therefore, I cannot allow you to die at his side, as I'm sure you might somewhat wish to."

With these words spoken by the Faceless One, the Holy Paladin saw the bubble within which Damian was imprisoned, flew up, and went over to the girl to whom it belonged.

"Well, then…" the Holy Paladin murmured, firmly clutching onto his halberd’s shaft, his attention going back over to the Faceless One.

"You still plan on fighting me?" The Faceless One asked, lost between being annoyed and impressed by the man's stubbornness.

"Always."

"Even though you know it is in vain."

"It is not in vain." Holding his halberd up toward the faceless one, he announced, "I get to die the way I want to. I don't know about you, but that's not futile at all."

Somehow the man’s words brought a smile to Ronandt's face, a smile that soon exploded into laughter.

"May I know what is so funny?"

"From what I can see, you, just like Archbishop Karen Caelus, seem to have been expecting my arrival. You knew I would come," the Faceless One explained, wiping away his tears of laughter. "Most likely thinking I would come for retribution."

"You’re not?"

"Yes, but to be fair, this vendetta you see me indulging in is actually less about me seeking retribution and more about me wanting to bring death upon the fools who attacked my child without any proper reason," the Faceless One said.

"I fail to see both the humor and the sense in what you’re saying."

"It’s because you’re one of these fools, yet you’re the first one whose suicidal decision feels so childish as to say, "Die doing what I want." Now I come to understand how you people got sent and accepted to deal with a literal child just because you were ordered to."

"We actually didn’t know about that detail when we—"

"I know. I know you had no idea what crime or deed I was hounded for. But now that I know why it was, I can't really blame you, in a very literal sense, but still, I think the hardest thing for me to even imagine forgiving is that you knew nothing and still went after me. The fact that I was hunted by ignorant people who were used and sent after me without knowing the true necessity of the order that dealt with the faceless one. The true irony is, that you, the Fourteen, the continent's so-called most powerful men, humanity's sword and shield, are nine years later—nine years since that night and fifteen since the day you received that order—and still don't know why you were sent after me. That doesn't help either. Or perhaps I was under a false impression, and you are, in fact, among those who know the truth. Do you? Do you know why you sent after me?"

"I do not know," the Holy Paladin confessed.

"Can you guess what it is—what it could ever be, Holy Paladin?"

"Perhaps it has something to do with your unusual strength—how you were born of a noble and a commoner."

"Those were the things that made me different, unique, and freakish, but they were not the factors that influenced your Pontifex's decision to send you, the Fourteen, after me. I am the Faceless One because, as a child, I made contact with something I was not meant to survive, something that, in your Pontifex eyes, I was not meant to win against. I was dubbed "the faceless one" because I was feared. He did not see me as a child; he did not know anything about me; he only knew me as the threat I could represent for what he and your church deemed to be a threat to humanity."

"Were they wrong?"

"Were they, huh? Perhaps… I have been human long enough to understand where it came from. The Church, as it is now known, has been built atop two pillars: humanity's fear and arrogance. Throughout the centuries, the church has been built from the ground up with a single goal in mind: to challenge what the apostle's reach."

"Dragons?"

"—Not just dragons, but gods as well. Talk about being arrogant... You lay claim to a world belonging to dragons, to whom you owe everything, plotting to usurp the god to whom you owe the very power that fuels your arrogance."

Silent for a while after that revelation, "... I knew nothing of this," the Holy Paladin answered before retorting, "but frankly, up to this point, I don’t think it even matters anymore."

"Indeed, it no longer does."

Seeing the archbishop summon magic out, the boy remarked, "You still have something in reserve?"

"I do. For Damian's sake, all you've done up to this point has been to allow each of our attacks to land on you without even attempting to defend yourself. Now that he's out of harm's way, do me a favor and don't hold back; show me what you're truly worth, Faceless One."

"I can most certainly do you that favor," the boy said, summoning out of thin air red lightning that took the shape of a lance.

Gunther recognized the color of the lightning as the same red that had turned that night into the Night Ecarlate.

Gunther braced himself for that sight, knowing it would be one of his last, summoning every ounce of mana he could muster from his body, which caused the entire surrounding area to be frozen into a thick layer of ice.

Only the boy remained unmoved, unfrozen, and unbothered, seemingly waiting for Gunther to unleash the first blow before unleashing his own.

Gunther gladly accepted the arrogant invitation to unleash his most powerful attack, which earned him the nickname "Thundersnow of the North" during the previous crusade.

The Holy Paladin assumed a lance-throwing stance and paused. The temperature around him dropped so low that it triggered strange, static-like reactions before turning the entire battleground into a frozen wasteland. He then chanted "White Rose" and unleashed an attack that flew along with his thrown halberd at the boy.

For a few meters, Gunther's attack flew toward the boy at the speed of a shooting star; he made no attempt to avoid it, and it slammed into the boy's chest like a glass to the ground, with little to no consequence.

At this sight, the Holy Paladin let out a sigh he knew would be his last one.

The boy approached and stopped a few meters away from the archbishop. Instead of unleashing his red lightning spear at the Holy Paladin, he violently struck the ground with it, engulfing everything, including the Holy Paladin, in a red, devouring light.

***

A few minutes later, Ronandt, who was standing in the middle of the rubble, was joined by Nia, who still had Damian trapped within one of her bubbles.

"Ronandt, I think we should leave now," Nia said, casting a discreet glance that Ronandt followed up to Damian, who had just helplessly witnessed his master's death.

The expression on his face was one Ronandt recognized as one he had once had after what happened that night, but amidst all the strong emotions he seemed to be going through, there was one he knew was neither anger nor resentment; it was confusion.

"I'm sure you feel you and your master have been victims of the world's greatest injustice and that it is your duty to seek justice and retribution; I will not deny you that right, for those are feelings I can only too well understand, but first there is someone you must speak to, someone who has been for a while wishing to talk to you: Maa, Mathilda, your mother."