The Sin Archbishop of Greed had finally fallen.His countless wives, women who had endured years of imprisonment under his twisted sense of "love," were at last set free.
It was thanks to the efforts of three individuals that this miracle became possible:
Natsuki Subaru, the spirit knight.
Reinhard Van Astrea, the sword saint.
And finally Emilia, the royal candidate.
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"Hey, Sylphy—there's something I need to ask you." Emilia's voice was soft yet steady, cutting through the quiet relief that filled the room.
The girl turned toward her. Sylphy had been one of Regulus's wives, a captive stripped of freedom and identity for far too long. For her, the outside world had been nothing but a fading dream. But now, standing before Emilia—before the person who had helped deliver her from that nightmare—she felt warmth bloom in a heart that had almost forgotten how to beat.
Her gratitude was boundless. If Emilia asked her for anything, she would obey without hesitation.
"Yes," she said quietly. "Anything I can help you with."
Emilia smiled faintly, though there was a shadow in her eyes. "Did you happen to see someone with black hair—someone who looked a bit like Subaru? His name is Tanaka."
Sylphy blinked, startled by the question. Of course she remembered him. Black hair, calm eyes that carried quiet resolve, and he certainly has left an impression that made it impossible for her to forget him.
After a long pause, she murmured, "Was he… someone you know?"
Emilia's tone softened, "Yes. He's a very important person to us."
Sylphy lowered her gaze, her expression trembling. "He was… a prisoner here, before he was taken away by the Sin Archbishop of Lust."
They already heard that from greed during their fight, but the question that they were afraid to ask...
What happened to him?
Even among the Sin Archbishops famed for their vulgar personalities and irredeemable actions, Capella is considered a special brand of evil.
Sylphy spoke again, her voice breaking. "A week ago… the Sin Archbishop of Lust tricked him. She took the form of someone dear to his heart. He tried to fight Regulus Corneas, but then…"
Her words faltered. Her hands trembled.
Another freed wife stepped forward, her face pale. "He was gravely wounded by Regulus. And when he fell… Lust dropped her blood into him—then took him away."
Sylphy's voice cracked as she continued, "He was willing to fight Regulus Corneas to save us all..."
Based on the small display of power, he was more than capable of escaping on his own. But he did not, that was probably because he fully knew that if he escaped, Regulus would shift the blame towards them and kill them.
She knew Capella was coming to that mansion, she took the form of someone whom Tanaka knew. If she did, it was highly likely that he wouldn't have been caught the way he did.
Her next words came out as a whisper, choked with guilt."He could have escaped if he wanted… but he stayed. To protect us. And I… I didn't even warn him."
Emilia stepped closer, her own expression tightening. "Sylphy… what happened to Tanaka?"
Silence fell. The air grew heavier, guilt pressing on their chests like a weight.
To Subaru, based on his encounter with Lust, he could only assume the worst.
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Dust swirled in the faint sunlight that pierced through the ruins.
"Cough… Cough…"
A weak sound escaped Tanaka's throat as he clawed his way out of a mound of shattered stone and splintered wood. His vision swam. For a moment, he couldn't tell which way was up. But he pushed through, planting one trembling hand after another against the rubble until he managed to pull himself upright.
His bare feet sank slightly into the dirt as he staggered forward. Every breath burned.
"What… in the world… happened here?"
His own voice startled him—it sounded rough, distorted, almost like someone else's. But he dismissed it, brushing away the thought as his eyes scanned the devastation around him.
The once-standing buildings were half-collapsed, streets fractured and drowned in muddy water. Fires flickered faintly in the distance, their reflections dancing across the flooded streets like broken stars. It looked like a battlefield—a city that had clawed its way through hell.
And yet… the place felt strangely familiar.
As if to answer his confusion, a booming voice echoed through the air, carried by what sounded like a city-wide broadcast.
"People of Pristella! The four control towers have been reclaimed! The Witch Cultists who threatened our city have been driven back! The Watergate City Pristella is victorious!"
Tanaka blinked. "Watergate City… Pristella?"
He had heard that name before—snippets, memories—but this was the first time he'd truly seen it. The waterways that split through the streets, the faint resemblance to Venice… yes, this must be it. But its beauty was buried beneath ruin.
He clenched his fists. "This isn't the time to be mesmerized."
That announcement confirmed it—the city had been under siege. The Witch Cult had attacked, and the battle had already ended. Yet here he was, alone, unguarded, free.
The last thing Tanaka recalled before losing consciousness was him being taken by lust. And now… this?
Something didn't add up.
Still, this wasn't the place to dwell on it. He needed to move, to find out what happened—and most importantly, to find them.
He steadied his breath and tried to summon spirits. A soft, familiar chant slipped from his lips as he reached inward. But… nothing answered. The usual warmth, that faint glow of mana gathering—there was nothing. Only silence.
His brow furrowed. "This is odd…"
He tried again. And again. Still nothing.
Then, forcing a calm breath, he reasoned, "It's probably the chaos. The spirits must have gone into hiding after all this chaos."
That made sense—spirits were sensitive to death and to mana distortion. But still, the emptiness around him felt wrong. Unsettlingly wrong.
He walked on through the cracked streets. The sky above was a dull gray, tinged with smoke. Water lapped quietly at the edges of shattered bridges. Then, through the haze, he saw them.
Two familiar silhouettes stood at the far end of the street.
A petite girl with creamy blonde hair, her body suspended lightly in the air—Beatrice.The one holding her, messy black hair and a track suit—Subaru.And beside them, silver hair that shimmered even in the dust-choked moon light—Emilia.
Tanaka froze. Then, slowly, a smile broke across his face.
It was faint at first, then genuine—warm and unrestrained. The first true smile he'd allowed himself in what felt like an eternity.
After all this time—after a year of silence, of pain, of captivity—he finally saw them again.
His heart ached with relief. He didn't even know what to say when he met them. He'd left without a word. He should apologize first, that much was clear. But the words could wait. Right now, he simply wanted to reach them.
He took a step forward. Then another.
But before he could call out, another figure emerged from a narrow alley ahead.
An older man, battle-worn and bloodied, his posture still sharp despite his exhaustion. Wilhelm van Astrea.
Even bruised and battered, he exuded that same quiet, unyielding presence Tanaka remembered.
Tanaka's smile widened. "Long time no see, Wilhelm."
Wilhelm's steps faltered. His eyes widened—not with joy, but with disbelief.
The silence stretched between them, thick and brittle. Tanaka tilted his head slightly, unsure how to react. It was understandable—he'd been presumed dead for a year—but the look in Wilhelm's eyes… it wasn't shock alone. It was something darker.
Finally, Wilhelm's voice came out hoarse. "How… are you alive?"
Tanaka blinked. "I'm not sure about that reaction. I know a lot happened, but I'm quite resilient, you know?"
He tried to lighten the mood, but Wilhelm didn't respond. The old man's expression hardened, twisting into something sharp—raw grief and rage given form.
Then, under his breath, Wilhelm muttered, "So it was you…"
Before Tanaka could even process the words, Wilhelm's sword flashed—an arc of silver faster than thought.
Tanaka's eyes barely had time to widen.
"This is for my wife."
The blade sang through the air.
In a single motion, his world turned red and Tanaka's head was decapitated.
Then—nothing.
Darkness swallowed everything.
No sound. No warmth. Just a suffocating abyss that pulled him inward.
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A breath.
Tanaka's eyes snapped open, his lungs heaving like he had just surfaced from deep water.
His hands shot up instinctively, clutching at his neck—still there, warm and whole. Yet he could still feel it… the phantom pain of the blade slicing through, the flash of cold before death.
"What the hell…" he whispered, trembling.
His surroundings—rubble, dust, the same collapsed street. The same air thick with smoke and ash.
And then—Wilhelm.
The old knight stood before him again, silent, his gaze heavy with something Tanaka couldn't place. Horror gripped him as the words he'd just relived came echoing back.
"How are you alive?"
Tanaka stumbled backward, staring at him as if facing a ghost. "You… you just— What's going on?!"
Wilhelm's expression twisted—grief curdled into fury. His eyes burned like dying embers. "So it was you…"
Those same words. The same tone.
Tanaka's breath hitched. "What the hell are you talking about!?" he roared, his voice cracking.
None of it made sense. He hadn't done anything—he didn't even know what Wilhelm was accusing him of. Yet the old knight's hatred was real, searing through the air like a brand.
When Wilhelm's hand reached for his sword again, Tanaka's instincts screamed.
He stretched his arm out, trying to call for the spirits—but there was no response, only emptiness. No warmth, no glow, no whisper of mana.
"Damn it…" he hissed under his breath.
Left with no choice, he forged an ice pillar from his mana and sent it surging toward Wilhelm. The ground cracked, ice spiking upward in jagged beauty—but the knight cleaved through it as if it were mist, his blade glinting like moonlight.
The shattering frost filled the street with a dense mist. Tanaka took that moment to act. "Freefall," he muttered.
A faint purple light flared around him, and with a burst of mana he launched himself high into the air, escaping the fog below.
He barely had time to breathe before Wilhelm's voice thundered up to him—raw and furious.
"This is for disrupting my wife's peace… Stride Vollachia!"
What did he just say?
The name hit him like a jolt.
Stride… Vollachia?
He froze midair, disbelief spreading through him. That name—he'd heard it before. The Sin Archbishop of Pride. An international criminal from the Vollachian Empire, defeated decades ago by none other than Wilhelm himself.
But why… why was he being called that?
Tanaka raised both hands, panic and confusion intertwining. "Wait! Stop! It's me—Kazuki—!"
But before he could finish, something snapped inside him.
A sharp, unseen force coiled around his heart—like invisible chains tightening with brutal precision. His breath caught; his muscles locked.
He couldn't move. He couldn't speak. The very sound of his name had shackled him.
Wilhelm saw the opening.
With a flash of silver, the old knight propelled himself upward like a human missile. His blade drove straight through Tanaka's chest.
The sound—the wet, crushing sound—echoed through the air.
Tanaka coughed blood, crimson splattering across the knight's blade. Pain flared through his ribs, his vision dimming as he fell from the sky. He hit the ground hard—bones cracking, air leaving his lungs in a hoarse gasp.
Through the haze of pain, something caught his eye.
A shard of ice—one of the fragments from earlier—stood near him. And in its surface, he saw his reflection.
Except… it wasn't his face staring back.
The man in the reflection was regal, terrifyingly so. Long, silky purple hair framed sharp, noble features. Grey eyes like cold steel. Clothing of royal cut—black and white, adorned with purple feathers.
Stride Vollachia.
Tanaka's blood ran cold.
"That's… not me," he whispered, voice shaking. "That's not me…"
But the reflection didn't vanish. The stranger in the ice looked back at him with lifeless indifference, like a ghost claiming its vessel.
And then—darkness again.
The world crumbled. The air grew still.
Death came swiftly.
And Tanaka looped once more.
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The same scene played again.
If this was a joke, then it wasn't funny.
It wasn't funny at all.
Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong—no, it had far surpassed the boundaries of his imagination.
He couldn't communicate with the spirits. The loop point was absurdly short. His reflection was no longer his own—it was the face of a criminal out of history books. And when he tried to utter his name, something unseen, something oppressive, choked the sound in his throat, binding his tongue in silence.
His mana reserves had recovered to some degree, but against Wilhelm—the Sword Demon—he was a candle in a hurricane. Surprise was his only chance, which was impossible in current situation.
Wilhelm's movements were too sharp, too precise. All Tanaka could do was try to deflect, to delay, to survive—but his mana would run dry, and when it did, so would his life.
It was hopeless. A dead end in every direction.
And then—he remembered.
"...Yes!"
A spark of desperate realization lit in his eyes. Subaru. Subaru was there. He must have noticed something—two loops now, back-to-back. There's no way he didn't.
He looked toward the distance, toward Subaru and the others. Hope flickered, fragile but alive.
But when his gaze met them… nothing. No reaction. Subaru stood exactly as before, his posture, his expression—unchanged.
That wasn't right. That wasn't possible.
Tanaka's lips trembled as he muttered, almost laughing at the absurdity, "This isn't funny at all…"
"So, it was you."
The words again. The same cold accusation, spoken with the same quiet fury.
Tanaka didn't move this time. He didn't dodge, didn't plead. His heart was hollow, consumed by despair.
And once again, the blade fell.
The world turned red, then black.
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When he came to again, Tanaka collapsed to his knees, his body trembling as if the world itself had crushed him. His breath hitched, uneven and ragged. The first sob tore from his throat like something broken, raw and unrestrained. Then another. And another.
He wept—loud, ugly, desperate cries that echoed into the void, swallowed by the silence around him. His chest ached with each breath, his vision blurred with tears that refused to stop. The pain wasn't just physical—it was something far deeper, clawing at his soul.
"Why…?" His voice cracked, barely audible. "Why is this happening…?"
He pressed a shaking hand against his face, his fingers digging into his skin as if to wake himself from the nightmare.
"Why me…" he whispered, his shoulders shaking violently. "What did I do wrong?"
His sobs grew quieter, strangled by exhaustion. He bit down on his lip until he tasted blood, trying to stifle the sound—but the despair only deepened.
It wasn't fair. None of it was.
He wanted to scream, to curse someone, to demand an answer from whatever cruel force toyed with him—but all that came out was a hoarse whimper. His tears hit the ground, hissing faintly against the frost.[1]
And then he realized—the ground beneath his palms wasn't stone. It was soft. Cold. His fingers sank into it.
The air was biting, the kind that carved into the lungs with each breath. His tears froze against his cheeks as he looked up.
All around him rose towering walls of black stone, ancient and crumbling beneath layers of frost. Before him stood a castle, immense and lifeless, its spires swallowed by a blizzard that seemed to have no end.
There, amidst the storm's desolation, sat a table and two chairs beneath a half-frozen parasol. Snow buried everything—the tablecloth stiff and white, the chairs rimmed with ice, the parasol drooping under the weight of winter's claim.
A chill ran deeper than the cold itself.
This place…
He knew this place.
The Castle of Solitude.
The realm where Odglass had taken his consciousness once before.
And then—he saw him.
A figure stood beside the table, still as a statue, gazing directly at Tanaka with eyes like shards of ice.
The storm seemed to twist around him, refusing to touch his form. His silhouette was tall, lean, and unyielding. His hair—whether white or simply veiled in snow—whipped in the wind like strands of frozen silk.
As the man stepped forward, his features came into focus: harsh, regal lines carved by time and burden. His eyes were a piercing, glacial blue—cold, endless, and mercilessly clear.
Tanaka's voice wavered. "Who… are you?"
The man's gaze did not soften. His answer came slow and deliberate.
"My name is Cepheus."
[1] That would be me, tehe