Bernadette felt as though two steel needles had been driven straight through her eyes, agony stabbing directly into her brain. Not only that — cracks split across her skin, one after another, the spirituality within her surging wildly, chaotically — the unmistakable warning signs of losing control from high-tier corruption.
In that moment, Bernadette's very first thought was, absurdly: Vincent was right — when it comes to "courting death," I really don't fall far behind him at all. I knew perfectly well this island was dangerous, and I still went and used my Fortune Teller ability to scout ahead anyway!
Still, she didn't panic. She cut off her "prophecy" ability at once, severing the image of the descending red moon, returning to reality first.
But right at that moment, everything before her suddenly cracked apart, shattering.
Suddenly, Bernadette found herself standing in some indistinct wilderness, countless blurred figures wandering across it, occasionally looking up at the sky, letting out wailing cries.
A faded memory surfaced abruptly in her mind — she'd "arrived" at this same strange wilderness once before, while "peeking" at a letter the Moses Ascetic Order's lawyer Derlin had handed off to someone, and had felt this same powerful pull from the wilderness back then too.
Right now, that same urge welled up in her again — an overwhelming desire to throw herself into it, to merge completely with it. And, correspondingly, the loss of control triggered by the corruption a moment ago had vanished entirely.
But, just like last time, since everything before her was only a "foreseen" image, she hadn't actually arrived at this wilderness in truth — which meant that pull to "merge with it" remained just that: a pull, an inclination, nothing more.
Still, she was certain that if she ever genuinely set foot in this wilderness, she likely wouldn't be able to stop herself from merging with it completely.
Just as the thought crossed her mind, a pair of lashless eyes suddenly surfaced within that wilderness, regarding Bernadette from a distance for a few silent, emotionless seconds — and then everything rapidly pulled back, receding, dissolving away.
By the time she came back to herself, she found the "prophecy" had already ended, and she was standing once more on the beach of that primordial island.
"The Hidden Sage..."
Bernadette wiped away the blood trickling from her nose, a note of confusion in her eyes. She'd crossed paths with the Hidden Sage, that evil god, for over a hundred years now — but just now, when the Hidden Sage had looked at her... why had it felt so calm, so indifferent?
That wasn't like that god's usual style at all.
Bernadette lowered her head, thinking it over: Vincent had told her before that Dad's corruption was connected to the red moon — and her own "prophecy" just now had shown her the red moon, and left her corrupted by it in turn.
But the moment that "wilderness" appeared, the corruption afflicting her had been wiped away entirely. So — had it come to help her? But then again, that "wilderness" seemed to have some connection to the Hidden Sage.
Surely that evil god wasn't actually helping her?
Combined with how calm the Hidden Sage's gaze toward her had felt, Bernadette's confusion only deepened.
After a long stretch of fruitless thought, another matter occurred to her: she'd just recalled that wilderness from before, triggered by peeking at that Moses Ascetic Order letter — but why couldn't she remember who that letter had ultimately been delivered to?
That letter had originated from the Moses Ascetic Order, but had ultimately been handed to her by some unknown person — which meant that person had to be someone with a genuinely close relationship to her. So why did she have absolutely no memory of him at all?
Almost as if... someone had deliberately erased every memory of that person from her mind?
What exactly was going on here?
If only Vincent were still here — he might well still remember that person's existence.
After a good while, Bernadette shook her head. "Never mind. Let's find Dad first."
She pulled out an illusory hat and placed it on her head, erasing every trace of herself, then followed a path that looked as though it had been carved out by human hands, into the forest of massive trees.
There were no birdsongs here, no roars of beasts, not even the faint rustle of insects crawling — the silence was so complete it felt as though time itself had frozen solid, as still and lifeless as if no living thing existed anywhere nearby, like walking through some abandoned graveyard where each massive tree stood in for a headstone.
After nearly half an hour of walking, the space ahead suddenly opened up, the massive trees thinning out. Beyond the thinning treeline lay a vast clearing, where countless creatures lay prostrate across the ground.
Among them: a crimson dragon with flame flowing across its skin. A treant with gnarled wood-knots for eyes and a jagged crack for a mouth. An eight-legged demon wolf. A giant with grotesquely elongated limbs. A feathered serpent, its scales a dark, sickly green, its feathers slick with grime, coiled so massively it resembled a small hill on its own. Countless creatures blending human and beast features. And, among them all, five people dressed in opulent finery.
Right now, every one of them had their upper bodies or heads bowed low, as if worshipping some unknown presence, not a single sound among them.
A few minutes later, the creatures all straightened up at once, and the entire primordial forest seemed to come alive in that instant. Only then did Bernadette get a clear look at the five human figures — and she froze, utterly stunned:
Uncle Grimm. Uncle William. Uncle Perry. And Uncle Edwards!
These were figures Bernadette had known intimately since childhood — the loyal companions who'd traveled the world alongside her father, helping him build the Intis Empire. They should have all been long dead by now — especially Edwards; Bernadette clearly remembered attending his funeral herself.
And yet here they all stood, gathered together, faces pale and sickly, skin shriveled and withered, "alive" in a way that looked closer to walking corpses.
Had they gathered here because of Dad — or had the corruption radiating from the red moon twisted them into this state?
Bernadette watched as the group followed those "monsters" off into the distant forest, choosing not to reveal herself or disturb them, deliberately avoiding the direction they'd taken, instead following a different, more treacherous path toward the island's center.
The rest of her journey passed without further strange encounters, until she arrived at a mountain several hundred meters tall, its upper reaches likewise blanketed in those deep green, near-black massive trees — so thoroughly that, from a distance, it looked almost indistinguishable from the surrounding forest itself.
A good portion of the mountain had been hollowed out. Within its hollow belly stood a black mausoleum, magnificent, imposing, in every sense.
A wave of excitement surged through Bernadette's chest — she knew, without doubt, that her father lay within that mausoleum. All she had to do was push open those doors and step inside, and she'd finally see the person she'd spent over a hundred years searching for.
But she could also sense, clearly, an aura radiating from within that mausoleum — one dangerous enough to unsettle even her, an Angel — or, more precisely, corruption.
Compared to how deeply she'd already been dragged into corruption just from a mere "prophecy" glimpse earlier, she couldn't say for certain whether she could actually withstand it, walking into that mausoleum in person.
But the answer she'd searched for over a hundred years lay right there before her. The father she'd longed for over a hundred years lay right there before her. And if she wanted to understand what had happened to Vincent, she had no choice but to see her father, in person.
Bernadette drew a deep breath, and, resolute, stepped forward, walking toward that magnificent mausoleum.
Before she quite realized it, she felt something growing heavy behind her, as though something had been added there. Reaching back, she found it was a length of hair — her own hair, apparently affected by some force, rapidly growing longer.
Not only that — her fingernails, too, were rapidly lengthening.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
Bernadette faintly heard her own heartbeat — except the rhythm sounded strangely chaotic, as though two separate sounds were blending together: one from her own heart, and one originating from her abdomen.
There seemed to be another heart inside her stomach now, expanding and contracting at its own steady, unhurried pace.
And that "heart" was growing bigger, bit by bit.
Her pupils contracted sharply as realization struck: there was a fetus inside her belly. "It" had already grown from the size of a raisin to the size of a full-grown human palm, and was still growing — before long, it would likely mature fully, tear its way out of its mother's abdomen, emerging drenched in blood.
And she hadn't noticed a single trace of it happening, until just now!
As far as she understood, the ability to "breed" like this seemed connected to the Earth Mother Goddess, and to that Mother Tree of Desire — but the Earth Mother Goddess was an orthodox god, and the Mother Tree of Desire's whole domain was "desire" itself. Neither matched her current situation.
So — was this the red moon again?
The Primordial Moon?
To be continued…
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