Chapter 6
- Reira ☾⋆⁺₊✧ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁
- Nov 11, 2025
- 9 min read
・・・・・
“Sister Isabel?”
Isabel opened her eyes. A white ceiling came into view. She turned her head toward the direction from which the voice that had called her came.
By her side was a young nun wearing a white veil. Since the white veil was the symbol of a nursing nun, Isabel quickly realised she was in the monastery’s infirmary. The nursing nun exclaimed, her face alight with emotion.
"You're awake! You're awake!"
Isabel said nothing. The nun hurried to inform others, and soon many clergy members working in the infirmary gathered around her, kissing her hands. It was their way of expressing joy that Isabel, the revered exorcist of the Holy See, had awakened.
Amidst the murmurs of blessings from the people around her, Isabel could piece together how she had ended up here.
Isabel was found a week ago in the woods near a local monastery in the same area where she had gone missing. Her body was covered in bruises, and despite all medical efforts, she had remained unconscious until now.
The medical team had even feared she might be brain-dead. Concerned about her condition, the Vatican sent a team of specialist doctors to assist.
After a round of blessings, Isabel told those around her that she wanted to rest, sending them away. Left alone, Isabel looked at the calendar. Today marked the second month since her disappearance.
She had been trapped in the Underworld for nearly two months. Isabel wondered what had happened in her absence, but above all, she wanted to know whether the children had been found.
A nursing nun entered the hospital room where Isabel was alone. It was the young nun who had been by her side when she woke up. She set down a steaming meal in front of Isabel and asked if she was feeling any discomfort.
Isabel asked her a question.
"Do you happen to know what happened to the babies who disappeared with me?"
The nursing nun smiled and spoke.
"They were found at the same place where you were discovered, Sister."
"All fifty of them?"
"Yes. All of them."
"Where are they now?"
“They’re at a nursery run by the Vatican. I’ve heard they’re all plump and completely unharmed, with not a single scratch. It’s remarkable, considering they were definitely children taken by demons.”
A deep sense of relief spread through Isabel’s heart. He had kept his promise. He had freed the fifty children along with her.
The nursing nun sat beside her and asked.
“Sister, if it’s not too much of an imposition, could you tell me what happened there? I heard you were taken by an enormous hand. What kind of adventure did you have? Did you fight demons with a holy sword and a crucifix? Did you defeat them all with holy water and the Lord’s Prayer? Is that how you rescued the children?”
Isabel looked at the young nun gazing at her with sparkling eyes. To her, Isabel must still seem like the great exorcist nun. Since she had reappeared with the children who had been taken by demons, it was only natural for her to believe that Isabel had rescued them and returned to the surface.
In truth, she had saved the children. She made a sacrifice to restore their human lives. But that sacrifice…
Moments of being naked and tangled with the demon, wailing, flashed through Isabel’s mind.
‘It was a dishonourable sacrifice.’
Isabel silently picked up the spoon. She ate the steaming stew, keeping silent even under the nursing nun’s puzzled gaze.
・・・・・
If one wanted to see the Underworld’s landscape at a glance, they only had to go to the top floor of the Temple of Evil. Its wide windows framed the vast Underworld like a single painting.
A sky always dyed blood-red, black mountain ranges, buildings made of red stone, and between the cities, pillars of fire stood like street lamps.
This place had no seasons and no day or night; the landscape remained the same all year, twenty-four hours a day. The Underworld, born alongside the Earth, had looked exactly the same ever since, except for a few buildings and the slight changes in the demons’ way of life.
The man standing by the window gazed at the landscape with indifferent eyes. A view he had looked at for tens of thousands of years could not stir any emotion in him. He was simply lost in thought, wanting only to organise the thoughts that troubled him.
“Lord Lucifer.”
The man known as Lucifer turned his head, his sapphire eyes fixed on the one who had called him.
Standing there was Damian, one of his high-ranking subordinates.
"So, you’re here again."
"What’s the matter?"
"It’s nothing. I just wondered if you were here since you’d left the palace again."
Lucifer turned his head back to the window.
“Do you have something on your mind?”
Lucifer did not answer. Damian quietly watched his back. For the past few days, he had been lingering here, away from the palace. Having served him for tens of thousands of years, Damian could tell that Lucifer was lost in thought.
Before deciding to declare war on the Heavenly Realm, Lucifer had spent centuries standing here, gazing out the window.
“Lord Lucifer, is this because of the fifty prisoners you sent back this time and Sister Isabel?”
"Do I seem that way?"
"Yes. That’s how it appears to me. Haven’t you been coming here ever since that happened?"
Damian walked over to Lucifer’s side.
“Honestly, Lord Lucifer, I was surprised by your decision. You’ve never released prisoners like that before. The Heavenly Realm didn’t even demand them, nor was the nun’s resistance particularly fierce. And even if she had resisted, after about two hundred years, she would have naturally given up.”
Lucifer remained silent. Damian let out a sigh inwardly as he watched him.
Ever since Sister Isabel was brought here, his state had been strange.
In fact, Lucifer had known Sister Isabel even before that. Up to now, there has never been an exorcist nun who single-handedly caused as much damage to the Underworld as she did.
Lucifer gathered information about Sister Isabel’s life and concluded that her heart contained nothing but vengeance and anger. That was a good thing. It meant she possessed qualities well-suited for merging with the Underworld. If properly tempted, she would surely become a valuable ally who would fight on their side.
He found Isabel intriguing and personally kidnapped her, locking her in a prison. He visited her almost every day. At first, he seemed pleased, but gradually he grew quiet, and after each meeting with her, he would always start wandering to this place.
And two months later, he released the exorcist nun and the prisoners he had painstakingly captured.
Since she was such a well-known nun here, the news of her release and return to the surface caused a stir in the Underworld. Through the prison guards, the story spread that they had slept together, leading the denizens of the Underworld to believe that Isabel had seduced the great Lord Lucifer with her body and secured freedom for herself and the prisoners.
However, Damian did not believe those rumours. Lord Lucifer was not someone who would waver and change his resolve because of physical temptation. He had lived for tens of thousands of years as the absolute ruler of this place. Possessing omnipotent power, he was able to indulge in every pleasure imaginable — and in fact, he had. Yet, at a certain point, he stopped everything, declaring that eternal pleasure held no meaning.
"Damian."
He quietly called for his subordinate.
"Yes, Lord Lucifer."
"Do you remember the decision I made here 150 years ago?"
Damian lowered his head.
"Yes, Lord Lucifer. I remember."
“You were flustered at the time, but deep down, you were pleased with my decision. Moreover, you were the one who persuaded most of the subordinates as well, weren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
Damian remembered that moment. Lucifer, who had paced by the window for centuries, made a decision. It was neither to rule the human world nor to conquer the heavens. And it was certainly not to plunge humanity into death and fear.
Lucifer had said:
“The world needs an ‘end.’ I can’t go on killing time without meaning in the eternity God invented, Damian. For tens of thousands of years, I’ve plunged the Earth into terror and poured my passion into ruling the Underworld. But now, none of it means anything, because there is no such thing as an ‘end.’ Do you understand, Damian?”
Damian nodded immediately. He understood Lucifer’s emptiness. For one who had lived tens of thousands of years and was fated to live on endlessly, existence itself was nothing more than a solitary card game, a tedious way to pass the time.
“I’ve debated this matter several times with Michael, the Archangel of the Heavenly Realm. He feels the same; he’s tired of eternity and wants to overturn this endless chessboard God created. But he refuses to ask God to invent ‘finitude.’ It’s because of the command God gave after creating the world and entering His rest: ‘Never wake Me.’ How fitting for the ruler of Heaven, where maintaining order is the only order.”
“Then, Lord Lucifer, there is only one way, isn’t there?”
“That’s right. War. We will wage war, Damian. So we must secure as many troops as possible from the human realm. First, we’ll go to war with the Holy See.”
For the next 150 years, they sent demons to the surface to capture as many humans as possible. They also worked diligently to create worshippers through voodoo and black magic. It was all for a single purpose: to bring about an ‘end.’
“Lord Lucifer, that was the greatest of all the great decisions you’ve made. Humans blindly fear death, but once they reach the afterlife, they are inevitably trapped in misery. One can only truly know how dreadful eternal life is by experiencing it firsthand.”
“Yes, that decision hasn’t changed. Someone has to do it. That’s why…”
After a moment of silence, he spoke quietly.
“To do that, I had to get that woman out of my sight for good.”
Damian stared blankly at him. At the crimson-haired, black-cloaked ruler of this realm. Lucifer looked at Damian with a bitter expression.
“She became a threat to my decision to end eternity.”
“You mean, that woman…”
Damian couldn’t bring himself to finish his sentence. He couldn’t utter the single word that had clearly risen in his mind.
After a moment of thought, Damian bowed his head to his lord.
“Great Lord Lucifer, you have made the right decision.”
‘For you, and for this world.’
Damian turned away, leaving Lucifer behind. If ‘that emotion’ had begun to bloom in his heart, then Damian would be of little help. The best way to erase it would be to sort out his thoughts and calm his mind alone.
After Damian left the temple, Lucifer was alone once more. In Lucifer’s mind, the image of a woman who had recently left this place, or rather, whom he had sent away, was vividly painted.
Crouched, clutching the cross, her green eyes glared at him. Hatred, vengeance. Resentment, confusion, tears, sorrow. These were all the emotions she radiated. At first, he had only found it amusing, but at some point, it began to trouble him, and in the end, he grew fond of her.
She was struggling with all her might, doing the best a human who believed in the ‘end’ could do.
Humans were beautiful beings. Since they had not been cursed with eternity, they were desperate in everything. They rebelled desperately, hated desperately, and even loved desperately.
For the sake of fifty children, she let go of the vengeance that had been the reason for her life. And she gave herself to him. Even though she was fully aware that, once in his arms, she could no longer purge her anger through exorcism.
All the emotions he had felt while observing humans exploded beyond measure when he looked at her. She was amusing, pitiable, and, at the same time… lovable.
He recalled Isabel’s body, held completely in his arms.
Golden hair that wound smoothly around his fingers. Her lips, her breath, her skin, and the depths in which he had buried himself.
Isabel’s face, sobbing and moaning in his arms, appeared vividly before him. Her breath, her expressions, her voice. She was merely human, yet she drove him into a level of excitement he had never experienced before.
The memory God bestowed upon the Absolute Beings at the dawn of time was almost a curse. Even after several days, it remained as vivid as if it were happening right before his eyes. And it would continue, until he himself ‘ceased to exist’.
He believed sending Isabel back into the world had been the right decision. If she had stayed by his side any longer, she would surely have shaken his heart, clouded his mind, and ultimately made him abandon even his resolve. Because he would have come to ‘love’ her. And love…
‘Love makes one dream of eternity.’
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