The dispute dragged to the shore’s end, and the Heretic Inquisitor still wasn’t allowed to run his tests, like a locked gate holding back a cold tide.

They said, we can’t trust a Heretic Inquisitor who came in with murder in his eyes, like a naked blade at first light. Not wrong. But the deeper reason was the dread of truth, a fog that hid whether Catherine was stained.

No—wrong. That was Raven’s thought, not Stini’s, like a shadow mistaking itself for the tree.

At the root, like a seed under black soil, Stini kept asking if “fallen” was a word that swallowed everything.

She’d seen that sheen on those pitch-dark wings, a bad-luck luster like oil on water. She’d sensed it, and her gut, that old compass, was right. The crux was this, the hardest stone in the stream—

Do the wicked deserve the sword?

Do monsters have to die?

What is a human? What is a Hero?

What justice can be carried to the end, without regret, without shame, without joy or grief, like iron pulled true by a lodestar?

And as for me, a Hero—

…whose expectations am I supposed to answer, like a bell answering the wind? Can’t I be, just once, a Hero to the wicked?

Hollow-eyed, Stini watched the sun slide down, a bleeding coin toward the horizon. Raven still waited in the temple, a quiet lantern under stone eaves.

“Haa, did I make it in time? You’re Miss Stini, right?” A young man hurried up like a breeze that forgot to knock. He wore a white coat. His gray hair was tied in a loose tail that spilled over his chest. A pale smile clung to his face, thin as winter light.

“Who are you?”

“Since you haven’t left, I’m on time. I am—mm—a trivial liar, a musician living by a lute’s strings, a third-rate storyteller peddling half-truths, and a messenger so replaceable anyone could wear the seal.”

He picked up the untouched burger on Stini’s table and ate with the lazy grace of a cat in sunlight. For a heartbeat, Stini thought he’d bought it himself.

“Hey! That’s my burger!”

“Is that important? I think you have heavier stones to carry and sharper things to do. Either way, the most important thing isn’t who swallows a small burger.”

He smiled at the maid server, took the soda, and drank like rain sliding off eaves.

“Oh, there’s a cola too.”

“You should pay for it yourself. I’ll teach you that with my fists. Nice to have a student when I’m angry.” Stini smiled instead, knuckles flexing like pebbles cracking in frost. She rose to find a wider patch of ground.

It wasn’t only anger. It was a hard-to-name disgust, a sand-in-the-teeth mismatch.

Just looking at him stirred an unease beyond good and evil, like a color the eye knew but couldn’t name. Their ways of thinking, their obsessions, their way of being—like parallel rivers, never meeting.

Her instincts kept grumbling like crows on a roof. Her thoughts buzzed so loud she wanted to spear her own skull. Only one thing felt certain: she could beat him bloody.

“Easy. For now I’m not the liar, the musician, or the storyteller. I’m the messenger. Hear what the messenger says, like a traveler taking shelter from rain.”

“…You’ve got three minutes to explain why you’re holding my burger and cola.”

“Simple. Their original owner no longer needs them, like a lantern at dawn.”

He barely chewed, just a soft working like gum in a cheek, yet the burger vanished as fast as Stini after three days of monster-slaying and no food, devouring like a wildfire.

“You planned to end your journey today. You agreed to eat with Vangibia and say goodbye, like sailors toasting under a new moon, right? Right. Two nights ago, at the night market, Miss Vangibia paid for you. Small sum, but it stuck in your throat. So you chose this fast-food place to return the favor.”

“And then?”

“I’m glad you didn’t ask extras. Explaining every step wastes sand from the same hourglass, and we both need time—enough chatter. She can’t make it. For certain special reasons. For certain pitiful reasons. She asked me to bring you her apology, Miss Stini.”

“Why can’t she come? What happened?” As they traded words, Stini understood her dislike. It rose like smoke.

He faked mystery. He toyed with fog. Yet her gut said he hadn’t lied once.

That made it worse. She couldn’t pin him to good or evil, friend or foe, like trying to nail down the wind.

Muddied and dim. Stalled in the middle of right and wrong. A creature poised on the knife-edge.

Stini didn’t want to understand. She refused to.

“If you want reasons, if you ask why she can’t even make a farewell meal, it’s a long story. Long as old bones under forgotten earth.”

“One more ghost-word and I’ll break your nose!”

“If you refuse to hear, if you refuse to see, how do you know your thinking is true? I can tell many long stories. All of them bind to you like red threads. But you fear what you hear and see isn’t the whole, and so you freeze—yet that’s no reason to plug your ears.”

His pale smile never changed, a wash of color too ordinary, so ordinary it became eerie, like a faded mural that somehow eclipsed the lead figure.

“Listen. We still have time. Enough for me to finish the tale. Enough for you to bring dinner back to Miss Raven. Enough for you to find your answer.”

“…How do you know I’m bringing food to Raven?” Stini’s gaze sharpened like glass. Her hand found her sword-hilt at her hip.

“Is that important? Raven has a story. Vangibia has a story. Miss Stini, which one do you want? We only have time for one. I suggest Vangibia’s. That one might not wait.”

Stini wanted distance like a cliff wants the sea.

She could punch him into the clouds, or she could bolt and look ugly. Either way, she wanted their lines of sight to never cross again.

“…And yet you’ll sit here and let me finish.” His unchanging smile turned razor-dry, like frost on a blade.

“In those ancient years, humans still explored nature, born of it and dying to it, like sparks in a great wind. The world the Creator made wasn’t smooth sailing. That golden age meant this: people died cradling their own ideals. That, too, is a blessing.”

“Many died in the search. To hurricanes, to tsunamis, to quakes, to blizzards—names on stones washed by rain.”

“Then time rolled on to the modern—no, the recent age. Humans wished the world would bend like a reed. From exploration to dominion. There’s always a price in that tide.”

“Nature didn’t change. People did. The storms stayed. But humans built stronger houses like cliffs, bigger ships like whales, learned disaster-magic that looked small to the sky. They set footholds in the old forbidden zones of life.”

“More humans. More land to open. More disasters to swallow the unwary. Not self-inflicted, no. Just that the places needed for space were never quiet waters.”

“The key ring was the Endless Sea, cradle and granary for seven percent of humanity. Lose it, and seven in a hundred would drift like leaves.”

“Humans can’t lose the sea.”

“Though the sea isn’t gentle, not always. It has two faces like the moon.”

“Generation after generation lived by the sea and died by the sea, like tides keeping count. Death finds us all. A bed, or a wave—does it matter? Maybe. But that quarrel isn’t today’s fish.”

“The Sea God wished to help, to grant favor. But He first had to keep balance. Sea against man. Life against death. Do you grasp balance? It’s a fun word, like a scale you can’t see… fine. Just know a Divine Being, bound by balance, can’t directly haul the drowning to shore.”

“The parched still die. The drowned still sink. Sea God Xien is the idea of the sea made flesh. He loves humanity, but the sea itself isn’t kind to us—though destroying the world is easy for gods. That’s a side note.”

“Mages can’t fight the Demon King. But in other ways, they outdo warriors by far. To quiet the sea’s hunger, they worked with Sea God Xien and cast—call it a legendary spell, a ritual. Yes, you guessed it. Sacrifice.”

“A Divine Being can’t move unless weight shifts on the scale. So we load the ‘human lives’ side with a stone, and buy divine aid.”

“Yes. Sacrifice. One life for many lives.”

“And yes, as you’ve guessed, this year’s offering is Vangibia.”

Stini shot up, the table clattering like a shield on stone. The young man had already stacked the empty trays and returned them to the maid server, so nothing smacked his face.

“Don’t flare. The ritual is once a year. One life buys tens of thousands of lives and heaps of gold, like a levee built of tears. Worth it, no?”

He dabbed at the spotless corner of his mouth. He straightened the table like a careful clerk, and even found time to apologize to the maid server.

“How could that be worth it! That’s a human life!”

“Please fix your logic before you swing. Helena’s fisheries alone make a million Colonna gold coins a year. Do you know how many died to storms before the ritual?”

“…”

“Do you know how wide humans range on the sea after the ritual, compared to before? How many horizons our nets now cut?”

“…”

“To save ‘humanity,’ you sacrifice ‘one.’ To save ‘the many,’ you sacrifice ‘one.’ Any era, any world, it’s the unmatched Golden Law. Miss Stini, can you refute it?”

“…”

“Vangibia is willing. She knows everything. She was asked and she agreed, then she was accepted as the sacrifice. Helena will compensate her family. Over a thousand Colonna gold coins. Enough for parents, brothers, nieces and nephews to rest easy in winter sun.”

“…But it sounds…”

“To weigh a life in gold is cruel and ugly. That’s what you think. Yet people do price their lives. Not only in gold. In fame, in honor. In that ‘ah, even a useless person like me saved someone’—that very silver-grade self-satisfaction. Everyone’s satisfied with this story. All who pay receive their due. Humanity walks one more year in calm water.”

“Except you. Without you—without your refusal and your fight—this ends in cheers and flowers, like lanterns bobbing on a clear river.”

“The problem is, the ‘saving’ you intend won’t bring thanks or bouquets. Only complaints and bitter smiles.”

“Miss Hero, will you still push on? For your lone ‘justice’—doesn’t that become the very ‘self-satisfaction’ you hate?”

The musician spoke unhurriedly, snow-cold and mountain-high, as if the matter were a distant peak under a clear sky.