“I did it!! It really works!!”

After turning a few more pages, Morse wrote down his feelings in an excited hand. The words were so deeply pressed into the paper, they nearly went right through it.

What Sherry hadn’t expected was that the Gerald Spell, which had saved countless people from disaster, had been invented and tested by Pope Morse himself.

He’d used his own life to test an idea that was utterly absurd. His actions reminded Sherry of the scholars in the Candlelight Sanctuary.

In her eyes, they were all a bunch of lunatics.

Farther down, Morse’s handwriting grew crooked and messy. It was as if a venomous snake had coiled around his arm as he wrote, leaving him frightened—and a little angry.

Angry at his own helplessness.

“Cyril isn’t fit to be pope. He’s too cowardly.”

“The Gerald Spell is the only way to stop the plague. It must be put into practice.”

The gap appeared again, and anxiety welled up in her.

For some reason, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the missing pages held the part about the disaster in the Holy City.

Unfortunately, beyond the gap came the account of how the pope had adopted her and her younger sister.

“Nothing is more troublesome than raising children. The quiet one must be the older sister, right? The noisy little one deserves to be the younger sister.”

“The older sister is called Liya, and the younger one Nina. Liya’s eyes are unusual. She’s barely been born, yet she gives me the impression of an adult.”

“I hope that when she grows up, she’ll protect her crybaby of a younger sister.”

Morse wrote about the children he’d adopted in a lighthearted hand. By then, he’d risen from archbishop to pope, and the Gerald Spell had begun to spread beyond Ayideen and across the world.

Sherry was the name she gave herself after awakening her Witch powers.

Only the final page of the diary remained, and disappointment welled up in Sherry once more.

Aside from learning some details about Morse’s life, she hadn’t found much useful information. What exactly had happened in the Holy City more than a decade ago? And why had the Headless Shadow been following her? She still had no answers.

Still, from the information Morse had left behind, it seemed that he and the previous pope, Cyril, had held radically different views. Had Cyril really been unwilling to promote the Gerald Spell, which could make people immune to White Mist disease?

Why would he reject a spell that could save countless lives?

She couldn’t make sense of it.

Still, at least she had a lead. If she started investigating the Gerald Spell or the late Pope Cyril, she might learn more about what had happened.

Rustle—

The diary fell open to its last page. The four words on it made Sherry jolt.

“It’s coming.”

It? What was coming?

She hurriedly flipped back a page, wondering if she’d missed something. But what chilled her was that on the previous page, he’d been cheerfully writing about the troubles of raising children.

It was as if he’d become a different person overnight. The writing on the last page was horribly distorted, like tiny snakes clinging to the fragile paper.

As she stared at the handwriting, Sherry could almost picture Morse struggling in agony as he wrote those words.

“…Cyril was wrong. So was I.”

“Every choice was wrong…”

“Everyone will die.”

The farther she read, the drier her throat became.

She remembered what Archbishop Ackerman had told her: Pope Morse had gone mad.

What had he been pursuing? And what choices was he talking about?

The dim yellow flame flickered in the basement. Sherry ran her fingers over the withered paper, her gaze unfocused.

Suddenly, a strange insect covered in long feelers leapt across her field of vision. Startled, she let the diary slip from her hands and hit the floor again.

“I’ll stomp on you in a minute!”

She cursed, hardly like a proper lady, then bent to pick up the diary—and noticed a few words Morse had written on the back.

“You can’t escape either.”

Each stroke was neat and precise.

Her heart gave a sudden spasm, and fear swept through Sherry.

Who had Morse been talking to? Her? Or the thing he’d mentioned?

Whoever it was, she didn’t want to think about it anymore. Somehow, the damn basement had grown terribly eerie. If she stayed any longer, she felt like she’d go insane.

She was a total coward, after all!

In a panic, she shoved Morse’s diary back into the cabinet, then fed more flame into the fire in her hand, making it bright enough to light the entire basement.

As expected, nothing made her feel safer than the light.

As for why she didn’t take the diary with her, she simply felt there was something sinister about it. Better not to keep it close.

She hurried back the way she’d come, glancing over her shoulder every few steps. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was following her.

She knew she was the only one in the basement. No one was following her. But the way her cowardly mind worked, she couldn’t feel at ease unless she kept looking back.

She was afraid of ghosts. In her previous life, she hadn’t even dared to watch horror movies.

She climbed the stairs leading out of the basement, taking quick, little steps toward the entrance. Maybe it was just her imagination, but the stairs seemed longer on the way out than they had on the way in.

She shoved the stone slab above her head aside. She didn’t care if anyone spotted her—getting out of the basement came first.

The longer she wandered in the dark, the more her mind ran wild. The scariest ghost stories in the world were the ones you told yourself.

When she emerged from the basement, the choking smoke in the Holy Land was still thick. Purple light flashed in the distance, and explosions rumbled one after another. They were all signs of the priests fighting the monsters.

Her task was done. Now it was time to leave the Candlelight Sanctuary.

Hopefully Carlisle was already gone.

She pulled her hood down to hide every strand of hair, lowered her head, and took a deserted side street toward the Candlelight Gate.

There was a reason no one came to the depths of the Holy Land: there were more monsters here than elsewhere.

As she passed an alley, she saw a monster floating in the air, shaped like a ball of flesh.

Its whole body was a fleshy pink, covered in lumps that bulged from its round surface. The lumps were translucent. Through their thin membranes, Sherry could make out things coiled inside like pythons. It was revolting.

Fighting monsters was always the worst option. Even if she could beat this one, the noise of battle might attract more.

The best choice right now was not to disturb it, but to back away and find another route.

With that in mind, she took a step backward.

Her sole touched the stone floor with a soft tap. The faint sound, too quiet for human ears to make out, became the monster’s wake-up call.

One by one, the translucent lumps burst like bubbles. Tentacles shaped like pythons shot into the air, making the monster look like a giant ball of spikes.

What Sherry found most unbearable was the way the monster split open down the middle, revealing a terrifying maw hidden inside the ball of flesh! There were so many teeth in its mouth that she was sure she’d develop severe trypophobia!