Chapter 211

Chapter 211: divine blessing.

That familiar car lay overturned in the street, as if it had crashed on the way to the Grand Cathedral. Vanna’s uncle was clearly still inside. Her already hazy mind tightened in an instant. In the blink of an eye she rushed to the car.

Then she saw that the arm hanging out of the window was twitching slightly. The blood-soaked hand seemed to rise just a little as she drew near.

Her uncle was still alive.

Vanna reacted at once. She hurried forward, braced the car with one hand, and snapped the twisted door frame with the other. Then she leaned in, propping up the warped structure while she checked Dante’s injuries. She pulled her uncle out of the car as carefully as she could, trying not to cause any further harm. Right after that, she cast divine magic. With the last of her strength, she called upon the Blessing of the Sea Breeze, trying to bring life back into Dante’s fading body.

The almost suffocating hot wind still raged through the streets. Burning ash and falling sparks made the city-state look like a literal hell. Vanna held a Protective Ward around herself, its powerful pressure forcing back the deadly environment nearby. She laid Dante flat on the ground. After a round of desperate efforts, she finally saw the man who had raised her for eleven years slowly open his eyes.

“Ah… Vanna… you came back…”

That was the first thing Dante said when he opened his eyes.

“Yes, I came back,” Vanna answered at once. She did not notice what was strange about that word “came back”. She simply reached out and took his hand. “How do you feel? Can you still move? I’ll take you to the Grand Cathedral…”

“No… Don’t bother with a burden like me,” Dante shook his head slightly. He tightened his grip on Vanna’s hand, his fingertips pressing weakly. “I should have known this day would come… They came to claim the price… You have to go. Before they find you… leave Pland. Go somewhere no one knows you…”

Hearing her uncle’s whisper, Vanna froze. She suddenly realized that her uncle seemed to know something even she did not. Her voice trembled a little: “What do you mean? Who are ‘they’? What price are they taking? Did you… already know what was happening in the city-state?!”

Dante forced his eyes open. The ruby prosthetic eye he had worn was shattered, and blood ran down from the wounds at the edge of his eye socket. In his remaining human eye, the endless fires on the street were reflected. After a few seconds of silence, he finally spoke in a low voice: “The Enders… and the Subspace behind them… Vanna, do you remember the great fire eleven years ago?”

“The great fire eleven years ago…” Vanna’s eyes widened a little. “You actually remember that fire?”

“How could I not remember… It burns in front of my eyes every day,” Dante said with a bitter smile. “I just thought I could lie to myself for the rest of my life.”

Chaos boiled in Vanna’s mind. In that moment she seemed to forget her exhaustion and wounds. She stared at her uncle’s already clouding eye and thought of everything she knew about the fire, the Black Sun, the Subspace, and the Enders. Before all those clues buried her, she finally asked: “But what does that have to do with the Subspace and the Enders… and with me? What connection do I have to all this? Why are ‘they’ coming for me? What ‘price’ do they want to take?!”

Right after she poured out the questions, Vanna regretted her tone. It sounded less like she was talking to her uncle and more like she was interrogating a criminal. But Dante seemed not to care. He only took a few shallow breaths and then spoke again, his voice like a dream: “When that fire started, I caught a glimpse of… a thin projection of the Subspace. When that extreme and dangerous Truth arrived, I made a wish to the Subspace.”

“You made a wish to the Subspace?” Vanna stared at Dante in shock. “What wish?”

“I wished that nothing had happened. I wished that you… would come back to life.”

Every expression on Vanna’s face froze.

Dante silently gazed at his niece. His face looked as if he were crying, yet there was a bitter smile mixed into it. He slowly raised his hand, as if he wanted to touch Vanna’s hair. His lips moved, and he said in a low voice: “Vanna… you’ve grown up… I’m sorry, I really am. Your uncle was useless. Back then… I didn’t manage to save you…”

“But I remember you taking me out of that fire…”

“I only carried a little pile of ash out of the burning house,” Dante said quietly. “It happened in just an instant. There was no time to react. You turned into this tiny bit of charred ash… I went mad trying to escape that nightmare, trying to make everything go back to how it was before the disaster. I begged for help from anyone who could grant it, a deity, a demon, even the Subspace itself… And then, something answered my wish. It took me many years to understand what exactly had answered me in that moment…”

Vanna seemed to no longer hear the rest of Dante’s words.

She slowly raised her hands and looked at her own body of flesh and blood.

She did not know how long passed before she finally broke the silence: “So, in a certain sense, my survival is the result of the Subspace’s divine blessing?”

Dante closed his eyes a little. He could not answer the question. He could only agree in silence.

“Then… how did I become a Saint?” Vanna asked at once. She was asking her uncle, but it also sounded as if she were asking herself. “How would the Storm Goddess allow someone who survived thanks to the Subspace’s divine blessing to become Her believer, and even grant such great power and protection?”

“I… I don’t know,” Dante said, shaking his head slowly. “Maybe only the Goddess Herself can answer that question, but… how could we ever…”

Vanna did not reply. Her thoughts were in greater turmoil than ever. The faith that had supported her all these years now showed a crack that could not be bridged. She did not know how to face her belief, or even how to face her own ‘existence’. Yet after a short silence, she still rose to her feet and said softly, almost to herself: “No matter what, someone has to stop this Mortal Realm invasion. We must… bring back the world we know as the Mortal Realm.”

“Vanna, you will die,” Dante said suddenly, his eyes snapping open. He used all his strength to push himself upright. “You cannot stay here. The foundation of this Mortal Realm is breaking apart. You must leave Pland, leave this manifestation, until it disappears from your memory completely. Listen, if your survival really is the result of the Subspace’s divine blessing, then correcting history may cause you to turn back into dust. That kind of paradoxical clash isn’t something a mortal can…”

Vanna only gazed quietly at her uncle. Her eyes were gentle and calm.

“Uncle, didn’t you say you loved this city-state and everything in it?”

Dante was silent for a moment. Then the firm expression returned to his face: “…Of course. So I will stay here and face fate together with this city, whether I live or die in the end. I’m ready. But… but you are different, Vanna. You can’t…”

“I’m the same,” Vanna said lightly, cutting him off. “I love this place too, and I am ready for everything… just like you taught me when I was small. Duty above all.”

Dante quietly looked at Vanna standing before him, at the only family he had left in this world. Her figure was as tall as ever, steady and firm, like a seawall ready to meet a giant wave.

He knew his words would have no more effect.

So he let out a soft sigh. With the last of his strength, he shifted himself and leaned against a nearby lamppost.

“Go, then,” he said softly. “I’ll stay here… and wait for you to come back.”

Vanna lowered her head and looked at her uncle.

In her memories, her uncle was still a tall, unwavering mountain. When had he become so much shorter than she was?

She bent down slightly and spoke in a low, gentle voice: “…If everything goes well, the Pland you know will return to the Mortal Realm. When that happens… don’t forget me.”

Dante did not answer. He only nodded slightly.

Vanna straightened up.

The next moment, an unsettling tremor came from far away and cut her movement short. Right after that came a terrifying explosion and the tooth-grinding screech of buildings tearing apart and collapsing.

Vanna looked in shock toward the source of the sound. She had never felt such fear and unease as she did now. In the next second, what she saw confirmed the source of that dread.

From the direction of the Grand Cathedral, a pillar of flame shot up into the sky. The blast wave almost tore apart the hot smoke clouds high above. A blinding, unnatural flash followed, as if a small Sun were rising from underground, ready to rise from below and melt everything to nothing.

Then something even worse happened.

She heard more explosions and more shrieking noise. She saw pillar after pillar of fire rise from all parts of the city-state. Huge fireballs floated above the sea of flames like small Suns. Each fireball rose from the location of a Cathedral.

The bells, which had never stopped ringing even during the city’s melting, finally fell quiet. The sheltered islands within the city began to fall one after another.

Vanna felt her mind go blank. The next second, driven by instinct, she rushed toward the source of the greatest light burst, toward the Storm Grand Cathedral at the heart of Pland.