SALP Chapter 3

The language that records divine revelation, the language spoken by angels, the language of the royal house of Entridhal that held ancient majesty as apostles serving them.

"...guide us to the highest one..."

Her hair stood on end.

As a prophet who was expected to possess unparalleled knowledge, Fiarelle was filled with awe and fear by a language she could not understand even half of.

Could it be that she had been hiding her abilities?

"Stop! It's dangerous, Your Highness!"

Fiarelle reached her hand toward the water column that was rushing at the princess.

"Please stop, Your Highness!"

But Ranthe threw herself into the water column without hesitation.

For the brief moment their eyes met, Fiarelle saw clearly.

"Dangerous..."

Those were definitely eyes filled with fear. Just like what she had seen that day in Roas. Deep terror was rippling in Ranthe's pupils.

But now within those pupils, the inner thoughts she had been hiding all this time were also clearly revealed.

Cold contempt.

Cynicism asking whether she really thought she had followed her sincerely.

She seemed to see the mockery directed at the foolish one who had been briefly deceived.

'Dangerous?'

Ah, she had those same eyes three months ago too.

'Who was it that put us, who knew no danger, into danger.'

Fiarelle could finally read what Ranthe's eyes were saying.

'But why are you mocking me? Me, who is your benefactor, allowing you to live as a noblewoman.'

"Ah..."

Fiarelle collapsed to her knees in front of the lake. She could do nothing but stare blankly at the lake water that was swirling violently in mid-air and moving as if being sucked somewhere.

When the lake finally became calm, only three fallen people of Penmark remained there.

In the crystalline water that was transparent down to its deepest depths, not even a shadow of a person could be seen.

The princess had disappeared. She had vanished completely. As if she had become foam and dissolved into the lake.

"No..."

A cold wind swept across the defeated prophet's cheek like a blade.

The Festival of Ailea. It was the night when the season of wind ended and the season of water began.

2. Ranthe Entridhal

It wasn't that she had suddenly developed faith that some special miracle would occur.

Ranthe had grown up as an utterly ordinary girl in the village of the purely innocent Raphlishians. No, perhaps she was slightly more immature and impure than the other Raphlishians.

'You are a descendant of the Kingdom of Raphlang that the angels protected. We Raphlishians are the proud people of heaven.'

Really? Did the angels really protect Raphlang?

But Raphlang was destroyed.

'If you sing the songs the angels taught us, your heart will be at peace. Songs are much easier than prayers.'

She could not empathize with other people's pure faith. Only she was like that. A child who wickedly teased innocent people and was suspicious of everything.

She didn't like prayers or songs.

She never dreamed that she was of royal blood. No one taught her.

It was doubtful whether even her parents, who died when she was young, knew about their family line. The residents of Roas also passed down surnames to their children, but they didn't consider the concept of family lineage very important.

The angel of Raphlang? She knew well that it wasn't herself.

She also knew that she had no special ability to perform great miracles.

She knew better than anyone that no matter how earnestly she begged and prayed, no miracles would occur.

But she knew this better than anyone...

"Angel of Eründel."

It was just that when she was precariously hanging on the edge of a cliff, there was nothing else she could try.

"Angel..."

Maybe. Perhaps. Just in case. Even by pure chance.

Could she feel, even just once, what the people who raised her felt? Could she experience, even just once before she died, the emotion of hope that the people she loved knew?

"The daughter of the paradise you protect calls to you."

With vague feelings, Ranthe tried calling to the angel. Like struggling to grab and hang onto even a thread as thin as a spider web glittering in sunlight.

So even when she suddenly felt her vision brighten and her footing shake, she thought it was just an illusion. Even when the old prayer that the village chief had secretly taught her came back vividly as if someone was whispering it in her ear and flowed from between her lips.

"...I earnestly call upon you in the name of the Master who rules over you, so pull me out of the swamp of death that blocks my path and lead me to safe shores. Apostle of the Highest One who will defeat my enemies with burning sword of fire and guide me to eternal paradise."

The colossal water column shot up like a monster with a thunderous roar, reminiscent of the earth collapsing, even before Ranthe had finished the short prayer.

"Your Highness...!"

The knights cursed and shouted, and Fiarelle let out a piercing scream.

"No, Your Highness!"

Ranthe ignored the voices passing carelessly through her ears and stared wide-eyed up at the water column.

Is this a response...?

Has her prayer been answered?

But what's happening here? That's not an angel.

Rather, like a monster...

Looking up at the water column that stood like a reverse waterfall, reality seemed to recede. Facing the sudden and incomprehensible situation, Ranthe looked up in confusion, staring intently at the water column that seemed about to crash down on her.

Is she going to die?

Could this be the angel's will?

Come to think of it, the prayer she had recited was something about being guided to 'eternal paradise.'

'Don't tell me I prayed to be guided to heaven after death...'

"Come out quickly! It's dangerous!"

But she absolutely could not return to the demons behind her. She absolutely hated that. If she returned to the palace, Ranthe would have to entrust herself to a monster more terrible than the water column that was writhing with its mouth open like a sea serpent and become his wife.

"Your Highness!"

Would she die if she stayed here? Was what came after this heaven or hell?

If she too had qualifications as a Raphlishian.

Would she... meet Aunt Louise again?

"Take me away."

Ranthe's trembling lips moved.

Beloved faces flickered before her eyes. The adoptive mother she had lost three months ago, and the face of a boy she had lost long before that.

She missed them heartbreakingly, those who had made her small village the biggest and most loving world.

"Do as the angel wills. Take me away."

She stretched both hands over the lake.

Vigo. Are you there too with Aunt Louise?

Her dearest friend. If only she could meet him again and live through those days when they ran around on their old orange roof and the hills, and got caught and scolded by Aunt Louise...

"It's dangerous, Your Highness!"

Ah, then that would be heaven.

Ranthe threw her body into the arms the water column stretched out.

Before losing consciousness, her attention was caught by Fiarelle's voice piercing through the tsunami for only a brief moment.

...Dangerous? More than you demons who devour people?

And she was swallowed by the lake water pouring over her head.

"No!"

At Fiarelle's piercing scream heard from afar, even while losing consciousness, a faint smile formed.

Ah, she had done well. She had succeeded.

Sleeping in the blue water, Ranthe dreamed. She dreamed that the water column that had swallowed her was swimming carefully through the sky like a giant mother fish protecting her eggs, charting a course towards water deeper and wider than Newbella's lake.

"An angel sleeps in Lake Eründel."

Aunt Louise often told Ranthe old stories while knitting at night.

"Thanks to that, Lake Eründel also gained mysterious power. When the lake water evaporates in sunlight, it travels to every place in the world, remembers everything it sees in detail, and returns to Eründel to tell the angel. So remember this. The angel can see every place that snow and rain touch. It's the same as the angel being present everywhere water exists."

A village where neither books nor minstrels existed. For children, the stories they heard from their parents and village elders were everything about the world.

"Angel of Eründel, please pray for us."

"Please protect our homeland."

"I'll be a good child."

Roas was a small village by a large forest and river. The descendants of Raphlang, the Raphlishians, numbering less than five hundred, lived together. In that place, which even the native Penmark people had abandoned because the surroundings were rugged and the land was not fertile, the homeless foreigners had settled down to live.

Even after hundreds of years had passed, they loved the ancient kingdom they had lost and their guardian angel. They tried to preserve and live by as much of their old culture as they knew.

Even orphaned children were raised by couples who liked children or by the entire village, so no one went hungry. Everyone was poor, but they were equally poor, so they didn't even know they were poor.

But actually, they didn't know much about Raphlang either. They were so ignorant that they didn't even know who had ruled them or why Raphlang had perished. No written records remained at all. Only the village chief could read.

An ignorant and simple people. A people who had lived in the north of the Mediterranean long ago, then after being destroyed, a few survivors had come down to foreign lands to live quietly in hiding.

Those foolish people who feared the warlike and large Penmark people and called them 'demons of the outside world'...

"Aunt Louise! The village chief says that when the angel of Eründel sings, our kingdom will be revived!"

Ranthe's hometown was such a small, small village. A place where they couldn't even imagine trampling others or being trampled, and knew only peace...