For a long while, Elias just stared at her. He didn’t answer her kind request right away and that made her a bit worried.

  She had both of her hands wrapped around his sweaty palms, if she wasn’t putting any real effort into holding them, they would have slipped free a dozen times over. And his trembling body didn’t make it any easier either.

  For some reason, his breathing had grown ragged and his heart raced faster than before.

  ‘What is wrong with him? Is he still scared of us?’

  Yor thought as she tried to decipher the meaning of the color his astris had flourished into. It was a burnished rose gold that pulsed erratically. She hadn’t encountered this type before so she was confused.

  “...Are you still afraid?”

  She asked softly while continuing to give him a reassuring smile, but that didn’t seem to do anything good. In fact, it only made the situation a lot worse. Instead of giving her answers, Elias was stammering nonsense.

  His words were tumbling out like broken shards of glass. Nothing he was trying to say was making any sense. That’s when Yor’s frown deepened as she thought smiling at him would be enough to set his fear at ease.

  She heaved a light sigh and thought about what she should do now.

  Then the realization struck her. Elias hadn’t been acting this way before she had taken his hand, he only began to lose his composure afterwards.

  Yor was slightly startled by the thought and immediately released him, drawing her hands back into her lap.

  “Uh, sorry”

  It only felt right to apologize, even though she had no idea what was happening. The change in Elias came almost instantly, it was like watching a dam burst for the first time.

  He sucked in a breath and his shoulders sagged with relief, seemingly looking like he finally found his composure and was able to thread his thoughts now.

  The boy continued to stare at her for a while longer before looking down on the carriage floor. A few seconds passed, and that unfamiliar color in his astris began to dim away, then he began talking.

  “My great grandfather…he was a hero. You’ve likely never heard the name, but in his day, there was none greater than him. Vicar Darren, he was called the Saint of Grace”

  Everyone listened intently. The longer he spoke, the reverence his tone carried.

  “They built a chapel in his home town, here in Fens, to honor him. My mother used to take me there, tell me the stories of his heroic tale around the Auren continent. And yet…”

  And that’s when his voice took on a bitter tone. He even clenched his fists tight and by the way his words came out rough, he must have been grinding his teeth as well.

  “And yet…after all he gave for this bloody continent, they turned on him. Tried to make him out a villain. A charlatan! As if he never saved thousands of lives!”

  Elias snarled, his astris flaring hot into crackling anger.

  Naturally, Yor was lost to what he was talking about, but the mention of the word ‘Grace’ reminded her of her dear neighbor. Wondering what she might be doing now.

  It was a full day since she had seen her, and right now it was about to be two days. Usually, by this time, Leo and Willow would be coming to pick her up.

  “Father of the Poor, Vicar Darren, wasn’t that the name? Tell me, little boy. Was he not counted among the Twelve Sacred Saints?”

  Temperance’s voice snapped Yor back to her current situation. As curious as she was about this new group, the boy did not follow up the woman’s question with an answer. However, that seemed to be enough of a confirmation for her.

  “Thought I knew the name. Saint of Grace rings familiar enough”

  Marcille, who hadn’t said anything this whole time leaned forward from her seat and asked.

  “Do you know Tansy? Who were they?”

  ***

  As Temperance explained it…

  The Twelve Sacred Saints were a legendary order of Ascendants formed three centuries ago at the height of the Auren continent’s unity.

  Their members were drawn from every corner of the continent, from warlords, pirates, knights and even non-humans all united under a single banner. To cleanse the world of Chaos!

  Although most of their members were mostly humans, they did factor in other races as well, some of which included an elf, a goliath with the head of a lion, a mermaid and one from the extinct species of jinns.

  Most of their heroic deeds stemmed from invading and conquering Chaos Regions before they reached full maturation. Suppressing Calamity level threats, and reforging kingdoms left in ruins.

  They were unrivaled in their generation, shaping entire centuries of history. No army or country dared to oppose them.

  The true purpose of the Twelve Sacred Saints was more than just masquerading as heroes. Their main purpose was to prevent the impending celestial event known as the Eclipse, which happened every one hundred million years, resetting the world anew.

  However, despite their overwhelming power and massive national backing, they met a tragic end. Not much is known about what happened really, a lot of it is shrouded in mystery.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  It happened roughly a century, when the Twelve entered the biggest Chaos Region the continent had ever witnessed, a festering landmass of death and madness.

  Most of them had perished in this treacherous landscape and the few who did survive somehow, later went on to wreck havoc and laid waste to cities and kingdoms alike.

  Their rampages caused massive losses and in some, the extinction of entire species. Most historians scrubbed the details so nobody knew what actually happened to them and why they suddenly turned on the people who once worshiped them.

  Earning them another name apart from the Twelve Sacred Saints, to the Blighted Saints.

  Temperance concluded by saying.

  “...The Twelve have monuments which most lie in ruin because nations sought to erase the shame they brought. A prime example of this is the Saint Sable College which honors Arlo Sable, who was their leader. It was once called the Saint Arlo Academy, till it was changed after the tragedy. Another is the drowned chapel of St. Vicar, honor to Vicar Darren.”

  And with that, she went quiet, letting her words linger in everyone’s minds. Apart from Arthur, who was already very knowledgeable on most topics, everyone else was stunned. Especially Yor.

  It took a couple of more seconds before she was able to digest everything she just heard. And it was a hell lot of information to take on at once.

  While everyone else seemed convinced, there was one who opposed it all.

  “That’s a lie!”

  Opposed Elias as he lurched to his feet. His body language seemed rather aggressive and he was shouting at Temperance at that, the leader of these scary looking people.

  Well, he didn’t know that. But Yor still had to commend his bravery to defend the honor of those he cared about.

  He was still an idiot, but at least he wasn’t a total coward.

  “Don’t you dare talk down about my great grandfather! He was a good man, a hero! He saved thousands of lives, stood against those monsters and projected our village when no one else would! Without him, half the damn countryside would’ve gone up in flames. He gave everything for this land, everything…!”

  Elias’s sudden outburst didn’t seem to move Temperance at all. She waited for the boy to pour his heart out then leaned her head backward while scratching the back of it.

  “I never said he wasn’t a hero, Elly. But answer me this. Was he counted among the ones who survived?”

  ‘Elly?’

  The boy trembled, seemingly caught off guard by her question.

  “W-what?”

  “Simple question. If he died, then yes. He saved countless lives and died a hero. But if he survived that Chaos Region that took the rest of the Twelve Sacred Saints…then he saved as well as took many lives after. History is cruel. It paints with both colors”

  She leaned forward and asked in a serious tone.

  “So, which is it…did he survive or not?”

  For a moment, Elias stood there stunned. He must have been at a loss for words. His shoulders sagged, and when the right words finally slipped past his lips, they were barely more than a whisper.

  “I…I don’t know”

  With that, he was defeated. He dropped his head and just stood there in silent shock. The thought that the hero figure he admired so much could potentially have been a genocidal maniac must have landed hard on the poor boy.

  Yor tried to comfort him, but before she got the opportunity Marcille exhaled a loud breath, bringing everyone’s attention to her.

  “This is taking too long, Tansy. At this rate, completing this request is going to stretch on for days”

  “We could have had the truth out of him already if you lot stopped playing around. Forcing the answers out of him would be much quicker”

  Arthur emphasized with Marcille’s frustrations. Both of them were right of course, the sun was already hanging way too low in the sky.

  This trip was supposed to last for three days. Today was the second, so if they continued to stall like this, the day they are supposed to leave at might be spent seeking the same answers they can just torture out of this boy.

  But that was a bit too extreme. Torturing another soul was definitely a no no for her. But her older sister didn’t seem to share the same sentiment as she did.

  “Tobias, do you not have something to move this along with?”

  She asked the man in the plague mask, who sat across from her. He turned his head creepily toward Elias, making the boy flinch.

  “Nothing gentle, I’m afraid. But…”

  He mused while lifting a syringe from his coat. The mere sight of it made Yor cringe, remembering the time it was used on her.

  “I could inject him with a toxin. A slow and nasty thing. Starts with stomach cramps, then vomiting, then the sweating begins. Nerves burning like fire. He’ll be begging for mercy before long. I have the antidote, to get it, he’d have to tell us every last thing we want to know. Otherwise—”

  “Enough!”

  Tobias’s questionable methods were interrupted by Temperance, her tone carried a wrathful tone Yor hasn’t seen in her at all. It was enough to make Elias squeal in horror and tumble so hard he fell on the carriage floor.

  Or could be what Tobias was saying that made him scared, and Temperance’s loud voice just triggered a reaction.

  Before anything more could be said, the woman continued.

  “Shameless, all three of you! He’s a child for Stars’s sake. Is your sense of decency truly worth less than a scrap of information? You’d let him suffer just to save yourself a few minutes? Huh?! We may be Vultures, but we are far above common thugs. We still have our morality as human beings!”

  Oh, right. Yor kept forgetting how none of these people were law bidding citizens, they were a step away from being criminals of the state.

  ‘Seems like she knows how to keep them in line’

  Neither Marcille, Tobias or even Arthur disagreed with or opposed Temperance. They merely apologized for their behaviour.

  What they were talking about was indeed important, she had her chin resting on her hand as she listened. However, her thoughts were occupied with something else. Something of particular interest the plague mask wearing doctor mentioned.

  ‘Did he say toxin?’

  That word alone curled like smoke in her mind. Back in her previous life as Kobayashi Yuzuriha, she’s always had a fascination most people would call disturbing.

  She’d known venoms from vipers, alkaloids from plants, and toxins brewed in the underbelly of black markets. Every culture on Earth had them, each more inventive than the last.

  However her interest in them wasn’t because she admired the craft. It was more like. She liked how they made her job to kill people easier, untraceable and helped her climb the corporate ladder.

  And now, in this brand new world…she hadn’t scratched the surface of what it offered!

  Yor could almost feel her mouth twitch into the faintest of smiles, with a bundle of thoughts swirling across her mind.

  ‘Astris flows through everything in this world. Through blood, bones, air, soil. Would poisons here bend under its influence too? Stronger? Stranger? Unpredictable?!’

  She turned to look at Tobias, the toxin he mentioned earlier peeking her curiosity.

  ‘I wonder what other symptoms it carries. What rare reagents brewed it, could they be pushed further and refined?’

  Yor immediately shook her head before curiosity could completely take her over. This wasn’t the time for that now, she was entrusted to get something out of this boy and that’s what she’s going to do.

  She rose from her seat and stepped toward the boy, who had collapsed onto the floor. She crouched in front of him and offered him a hand.

  Yor softened her expression before she said in a soft, inviting tone.

  “Elias. You don’t have to be afraid. We’re not here to hurt you. But we do need your help”

  The boy looked up at her and that same rose gold hue slowly overlapped his raw, skittish fear. Even now, Yor couldn’t tell what that color meant, but she brushed past it and smiled.

  “Please. Tell us where the chapel is. That’s all we ask”

  Elias swallowed hard. His hesitation clung to him like a second skin. He stared at her eyes, then at her hand, back to her eyes and finally let out a shaky breath.

  “...Fine. I’ll tell you. I know where it is. But…”

  He slowly went to his feet before finishing his sentence. Clenching his fists and shouting.

  “If you want to get there…you’ll have to take me with you!”