Thinking like that, Ziffnel flopped back onto the ground and lay down, gazing up at the vast, cold blue sky with a soft sigh.
“Telmere, you rotten ba*stard. Why die for something like that? A fool who risks his life for something as ridiculous as love.”
With those words, she slowly closed her eyes.
The energy of clear water drifted lightly on the wind.
Breathing in the crisp air that felt oddly comforting, the angel—who had left her body behind on the cold earth—parted her lips and began to hum softly, lost in memories of the past.
‘Ziffnel, you will definitely become a good angel.’
“Lalala──”
‘Would you mind keeping this insignificant creature company for a while?’
“Lala─”
‘… Please, please embrace them with kindness. My dear friend.’
“La… ──”
It was a truth she had always tried to ignore—
A pebble lodged in her heart, one she habitually turned away from under the excuse of not understanding love.
“… Did I… like you?”
“Hikk….”
A little girl’s crying echoed in her ears.
It had been annoying just moments ago, yet for some reason, it no longer bothered her at all.
“… Sniff.”
Ziffnel—the angel of charity and love.
A merciless angel who crushed the skulls of heretics like an iron giant, all while claiming with her own mouth that she did not know love.
Even for someone like her, there were days when she wanted to cry.
***
Let’s rewind for a moment to the past—
To a woman madly in love: Cecil Lionelta.
Her once carefully styled brown hair, always tended to please her husband, was now a tangled mess.
Her cheap skirt was torn at the side, revealing her legs, and one of her small feet was missing its shoe.
She was a delicate woman who had offered her heart and begged for love.
The wife of the heretic inquisitor looked up at the blonde-haired man running frantically toward her, then casually snapped her fingers, casting a spell without anyone noticing.
── Tak.
A faint click echoed from within her as if something had locked into place.
In an instant, she reverted to her stately self from before the fight with Thalia—a hateful and inconsiderate b*tch.
She collapsed to the ground, feigning unconsciousness.
This part was important.
He would definitely come running to her.
She tried to erase the image of Julius abandoning her for Thalia. She wanted to believe it never happened.
And so, she acted as though she had barely survived a fierce battle.
A coward’s play—
From the woman who hadn’t hesitated to go toe-to-toe with the very embodiment of mercy and love.
Another self, buried deep within Cecil—her archdevil Nirhil—clicked her tongue and spoke with a mixture of exasperation and amusement.
[You really… No. Never mind. This is absurd. I’m going to cry.]
‘Shut up. I don’t want to seem like some wild woman to Julius.’
As if she had forgotten all the wild and reckless things she had already shown him.
A woman’s heart was truly complicated.
She lay on the ground, holding her breath, pretending to be dead.
When she felt the warmth of her man wrapping around her delicate body, the corners of her lips twitched, barely suppressing a victorious laugh.
She held it in.
‘I won. I really won!’
As expected—Julius loved only her.
No other woman could ever melt his heart.
He was her prince on a white horse.
And only she was allowed to ride it.
From a distance, a girl with black hair came running, moving her injured body with desperate strength.
Cries echoed from her mouth—an old-fashioned priestess shouting not to fall for the devil’s vile words.
Had it reached his earnest heart?
He, who had been holding her shoulders and calling her by his wife’s name in a sweet voice, turned his head to look at his only sister when he heard her sad voice ring out.
‘No, this isn’t working.’
‘Julius.’
‘Your beautiful eyes should only see one woman.’
‘Yes, Cecil Lionelta.’
‘Only I deserve to be in his eyes.’
Her slender arms, which hadn’t moved no matter how hard he shook them, slowly lifted to touch his face.
And he felt the warmth flow in, full of longing.
“Don’t look at other women in front of me, Julius.”
Their lips touched in the blink of an eye.
The extremely sweet scent of milk wrapped around Julius, clouding his mind.
A small tongue, desperate and insistent, slipped past his open lips and caught hold of her husband’s tongue, refusing to let go.
It was a sight that might have seemed disgraceful.
But Cecil Lionelta was his wife.
She claimed Julius’s lips as if to stake her claim and then smiled gently at the black-haired girl watching from afar.
She truly couldn’t stand it.
That day, when her consciousness as a devil was still strong.
Thalia—the girl she had seen while wandering through Kente’s market, searching for the man who had disappeared.
To dare remain by Julius’s side, to keep his image in her filthy eyes—there was a limit to arrogance.
The black-haired girl lost all strength at the shocking scene and collapsed.
Cecil, who had watched her until the very end, turned her attention back to the sweet lips of the man she loved.
Their immoral k!ss continued until they were both breathless.
After a while, Julius finally pulled away from his wife’s lips, looked at her, and gently touched her pale, plump cheeks.
“Are you feeling okay? Are you hurt anywhere, Cecil?”
Still the same—her heretic inquisitor spoke in a harsh tone, so unlike his former gentleness.
But what reflected in his eyes wasn’t her past self—it was her present self. So Cecil closed the lips that were about to speak, licked them once, and whispered softly to him.
“I’m hurting, Julius. It hurts so much… I don’t think I can bear it without you.”
It wasn’t a lie.
Her heart truly ached.
Kente Village—where Julius had been born and raised.
Why hadn’t she been by his side back then?
There was no trace of her in the precious memories of his childhood.
Only that hateful black-haired girl.
So much resentment swelled in her chest, she couldn’t hold back the anger. As tears streamed down her cheeks, the delicate woman buried her face in her husband’s arms, shivering as he gently embraced her.
Julius, who had been watching her quietly, wrapped his arms around the small, sobbing woman. He placed his large hand on her back and began to stroke it slowly, as if to soothe her.
“… I don’t know what happened, but don’t cry. I’m here now.”
“… Julius, I… I’m so cold. I just want to go home.”
“Okay. Let’s go back now. To Kente Village.”
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Check out my other projects: Roughly an Isekai Hypnosis Story (er0-novel 😉
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