“Me? You expect me to take responsibility?! I've been dead for centuries! How am I supposed to fix anything?!”
Sarah sprang to her feet, protesting furiously at the god who had so casually decided to saddle her with responsibility for the state of the world.
She waved her hands in frantic objection, scrambling for every excuse she could think of.
She had been dead for three hundred years. How could she possibly know what was happening in the mortal world? Besides, she was no god. How was she supposed to identify which destinies had gone astray, let alone figure out how to correct them?
And so her objections went on.
“There's no need to concern yourself with that.”
Unfortunately, the god had no intention of allowing her to talk her way out of the assignment.
With a serene smile, the deity used one hand to tilt Sarah's head back into position and raised two fingers toward her eyes with the other.
“My fragments will guide you wherever you need to go.”
“...?”
Sarah narrowed her eyes at the light gathering around the god's fingertips.
It was an extraordinary radiance, as though someone had gathered the stars from the night sky and compressed their brilliance into a single point. Even Sarah, who had spent three hundred years enduring the flames of hell, found herself momentarily entranced.
There was, however, one rather alarming problem.
Those glowing fingers were pointed directly at her eyes.
“Um, God? Couldn't we discuss this a little more calmly? With words, perhaps...?”
Confronted with the very real prospect of having her eyes gouged out, Sarah began struggling desperately.
She leaned her head back as far as she could, twisting and squirming in a frantic attempt to escape.
But what chance did a mere sinner have against an omnipotent god?
The deity remained utterly unmoved by her struggles.
“If you faithfully carry out the task I've given you—”
And then, with perfect composure, the god presented an offer Sarah could never have refused.
“I will pardon the entirety of your remaining 504,932,781-year sentence.”
Her entire sentence.
More than five hundred million years of punishment, erased in a single stroke.
“...?!”
Sarah went rigid.
She had never imagined such an offer was even possible.
Staring up at the god with wide eyes, she struggled to find her voice.
“Y-you mean that? You're serious? But why?”
Her question was equal parts hope and disbelief.
The god merely chuckled.
There was something unmistakably arrogant about that smile, as though the deity were silently asking, Does it matter whether I'm serious? It's not as though you have a choice.
“You have three years. If you fail to set things right within that time, your five-hundred-million-year sentence will be reinstated.”
You can manage that much, can't you?
Countless questions immediately crowded Sarah's mind.
How was she supposed to accomplish such a thing? Why did it have to be her? How many people would she need to save? And was it remotely possible to untangle three hundred years of distorted fate in a mere three years?
She could have spent an eternity asking questions.
Instead, she kept her mouth shut.
“This will not be a reincarnation. Your soul will be returned directly to your body at the moment before your death. Do you have any further questions?”
“No! None at all! I'll do my very best!”
Sarah nodded so vigorously that anyone watching might have mistaken her for a woman entirely confident in her ability to accomplish the impossible.
After all, hesitation was a luxury reserved for people with options.
Someone who had spent three hundred years at the very bottom of hell could hardly afford to be particular.
Opportunities were rare. When one appeared, no matter how suspicious it seemed, the sensible thing was to seize it.
She could worry about the consequences afterward.
“Sarah Rosenbaum.”
Perhaps the god was pleased by her unhesitating acceptance.
There was a faint note of warmth in the divine voice as it called her name.
“Yes?”
Sarah looked up obediently at the wise, impartial, and wonderfully benevolent deity who had granted her such a miraculous opportunity.
The god smiled.
“This time, try to live a little more virtuously.”
Thud!
And with that impeccably moral piece of advice, the god drove the glowing fragments straight into Sarah's eyes.
“Aaaaaah!”
Blinding white light swallowed her vision.
So this was what resurrection felt like.
It was her first experience of the process, of course, but the brilliance was so overwhelming that it nearly brought tears to her eyes.
Engulfed in light, Sarah suddenly felt a strange weight settle over her.
A body.
She had a body again.
It was a sensation she had not experienced in three hundred years, and the unfamiliar heaviness of flesh and bone left her momentarily bewildered.
She tried to open her eyes.
Nothing happened.
She tried again, putting more effort into it this time, but her eyelids stubbornly refused to move.
It was as though she had forgotten how to use them.
...Water.
A sharp, damp scent reached her nostrils.
And somewhere nearby came the unmistakable sound of water splashing against a hard surface.
Such a clear, refreshing sound.
Nothing like it had ever existed in hell.
This really is the mortal world... isn't it?
The realization came all at once.
She had escaped.
After three hundred years of torment, she had finally escaped hell.
It had happened so abruptly that Sarah felt a fleeting pang of unease. Perhaps she had been a little too quick to accept the god's terms.
But that concern vanished almost immediately.
There was water nearby.
The moment she became conscious of it, an almost unbearable thirst seized her.
Water.
She wanted water.
If her body had obeyed her, she would have leaped to her feet and rushed toward the sound without a second thought.
Unfortunately, she still couldn't move so much as a finger.
Apparently, her newly restored body needed a little more time to remember how to function.
One thing, however, was already perfectly clear.
The ground beneath her was freezing.
That god really did just dump me wherever they pleased, didn't they?
Then, at long last, her eyelids stirred.
Slowly, painfully, they opened.
“...”
Light.
For the first time in three hundred years, Sarah saw light that did not come from the fires of hell.
It was so bright that she could barely bear to look at it.
Yet she refused to turn away.
Her eyes stung. Tears gathered along their reddened edges. The brilliance was almost painful, threatening to overwhelm her vision entirely.
And still she stared, utterly captivated.
Wow.
Sunlight really is something else.
She was no longer trapped in that dreadful, dimly burning pit.
She was back.
She was finally back.
Hehe.
Hehehehe.
The mortal world.
The mortal world!
As Sarah luxuriated in the simple miracle of being alive again, however, something peculiar began to trouble her.
“...?”
Why did the sunlight seem so close?
And now that she looked more carefully...
Wasn't it a little strange that the sun appeared to be sitting on the ground?
“Eek! C-cold!”
Before she could make sense of it, a torrent of icy water came crashing down over her head.
The shock of it pierced straight through her already chilled body.
Whatever lingering fog had clouded her senses vanished instantly.
Sarah spluttered, hurriedly wiped the water from her face, and finally took a proper look around.
“What the...?”
Iron bars.
There were iron bars directly in front of her.
She jerked upright.
“Why the hell am I locked in a cage?!”
She had been so overjoyed at returning to the mortal world that she had hardly noticed where she was.
Now, however, the situation was impossible to ignore.
She was inside a cramped iron cage, barely large enough for her to straighten her back.
Sarah instinctively reached toward the bars.
Something heavy clinked against her wrists.
Shackles.
Thick iron shackles had been fastened tightly around both hands.
So that's why I felt so heavy.
“Where the hell did they send me?”
A mounting sense of dread replaced her earlier elation as she hurriedly surveyed the area beyond the cage.
First of all, that supposed sunlight was nothing of the sort.
It came from a lamp illuminating the room.
And beyond the iron bars, the floor was covered in water.
Splash!
The sound echoed from somewhere farther away.
It seemed someone else was receiving the same treatment she had just endured.
Now that she understood what she was seeing, the light no longer seemed quite so beautiful.
Nor did the damp air smell particularly refreshing.
This was a cold, wet chamber lit by artificial light, and there was absolutely nothing about it to suggest that anything pleasant happened here.
A dreadful suspicion crept up the back of Sarah's neck.
Her expression hardened.
“Hey. Did that one just talk?”
A rough male voice sounded from outside the cage.
The speaker sounded middle-aged, perhaps older.
“What? No way.”
Another man answered.
A long shadow fell over Sarah.
And then—
Splash!
Another bucket of freezing water was dumped directly over her head.
“Ugh! What the hell is wrong with you?!”
Sarah's patience finally snapped.
She spat out the water and cursed at the top of her lungs.
At that, the two men moving about outside her cage bent down to peer inside.
One was thin and wiry, with a restless, nervous air about him.
The other was a hulking brute, his thick limbs packed with muscle.
“No kidding.”
The wiry man gave a disbelieving laugh as he saw Sarah glaring back at them with unmistakably alert eyes.
“Hey. Come here a second.”
Something seemed to catch his attention.
His expression changed.
Without warning, he thrust an arm between the bars and seized a fistful of Sarah's hair.
“Ow!”
Bang!
He yanked her forward.
Sarah's forehead struck the iron bars with a sickening crack.
A sharp pain shot through her skull, and warm blood began trickling from the split skin.
You bastard...!
Humiliation and rage flared through her.
She glared at the men with enough venom to kill.
They paid her no more attention than they would have given a barking dog.
Instead, one of them held a bright light directly in front of her face.
“Her eyes are purple!”
The muscular man was the first to speak.
His voice rang with excitement, as though he had just stumbled upon an extraordinary treasure.
“She's an immune.”
The wiry man's words caught Sarah's attention.
An immune?
She had never heard the term before.
Despite the pain in her scalp, she listened more carefully.
“How the hell did an immune end up mixed in with this lot?”
“Who cares? It's our lucky day.”
Sarah held her tongue.
Perhaps if she stayed quiet, they would say something useful.
What exactly was an immune? Was it some kind of title? A condition? A particular sort of person?
Unfortunately, the two men merely exchanged meaningful looks, elbowed each other, and snickered.
Neither seemed inclined to explain anything.
The wiry man finally released her hair, shoving her head roughly aside.
His voice took on a distinctly greedy edge.
“We could get a fortune for this one from the guild.”
Ah.
Now Sarah understood.
So that's what this is.
Her lips twisted into a crooked smile.
These bastards are slave traders.
Of course.
Three hundred years had passed, and the world still hadn't managed to rid itself of scum like them.
How utterly disappointing.
“Cover her up. We don't want anyone else getting ideas. I'll go see if there are any buyers nearby.”
“Got it.”
The wiry man walked away, grinning from ear to ear.
Once he was gone, the muscular brute fetched a large piece of cloth from somewhere nearby.
Without so much as a glance at Sarah, he threw it over the cage.
“Hey. Wait—wait, wait...!”