15th of Glace, year 20XX

Renee woke up with her face pressed to the History of the World. When did she fall asleep?

She lurched upright in her chair, horrified when she recalled that today was the winter solstice. How could she have fallen asleep like that when there was such a dire deadline looming over her head? 

She was furious with herself, angry and guilty in equal measures. 

She riffled through her wardrobe and yanked a random white dress before scrambling to put it on. It was only afterward that she realized her mistake, as it was in the dead of winter and her dress had short sleeves. But it was too late to change now. Grabbing what she could, she raced down to the main area where the saints usually hang out.

That’s where Renee froze, standing in the doorway to an empty room. Well, a mostly empty room. The only person who was there was Anise, sitting down with a resigned expression on her face. She startled when Renee barged into the room, then cast her eyes down as if to avoid Renee’s eyes.

“Where are they, Anise?” Renee asked, a heavy feeling sinking in her chest.

Anise refused to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“What is going on?” Renee demanded, her panic rising.

“I didn’t think you would wake up so fast.” Lirion’s voice came from behind her.

Renee whirled around to find Lirion standing in the hallway a short distance away. She felt a knot unravel in her chest when she saw him. 

He started a little when he saw her. “That dress…”

“What was that?” Renee asked.

“...looks familiar.” Lirion finished.

Renee cast a quick look down at her dress, but she couldn’t find anything special about it. It was white, with an A-line skirt that fell just above her ankles. 

“I thought everyone left this building for a second.” Renee let out a sigh of relief. For a long moment, she thought that the saints had all abandoned her.

“We did.” Lirion’s tone was both cold and apologetic at the same time. “I just happened to be the last one here.”

Renee’s stunned expression melted to a frostier one that matched Lirion’s. “What is going on?”

“We decided that you and Anise should stay behind.” Lirion explained. “We’re going to open the gateway to the aether realm in the University of Elysia instead of here.”

For a moment, Renee couldn’t believe her ears. The full implication of his words sank in. “You think we’re liabilities.”

He flinched a little as she voiced out the ugly truth. “We want to keep you two safe.”

“Safe?” Renee’s voice rose to a shout. “How safe can we be if we sit around and wait for you while you engage in a battle that will decide the fate of the world? How safe can we be if the rest of you are going to martyr yourself for this? Are you really going to cast out not one but two saints? You don’t even have Eislyn by your side, and you’re actively choosing to walk into Eris’s domain!”

“We made it without you last time.” Lirion turned away.

“What do you mean?” Renee demanded. “Lirion, turn around and face me right now!”

“I can’t.” He said. “If I do, I’ll fall apart. Please, Renee. Stay here.”

Renee casted another look at Anise, who was silently crying and refusing to meet Renee’s eyes. 

“You knew.” The realization that Anise was also in on their plan struck her like an arrow to the heart.

“Fine,” Renee growled. “I’ll stay, since the only thing worse than being useless is being a liability.”

She didn’t wait for him to say another word. She turned swiftly on her heel and marched off, angrily stomping through the empty hallways of the Court of Saints.

She didn’t look back. She didn’t slow down. She walked faster and faster until she was fully sprinting from one hall to another, her eyes blurring up with tears. Then, all of a sudden, she stopped and collapsed onto the floor, her dress pooling around her.

“I can’t believe you, Lirion.” Renee angrily wiped away her tears. “And to think I kind of like you too.”

Anise’s betrayal hurted worse, of course, but Anise was naive and easily convinced.

The worst part was that Renee could understand where their decision was coming from. With no memories and only a fraction of her full powers, she really was a liability. It’s just that the fact she had no say in stepping aside was humiliating.

Renee raised her head again to see which corner of the Court of Saints she had run to in her distress. It wasn’t an area she was well acquainted with, mostly because she hadn’t really explored the building that well. To be fair, it was huge.

In front of her, there was a long mirror with a gilded frame, and she could see herself reflected in the glass. She looked like a mess. Less like a saint, and more like a girl who was lost.

Rising to her feet, Renee approached the mirror, continuing to study the girl within. She had golden eyes filled with determination, her straight black hair reaching to the small of her back. How can she make this girl look more like a proper saint?

Gripping onto the frame of the mirror so hard that her knuckles were turning white, Renee took a deep breath. She wondered if she was crazy or desperate to try what she was about to do next.

Staring hard into her reflection’s eyes, Renee firmly started speaking. “I, Renee Arlinus, swear to dedicate my life to serve this world, to become a keeper of humanity, and to protect all life until mine has come to pass.”

The Saint’s Oath was immortalized by every story that survived time and history, and was so famous that anyone could probably recite it perfectly from memory. It was nothing more than simple words and phrases, but also carried a large weight behind them. It was the oath every saint swore to Eislyn when they took up the rank of sainthood. 

Normally, the oath was asked by Eislyn herself and goes as, ‘Do you swear to dedicate your life to serve this world, to become a keeper of humanity, to protect all life until yours come to pass?’ 

Well, Renee had to improvise it a little because there wasn’t a goddess around to speak the question part. She wasn’t even sure what she was trying to accomplish here. Perhaps to unlock some memories? Perhaps to reach Eislyn in a way that a thousand years of fervent prayers from billions of people couldn’t? Or perhaps she was hoping it could unleash her magical latency through some kind of placebo effect?

To her surprise, she felt one of her seals flare up again before giving way, shattering like glass. Mana rushed throughout her body. Renee sucked in a breath at the feeling. 

It worked! The second seal had been released! She wasn’t sure how or why, but that wasn’t important at the moment. If she showed it to the other saints, would they allow her to accompany them now?

The mana then poured out of her and flowed into the mirror whose frame she was still clutching on to. As she watched, the surface of the mirror started to ripple, as if her words had transformed it into liquid. Her reflection became distorted and blurred. She flinched and immediately let go of the mirror’s frame, taking a small step back. 

When nothing happened immediately, her panic ebbed and her curiosity took over. She leaned in closer, trying to make out what the mirror was trying to show her. Was it still her reflection? Or was the mirror now showing a different image altogether? 

Something shifted in the mirror’s surface, something that was not Renee’s reflection. Renee was only able to catch the gleam of golden eyes before a pale hand shot out through the surface, parting the glass like water, and clamped down on Renee’s wrist hard. It moved so fast that Renee didn’t have a chance to react. Before Renee could even so much as draw in a breath to scream, the hand yanked her into the mirror.

She slipped through the surface of the mirror with so little resistance that she might as well have walked through an open doorway. The hand vanished from her wrist as soon as she passed over. There was no ground beneath her on the other side, and not a speck of light. It was as if Renee had been pulled into a void. For a moment, Renee stood suspended in the air, terrified and practically blind, until gravity finally took hold. 

Then she finally let out a scream as she plummeted down into the dark abyss.