Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 384: Sin and Redemption

When the darkness broke, Mayne found himself standing in an open square.

Everything ahead of him was vaguely, stubbornly familiar — short houses, a monastery still under construction, a new stone church. The ground was dry and firm without a trace of snow. Sun pushed through clouds. A warm breeze moved against his cheek. Nothing about it felt like the Months of Demons.

He stood very still.

This is the old Holy City. Where I first became a believer. His Holiness O’Brien was hosting a cleansing ritual in this very square.

“So this is the most prominent place in your memories.” Zero’s voice came from behind him, cool and unhurried. “It’s a nice place.”

The Pure Witch.

His fractured thoughts snapped together all at once, and with them came rage — clean and sudden, filling him like a poured liquid. He turned.

“Zero. Are you insane?”

She used her powers on me. How dare she use her powers on me.

And the God’s Stone of Retaliation — why hadn’t it worked?

“I know exactly what I’m doing.” She stood a few paces back, composed, as if they were meeting in a corridor by appointment. “You’re the one who’s still confused. That’s all right. In your subconscious, we have more than enough time.”

Mayne knew Zero’s ability: the Soul Battlefield. It drew both combatants into a mental arena where the victor absorbed everything — memories, identity, accumulated self — and the defeated was simply erased. The only defense was a God’s Stone of Retaliation. He wore one. He had always worn one.

He reached into his pocket and held the crystal up. Cerulean light ran through it cleanly, undimmed, without flaw.

“Why?” he said through his teeth.

“The stone?” Zero smiled. “Its sphere of influence has been removed. A mortal can’t feel the difference, of course.”

The sphere of influence removed. Mayne stared at her. There was only one person in the entire Holy City capable of countering a God’s Stone of Retaliation, and that was the Pure Witch Isabella.

Betrayal. Blatant betrayal.

A vein throbbed in his forehead. His hands trembled before he steadied them. “If I had known these tools were so unreliable, I would have had them all converted into the God’s Punishment Army when I was first appointed.” He kept his voice controlled. Barely. “When did this happen?”

“How would I know when she acted? You had me in a cell.” Zero shrugged. “I only asked her to do it. That’s all.”

“You asked her.” The word landed like an indictment. “If you hadn’t been planning this for a long time, how could she have done something this significant so easily?” His thoughts raced forward and then stopped. “No.” His heartbeat stuttered. “Even the two of you together couldn’t have found the opportunity…”

After his coronation, he had moved into O’Brien’s former bedroom. Booby traps embedded in the walls. Verdict Warriors at the door at all hours. Advanced Magic Stones beside the bed, carried on his person every day. Guards flanking him through every corridor.

How?

The fury in him had been burning too hot to maintain properly, and so it had cooled, suddenly, into something calmer and more dangerous. “What do you want? Is this retaliation for the whipping? Even if you kill me here, the cave below your cage is saturated with God’s Stones. You have nowhere to go once the elevator stops. The Verdict Warriors will take you the moment the door opens. And what happens to you in interrogation will make the whipping feel like nothing.”

“I don’t want to escape.” Zero shook her head. “I want to become the Pope.”

Silence.

He had prepared himself for many answers. Not this one. “A Pure Witch as Supreme Pontiff?” He almost laughed. “I was crowned before every believer in the Holy City. If you kill me, do you think they’ll accept you?”

“I don’t need to appear before everyone.” Her voice was patient, as if explaining something to someone who would understand it eventually. “I’ll have a mouthpiece act as Pope in my place. His Holiness O’Brien spent most of his time in the Pivotal Secret Temple anyway, and wore a mask on the rare occasions he appeared publicly. Under those conditions, who could have said the Pope was actually someone else?”

“You won’t be able to sustain the deception! The Verdict Warriors will realize I’m absent the moment the elevator touches ground. They’ll arrest you immediately!” His voice rose before he could contain it. “If you let me go right now, I can still forget this ever happened.”

“Once the Battle of Souls begins, it doesn’t end.” She smiled. “And you were wrong from the start. They won’t arrest me.”

They won’t arrest her. He stared at her eyes and found no fear in them. No panic. Only a calm that looked, from the inside of it, like the certainty of someone who has already thought past the objection he was raising.

Then it came — a bolt of understanding, ice-cold, shooting through him.

“Even giving up may also be a wise choice.”

“I’m sorry, child.”

His mouth opened. His throat closed around whatever he had meant to say.

“Is this… all O’Brien’s doing?” he finally managed.

“Now you understand.” Zero arched her brows. “The Supreme Pontiff issued standing orders to all guards and Verdict Warriors in the Pivotal Secret Temple — they are never to leave their positions below ground, and they answer only to the Pope. You accepted the scepter above ground.” Her voice was quiet, almost conversational. “But you never took control of the Pivotal Secret Temple.”

She glanced around the sunlit square — the old Holy City, warm and impossible.

“We are currently standing above the cave, above the core of the church’s organization — the one place above ground free from God’s Stone influence, and the one place below ground free from the guards above. Don’t you think that makes it the perfect arena?”

The smile left her face. Her eyes became something else entirely — lit from inside, like fire behind glass.

“This is the battlefield His Holiness prepared for us. Whoever survives becomes the true ruler of the church.”

“How…” The word scraped out of him. “How could he do this? The stupid old man. Was this his repentance — returning power to the witches it was supposedly stolen from?” His voice cracked. “How absurd.”

The ambition in her eyes was something Mayne had never expected to see in a Pure Witch. They were conditioned from birth to be instruments. Loyalty without question. Obedience without remainder.

And then he remembered — too late, as everything clarified at once — what O’Brien had said before the invasion of the Kingdom of Wolfheart.

“I’m sending two Pure Witches to fight alongside you. No one can escape their wrath.”

Why had he never considered what it would mean, for Zero to absorb the memories of a king and a queen? What it would do to a mind designed to receive and retain everything?

He saw O’Brien’s expression in his final hour — that particular, settled relief of a man who had arranged things to his satisfaction and was finished with the world — and understood now what it had meant.

The old man had already been preparing for this. He had known what ambition lived in Zero, and he had chosen not to prevent it.

Is this the ending you wanted to see, Supreme Pontiff?

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