The shock of the reset knocked her sideways.
Emotions returned in a cascading sequence, snapping back into place one after another.
The sudden flood made her realize, more clearly than before, how wrong their transcendence was… and how precious those emotions truly were to her.
She found herself by the window again, desperately sucking in the cold wind in an attempt to dull her raging senses.
When she eventually regained control of herself, she realized that everything was almost the same.
The morning sun, the bells, the vendors, the pilgrims, and her attendant, who would knock in thirty seconds with the schedule for a day she had already lived.
She pressed her hands to the windowsill and tried to make sense of it all.
She recalled everything—from the weeks of gradual loss to the flowers she had felt nothing about, and the girl in the hall who had gone home radiant while Seraphine stood behind her like an unfeeling marionette.
'It's alright…'
'I'm okay…'
'...I know what is coming. I will not let it happen again.'
With that intention anchoring her, she went through the morning clinic and then the tasks that followed.
At first, everything was fine, but it did not take long for things to start spiraling out of her control.
'No. I can do this.'
The gentleness she showed the construction worker… the distressed mother… the cute child… the emotion accompanying such actions became more and more like holding water in cupped hands.
'Hold on…'
She held on through the week, but it was a losing battle.
'No… Please…'
The ascent was an insidious affair, and the moment she relaxed, she felt another feeling turn into indifference.
'Ah…'
The sublimation of her 'impure' emotions into a supremely pure state moved like a changing season; by the time she noticed the shift, it was already too late.
She would catch herself processing a patient's distress as mere information and realize she had been doing it for hours, then scramble to find the feeling underneath and discover it thinner than the day before.
It did not matter how hard she clung on. By the time she reached the rooftop, where the final scene waited, she was already most of the way gone.
She stood over the moment of choice with her emotions reduced to embers, and the transcendence was so much warmer than those embers that they went out.
Then, somewhere in the corner of her mind, she remembered a certain man. She remembered how warmly he held her, how vulgarly he used her body, how ruthlessly he took her chastity…
And… she did not feel anything.
She reset.
***
***
***
The loops accumulated.
She stopped counting somewhere past twenty.
No matter what trick she tried, it never worked.
She tried different strategies. She held onto specific memories. She recited names. She decided, at the start of each attempt, that she would simply refuse to let the pathway take her beyond a certain point.
She even resorted to self-harm when she felt the embers of her emotions leaving her.
None of it held, and all she was left with were mangled thighs and lacerated arms.
And by the end of it, she always transformed into an emotionless, perfect saintess of Chastity.
The mortal emotions ceased to taint her. No lust could be felt, even as she recalled her most obscene nights with her beloved. No anger touched her, even when she remembered her life's most rage-inducing moments.
Jealousy, pettiness, hate, love, greed… she was above it all. Her purity was unmatched.
And when the dream returned to its beginning, where all her emotions collided back into her being, the first thing she felt was loathing—loathing directed entirely at herself.
Just like now.
'How could I…?'
'How could I forget him? How could my love be so fickle? How could it be swept away by something as trivial as purity?!!'
Seraphine felt hot tears spill down her cheeks as she silently gazed at the morning sun of yet another attempt to fix her mistake.
The hatred was multiplied by the fact that it wasn't only Ashen. Her friends, Alice, Lucia, Lapis… everything was swept away by the raging currents of her Virtue.
'I don't believe it.' Seraphine's eyes hardened. 'At least you. I can't forget. For more than five centuries, I have loved you. Cherished you. Drowned in madness with you.'
She bit her lip until it bled.
'How can a mere illusion dare to trample on all of it?'
'Even when everything ceased to matter back then, only you stayed by my side. And only you saved me from eternal doom. So how could I succumb now?'
'...I'd rather die!'
***
***
***
After the thirty-something reset, the self-hatred almost felt like a physical phenomenon.
She could not explain that sharp pain in her heart any other way.
Her emotions were her most precious things. The love she had for Ashen, the irritating fondness she felt for Alice, the goofy warmth she had for Lapis and Sabrina and all of them, the way she could not pass a hurt animal without feeling her chest pull toward it—these were not merely incidental to who she was. They were HER.
And every loop, she watched them stripped away. She could not stop it, and she despised herself for that.
…because the person who remained had nothing to do with the real her.
'I am so weak…'
A stray thought popped up in a loop somewhere past forty, as she watched herself perform a clinic session with perfect technical efficiency.
'Every time I tell myself this will not happen, and every time it does. What is the point of knowing what I am losing if I keep losing it?'
The self-hatred worsened with every loop. But how could it not? This looping pattern… it reminded her too much of a time she had spent with him… except this time, without the feelings to match.
It trampled on those fond memories, so she could only hate.
Hate this weak self that did not know how to protect her own emotions.
Hate this purity that considered her emotions unnecessary.
Hate even chastity herself.
Hate.
Hate.
Hate.
Hate!
HATE!!!
By the later loops, it was the first thing she felt each morning. Before the bells faded, before her attendant knocked, before even the rest of her previously lost emotions, it was already there—low, steady, and furious. Directed at neither the pathway nor the dream, but at herself. At the version of herself that kept watching her own warmth disappear and calling it transcendence.
I hate this. I hate that I cannot stop it. I hate that she thinks she has improved.
She could not protect her love, but she could despise what replaced it.
***
Another attempt.
The morning came when the bells rang and she felt the hatred first, and everything else second, and that unreasonable loathing did not soften as the days passed.
The ascent still happened. She still felt the clarifying tug, the way the emotions simplified and receded. But beneath it, her hatred for her own weakness had grown so deep and so personal that the transcendence could not quite reach it.
It was not a grand emotion. It was not love, or courage, or a memory of something beautiful. It was simply a woman who was tired of watching herself fail the same test and had finally found something to be angrier about than she was afraid.
The weeks passed. The path claimed her piece by piece, same as always, and she held the hatred at the center of her chest like a coal, because, no matter how ugly and malevolent, it was hers. She learned the hard way that her emotions were her dearest things.
They were what made her human, and the perfectly transcended, inhuman saint she kept becoming would never have felt them.
She reached the street in the market district on the day the dream required.
A woman was there.
She was perhaps thirty, down on one knee on the cobblestones, one arm raised to shield her face while her husband stood over her. The sound she made was small, so that fewer eyes would turn toward her.
Around them, people watched and kept walking. This was not their business. The Saintess was passing; perhaps she would offer a prayer, a gentle word about patience, forgiveness, the spiritual elevation of suffering. That was what saints did.
The transcendence pulled at Seraphine with impunity, offering the clean view from above. Here was suffering. Here was its cause. Here was the framework within which both could be understood and accepted. She could feel the serenity waiting for her, only one step above where she stood.
Then the hatred spiked.
Do you need help…?
A languid voice rang in her mind as she stood frozen in the middle of the street.
The voice was her own. It was a voice that rarely appeared, since she had been the one to ask for its sealing.
It was not a trick from Ashen to secretly help her, as she had momentarily thought.
No… it was the personality from the History Fragment, the version of her who crazily loved him, and whose obsession with him knew no bounds.
From start to finish, no matter how many attempts washed over her, she barely acknowledged them. They passed by her like a breezy current.
The sheer madness of her love would crush this trial solely by its existence.
Transcendence of emotions? What hubris was that? For her, she had already transcended every other emotion with love.
Her most precious chastity was the first thing she offered him when she learned of the catastrophic consequences of doing so.
And this personality was now offering her help.
'...'
All she had to do was nod, and all of this would be over.
…but for some reason, she could not bring herself to do it.
Instead… a new emotion started clawing at her, one she recognized as jealousy.
It spread like bitter poison and fanned the flames of self-hatred.
'No.'
'I don't need help.'
'My love is enough.'
'...Even if yours is also mine in the end.'
...Suit yourself.
Such a childish emotion should have made her ashamed, normally, but it only made her smile.
Her feet resumed moving, now toward the heart of the chapel.
And as she walked, the smile on her face became almost uncontrollable.
…because the fact that she felt jealousy, even if it was directed at herself, meant that that same emotion had resisted the corrosion of purity and stood by her.
And now… with two hideous, unsightly emotions, she could sense the floodgates of the rest of her emotions banging, begging for release.
Bang!
Bang!
BANG!
Seraphine felt like an apocalypse was raging within her, but her feet never stopped.
Finally, she reached the room where the Lust Sin Lord was supposed to sit, but instead of that mysterious woman, she found someone else occupying the throne.
It was him.
Her beloved.
Her obsession.
And the reason for her self-loathing.
The love of her life and the master of her chastity.
Ashen.
She looked at him and did not know the exact expression she was making. Judging from his almost eager, encouraging one, she thought it was not an emotionless one, at least.
After struggling for a moment, she took a step forward, and he almost jumped from his seat in eagerness.
Another step.
Followed by another.
Step…
Step…
Before she knew it, she was a mere step away from him.
'Ahh…'
When she saw him open his arms wide, like a child who had been lost and had finally found his parent, a flood of relief crashed over her, and without thinking, she threw herself straight into his embrace.
"Ashen."
"I'm here… good job."
"Ashen."
"Yes, love. You did amazing."
"Ashen!"
"My darling, you were amazing. There is no need to blame yourself."
"Ashen…"
"...Yes?"
"I'm sorry."
"As I said… the most important thing is that you found your way on your own. I'm proud of you," he said, reaching to caress her head as though soothing a child.
"Just focus on this moment. This current emotion is your anchor. Hold onto it and never forget it."
"Yes, hic… Ash… I'm back."
"Yes. Welcome back."
And just like that, with bitter self-envy and raging self-hatred, the Saintess forged a path out of transcendence to reclaim her humanity.
And what she found at the end of that path was love.
Her anchor.