Repeating Yae Sakura's own words from the past—polished and returned to her—was a strangely delicate feeling.
"I came here precisely to seek the whereabouts of the Kami and Frost."
Kiana skillfully ended her explanation with that line. She didn't directly claim to be part of the Godslaying Corps, but her phrasing was enough to nudge Yae Sakura toward that assumption.
As for Yae Sakura—
She listened in a daze.
Since she could remember, Yae Village had been isolated from the world. She once believed that the world beyond must be different, that Yae Village's misfortune was unique. She never imagined such things had existed long ago—and were spread across the entire world.
The Yaoyorozu no Kami...
That evil spirit that had claimed so many lives.
So, by reclaiming the abandoned Frost, all this misfortune could be brought to an end.
Kiana's words shocked her deeply. Yet Yae Sakura didn't doubt them—she chose to believe entirely.
Because her instincts told her it was true.
Kiana was right.
That thing was a Kami.
In an instant, Yae Sakura's mind filled in the gaps—the reason Kiana hadn't revealed her true purpose earlier was surely because she didn't know whether anyone here could be trusted.
Most of Yae Village's people had been seduced by the evil god. Those who didn't believe had mostly become sacrifices.
The one who aided the wicked...
Was none other than the chief priest of Yae Shrine—the man who had abandoned Frost and built an idol to the evil god.
Her father.
"Once we retrieve Frost, we can end everything?"
The origin of the evil god didn't matter.
Slaying it had always been Yae Sakura's goal, and she wouldn't abandon that resolve no matter where the god came from.
She had prepared for this moment for years.
Kiana's arrival was timely. Yae Sakura had waited patiently, biding her time for the right opportunity—to strike and kill with one blow.
"Yes."
Ordinary Kami were not difficult to handle. If that one were truly powerful, it wouldn't need to cage humans like livestock.
Even though she couldn't use her full strength in the Stigmata World, Kiana was confident that defeating a Kami wouldn't be a problem.
"...That blade—I remember he threw it into the underground storage room."
After the object of worship at the shrine was changed, the blade that had once been venerated for generations became nothing but a discarded relic.
If she remembered correctly, it should be in the warehouse.
Yae Sakura struggled to remain calm. Though she had prepared for years to kill the god, she couldn't deny the fear in her heart.
After all, she was only human.
And her opponent—a being beyond humanity.
"I'll go and find it."
She didn't want to waste another second.
Now that she knew the shrine's blade was the key to breaking the curse, Yae Sakura wanted to retrieve it as soon as possible—before anything could go wrong.
"I'll go with you."
Kiana immediately followed, wide awake, as Yae Sakura led the way out of the courtyard.
As they walked, Kiana struck up conversation.
"By the way, you said earlier that it's marked me. Is that one of its abilities?"
"The idol is its eye. Even when it isn't here, it can see through the idol."
Yae Sakura's voice was cold with hatred. "It uses that ability to choose its sacrifices. Anyone who appears recklessly before the idol may be marked as prey. Once marked, the village receives its command—to prepare a living sacrifice. They offer the marked person to the evil god, hoping to gain eternal peace in return."
Living in this village—
In its filthiest corner—
Yae Sakura understood too well how hopeless they were. She didn't believe that man had spared her out of paternal affection.
She had been biding her time.
All her restraint, all her patience—was for one purpose only: to strike once, and kill the god completely.
"So it's really playing the part of an evil god?"
Kiana's expression turned strange. She had seen many Kami, but this was her first time hearing of one that caged humans like livestock, marking them for consumption.
Noticing her expression, Yae Sakura asked, "The Kami you've seen in the outside world—aren't they like this?"
"No."
Kiana shook her head. "I've encountered many Kami—some powerful, some weak—but all of them fought head-on."
Yae Sakura's eyes darkened. "It enjoys 'suffering'."
Kiana frowned.
"The more twisted and painful the emotion, the more it delights in it. When it chooses a living sacrifice, it's so it can savor the fear of its prey right before death."
Yae Sakura's explanation made everything clear.
Kiana understood the unspoken meaning behind her words—the Kami Yae Sakura sought to slay was a kind she had never encountered before.
Yae Sakura walked quickly, worried that her father might return to the shrine early. Before long, she led them from the shrine's main hall down into the storage room beneath it.
No one had been here for over a year. The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust.
Yae Sakura lit a small brazier to dispel the darkness.
She pushed open the unlocked door and began searching through the cluttered storage space. At last, she found Frost, discarded like worthless scrap metal in a corner.
Its shape was unusual, though it didn't appear divine.
Holding it in her hands, she felt nothing special.
It looked so ordinary that it was easy to see why it had been thrown away like trash.
"This is Frost you spoke of, right?"
Holding the blade, Yae Sakura still couldn't sense anything extraordinary about it. She handed it to Kiana.
Kiana took the blade, and for a brief moment, it felt as if she had returned to that day—before everything happened, before everyone died.
Gripping its hilt, Kiana felt the dormant power within it—the power that had once consumed Heaven's Winter Cloak.
This wasn't an incomplete weapon.
It was a fully formed Edict Edge.
Kiana's heart filled with doubt. In the Stigmata World, the Edict Edges shouldn't exist in their complete forms yet.
She tried to awaken Frost's power, but since she wasn't its recognized wielder, it resisted her touch.
Forcing her Honkai energy through it, she managed to stir only a fragment of its strength.
For some reason, the blade felt sealed—most of its true power remained locked away.
Kiana's frown deepened to a razor's edge. She could tell clearly that this was Frost that had once slain Heaven's Winter Cloak, a complete Edict Edge—yet it was now only displaying the strength of a half-finished blade.
Was it being suppressed by the Stigmata World?
Or perhaps, within this world, the blade's power was never complete to begin with?
Was its "completeness" just an illusion?
"I've awakened part of its power," Kiana said, handing the sword back to her. "You're the one it acknowledges. Take it—and do what you must."
She couldn't make sense of what was happening, so she decided to observe instead.
Even a portion of its strength would be enough.
Surely, the Kami of Yae Village couldn't be one of those rare, top-tier Kami?
Those elite Kami, second only to the Twelve Kami, possessed such immense destructive power and form that they'd never need to hide in a small place like Yae Village—nor play at raising humans like livestock.
When Yae Sakura drew the blade, a piercing chill spread from what had seemed an ordinary sword. The temperature in the underground chamber plummeted by more than ten degrees—and kept dropping, heading below zero.
There was nothing dramatic about it—no flashes of light or divine signs.
Feeling the cold radiating from the weapon, Yae Sakura slid it back into its sheath.
She had thought she might need to perform a ritual after retrieving Frost. It had been enshrined for so many years without once displaying any sign of divinity.
But the moment Kiana held it, the blade had revealed its power.
If this sword truly had a rightful wielder, then wasn't that Kiana herself? She had, after all, touched this blade once when she was young.
"Thank you."
Cradling her hope for vengeance, Yae Sakura spoke with genuine gratitude toward Kiana—the girl who had already earned her trust and fondness.
To her, Kiana's earlier words had been a gesture of encouragement—a way of telling her to do what she most desired.
And what was it that she desired most?
She knew the answer by heart, one she could never forget, even in her dreams.
Whenever she was beside Yae Sakura, Kiana found it hard not to let her gaze linger on her face.
When she heard Yae Sakura's soft "thank you," Kiana replied with meaning in her tone: "You don't need to thank me. I didn't really do anything—and besides, aren't we friends?"
The Yae Sakura she knew had always cared deeply about the idea of friendship.
If this Yae Sakura truly was the same person, she would surely react to that word.
As expected, Yae Sakura froze, her eyes widening in surprise and disbelief.
"Friend"—to her, that word was almost foreign. Living under the gaze of an evil god, never knowing when she might become the next sacrifice, she had long been isolated.
Once, when her mother was still alive and everything was peaceful, she had friends in the village.
But…
Memories of those painful times flickered through her mind. She lowered her eyes, hiding those fragments of the past that she would never be able to forget.
"Doesn't it count?"
Everything she had longed for yet thought unreachable was suddenly placed before her. Yae Sakura instinctively wanted to distance herself, afraid of dragging Kiana into her cursed fate.
But then she remembered—Kiana had come here to defeat the evil god. That fear of burdening others, of watching those close to her be turned into sacrifices, slowly faded.
They had met only today.
But they shared the same goal.
To destroy the evil god.
Kindred spirits—how could that not count as friendship?
"Of course it does!"
As the words left her lips, Yae Sakura felt a surprising sense of ease.
"That's more like it. Let's go. By the way—the idol's up there. If we keep walking around like this, won't that Kami realize we're planning something?"
"It won't care."
Yae Sakura shook her head, leading the way up the stairs. "It's arrogant. It sees everyone as food—as insects."
That almost made it sound easy to deal with.
As they walked, Kiana kept the conversation going, asking for details about the Kami. Living within the shrine, Yae Sakura was the one who had the most contact with it, aside from the shrine's chief priest.
Listening to her, Kiana gradually formed a clearer picture of the Kami that ruled Yae Village.
Talking as they went, they finally returned to the surface.
The next morning, Kiana began teaching Yae Sakura how to wield Frost, passing on the combat style of the Yae Sakura she once knew.
And Yae Sakura learned astonishingly fast—almost as if she had trained this way countless times before.
As time passed, the balance in Kiana's heart began to tilt. She was starting to believe—this truly was the same Yae Sakura she remembered.
Three days passed within the Stigmata World.
On the third day, the chief priest of Yae Shrine finally returned, bringing with him the evil god's new decree for another sacrifice.
But this time, Yae Sakura would not stand by.
With Frost in hand, she stood at the shrine's entrance, staring coldly at the man she called her father.
She had waited for this moment far too long.
"Sakura, are you going to betray the gods?"
Her father, the chief priest of the shrine, had been kneeling before the idol in devout prayer when Yae Sakura appeared.
He had just finished his prayer when he rose coldly to his feet and turned to face his grown daughter.
"It is no god."
Yae Sakura had thought she could maintain her composure—but once the words left her lips, she realized she couldn't.
Hatred filled her eyes.
The evil god was something she had to destroy, but compared to that monster, she despised this man even more.
Because the man before her had once been human—a husband to her mother, and the father of her and Rin.
"And you, my father, are beyond redemption. Even hell would spit upon your rotten, stinking soul."
Her words did nothing. The man's eyes held no warmth, only the cold indifference one might show a corpse.
She may have been his daughter, but twelve years ago, he had already lost all humanity. To him, she was just another sacrifice—like everyone else in the village.
But unlike them, she had the right to choose when she would become one.
Because…
A twisted, monstrous shadow swelled from behind the man and from his very silhouette. The black mass spread like a giant spider, and a pair of crimson eyes gleamed with malice, fixed upon her.
It delighted in watching mortals suffer from emotion.
It loved nothing more than seeing family turn against each other.
Warped and deranged.
"So, you're ready after all."
The man seemed to see her death in his mind's eye. "What a pity," he murmured.
The only pity... is that I woke up too late!
With a flash, Yae Sakura moved—fast. Frost glinted as she struck, her figure vanishing into a blur.
Kiana appeared at the entrance just as the battle began. Watching Yae Sakura's unstoppable advance, she felt no worry over who would win.
The victor could only be Yae Sakura.
And indeed—
The man who had thought he could once again win easily, as he had in the past, found himself completely overpowered. He barely managed to dodge in terror, losing an arm in the process before being struck down and sent crashing backward into the idol.
The battle was decided in an instant.
"That blade!"
The man, who should have been incapacitated, pushed himself up with his remaining arm. His eyes now glowed with the same crimson light as the evil god's.
The Kami that had been silently observing realized that Yae Sakura now possessed the power to slay it—like those of the Godslaying Corps.
Startled, it reacted in fury. The shadow coiled within the shrine surged into the man's body. His severed arm twisted and reformed, replaced by the grotesque black mass of the Kami's essence.
As Kiana watched, she confirmed her suspicion—this wasn't a particularly powerful Kami.
Judging by its presence, it was about the same level as the Arachne she had once encountered in Nagazora.
Terrifying to ordinary humans—almost impossible to resist without a miracle.
But to someone wielding an Edict Edge—
Even if this blade could only unleash a fraction of its true power, it was still an Edict Edge. Against it, this so-called Kami was nothing more than an elite-class monster at best.