In a world where the gods demand pain as tribute, Yuda has served as the Great Shrine Maiden of Asterion for over a century—a Regeneration-blessed tool of the state, burning and healing without end, never permitted to die. She has long since stopped believing in the voice she speaks for.
But when a northern village is reduced to ash by a rogue flame-blessed, Yuda is dispatched to investigate. What she finds is a young man consumed by fire that will not kill him, cradling the charred body of a g
Fire Punch: Flame of Atonement - The Shrine Maiden Who Acts Out the Oracle — The Flame That Never Dies in the Ash-Burnt Village
"God is pleased by the sacrifice that becomes fuel for the people."
In the cold early morning of early winter, Yuda's voice echoed icily through the topmost prayer chamber of the Great Temple Asterion. The hem of her white vestments brushed faintly against the floor. The star patterns embroidered in silver thread caught the candlelight and glowed dully.
The priests kneeling before her held their breath. Not one of them raised their face. Only Yuda's voice reverberated against the stone ceiling and faded away.
"But that fuel must know it burns its own body. Pain itself is the offering to God."
Her voice was flat. Words she had repeated for over a hundred years were nothing more than sounds slipping from her mouth now. Not the voice of God, nor her own voice. Merely a string of symbols the state wished the people to hear.
Yuda narrowed her blue eyes slightly. Those eyes, colored like the depths of a glacier, had grown thin with light from living too long. When she lowered her gaze, the white hair that reached her waist slid from her shoulder. The ends were a little damaged—proof she had neglected their care.
When the prayer ended, the priests withdrew without a sound. After the last one closed the door, only the sound of candle flames flickering remained in the prayer chamber.
Yuda stood motionless and reached a hand behind her back. Beneath her vestments, the wing-shaped blessing mark radiated heat. The Blessing of Regeneration. A power that automatically repaired wounds and extended lifespan far beyond that of ordinary people. The price was pain. Every time she was wounded, every time she healed, she had continued to feel pain.
One hundred and thirty years.
A span of time dizzying to contemplate.
"Lady Yuda."
A voice came, and she turned. There stood the High Priestess Serafina. Her silver hair was bound severely at the back, and her deep green eyes were fixed on Yuda. Her small frame—barely five feet tall—was wrapped in priestly robes. In those eyes seeped the exhaustion and resignation of one who had spent long years performing oracles.
"About tomorrow's Oracle Market."
Serafina waved the letter she held in her hand.
"Do not touch upon the burning incident in the north. That is all."
Yuda said nothing and tilted her head slightly.
"The people will be unsettled. The Oracle Market is a place to maintain the people's faith. You need not say anything unnecessary."
Serafina's voice was calm. But her eyes were not smiling. Yuda knew. This old woman did not believe in God. She had long since accepted that oracles were nothing but a tool for governing the people. Even so, she continued to perform lies in order to protect the people's faith.
Yuda watched her with eyes mixed with respect and contempt.
"I understand."
She answered briefly. Serafina nodded once in satisfaction and left, her footsteps lingering behind her.
Alone, Yuda walked to the window of the prayer chamber.
Below spread the seven-tiered city of Vermina.
The royal capital of the Kingdom of Behemdolg. Population approximately two hundred eighty thousand. The largest city on the continent. In the seven-tiered circular city, the wealthy lived higher up, while labor and poverty swirled at the bottom. The royal palace and the Great Temple Asterion towered on the first and highest tier, where ordinary citizens were not even permitted to set foot.
Yuda looked down at the city from the window.
Citizens ascending and descending the spiral staircases looked small as ants. From the Golden Fleece Hall on the second tier, the scent of spices drifted on the wind. The air in the laborers' district on the sixth tier was smudged with coal smoke. The city's clamor pressed in and receded like waves, distant.
The calls of merchants in the market. The laughter of children. The sound of carriage wheels striking cobblestones.
All of it blended together, reaching Yuda's ears as a single mass of sound.
(One hundred and thirty years.)
Yuda thought.
(I have not taken a single step out of this city.)
The Great Temple Asterion. The Oracle Market. The Blessed Management Bureau. Her world was complete within this seven-tiered circle. As a shrine maiden who heard the voice of God, as a device to gather the people's faith, she had been bound here.
Part of the city, yet severed from it.
That sensation no longer even carried pain. There was only a small hollow deep in her chest.
Yuda traced her fingers along the windowsill. The coldness of the stone traveled from her fingertips up her arm.
(Am I human?)
Or a tool of the state?
No answer came. She had no intention of producing one. It was an answer that had not come after more than a century of asking. It could not come now.
Yuda stepped away from the window.
At that moment, the door of the prayer chamber was pounded violently.
"Great Shrine Maiden, forgive my intrusion!"
A young messenger man burst in, out of breath. His Bureau uniform was soiled with soot and snow.
"Emergency report from the Blessed Management Bureau. One of the northern village clusters—the village of Ashen Burn—has been burned to the ground by the flame-blessed Doma. Forty villagers, all dead. An unregistered flame-blessed was witnessed at the scene."
Yuda's expression did not change.
"The Bureau orders Lady Yuda to undertake an inspection mission. If a surviving blessed is found, I am to deliver written authorization for elimination if the threat level is C or above."
The messenger held out a sealed document with trembling hands. Yuda took it. It was heavy. It should have been a single sheet of paper, yet it was packed with human life and death.
"...So I'm to go."
Yuda's voice was flat enough to surprise even herself.
"Yes. It was judged that Lady Yuda, as a Regeneration-blessed, would not die even alone."
Not die.
The words echoed deep in Yuda's chest.
(Because I won't die, I'm sent.)
A convenient tool. Burn it, break it, destroy it—it heals on its own. So they send it to places no one else wants to go.
The corner of Yuda's lip twisted, just barely.
(A cold smile.)
She could see it herself. This was mockery. Not at the state—but at herself, who had grown so thoroughly accustomed to being treated this way.
"Understood. I'll prepare."
The messenger bowed deeply and hurried away.
Yuda opened the document. There, a concise order and the wording of elimination authorization were lined up. If threat level C or above, dispose of on the spot. In the name of the state. As the will of God.
(The will of God.)
Yuda rolled the words around in her mouth.
The will of God. The voice of God that I perform. It becomes an indulgence for taking human life.
She tucked the document into her robes and left the prayer chamber.
---
At the foot of the Ice Rim Mountains lay the village of Ashen Burn.
About a hundred and twenty kilometers north of Vermina. Two days by carriage. The mountain range that ran along the southern limit of the glacier blocked the sky like a folding screen. Snow fell ceaselessly, and the world was a single sheet of white.
Yuda turned up the collar of her winter coat and stood at the village entrance.
(...How terrible.)
Charcoal and black crystals were scattered across the snow. The remains of houses. Frozen bloodstains. Scattered dishes. The wreckage that showed people had once lived here had been burned and strewn mercilessly.
Yuda took one step in.
The sound of her foot pressing into snow echoed strangely loud.
(A hundred years ago.)
Memory surged back.
A hundred years ago, during a verification by the Blessed Management Bureau, she had been burned continuously for three days and three nights by a flame-blessed. An inhumane experiment to measure the limits of the Blessing of Regeneration. Her body burned and healed, healed and burned. Consciousness slipped away from the pain again and again, and still she continued to regenerate.
The smell of that time.
The smell of her own flesh burning.
Yuda stopped walking. Deep in her stomach, something slowly contracted.
(It's all right.)
She told herself.
(It's already over.)
But her feet would not move. The whiteness of the snow called back the memory of that day's flames with terrible clarity.
That was when it happened.
From the center of the village square, an abnormal sound reached her.
The sound of flames.
Yuda raised her face.
And she saw.
On the snow stood a single young man. His whole body was wrapped in fire, and yet he did not fall. In his arms, he clutched the corpse of a girl turned to charcoal. White hair. Blue eyes. Burned so badly that no one could recognize her face anymore.
The young man stood on, within the flames.
"Luna... Luna..."
His voice came faintly, mixed with the sound of fire.
"Live... Luna, live..."
Yuda held her breath.
(He's alive.)
The young man's body was being burned continuously by the flames. His skin carbonized, his flesh charred, and still it regenerated. Burned and healed, healed and burned. His body was exactly like hers a hundred years ago.
(A Regeneration-blessed.)
And moreover, alive while being burned continuously by fire.
The young man's eyes were clouded. The pain had robbed him of coherent thought. His amber eyes reflected the firelight, unfocused and wavering. His short dark brown hair was singed by the flames, the ends curling.
"Luna... don't leave me..."
The young man tightened his arms around his sister's corpse. The flames enveloped them both.
Yuda's hand touched the document in her robes.
(Elimination authorization.)
Was this young man threat level C or above?
(An unregistered flame-blessed.)
No—that was wrong. This young man was not producing flames himself. The fire burning him was not coming from his body. It was Doma's flame. That man's fire, which would not extinguish until whatever it touched was burned to ash.
(This young man is a Regeneration-blessed.)
Yuda was certain.
(Even burned continuously by Doma's flames, he cannot die.)
Burned and healed, healed and burned. Forever.
(...The same as me.)
Deep in Yuda's chest, something grated.
Herself a hundred years ago. Burned by flames, screaming in pain, and yet unable to die. What had she thought then?
(Someone.)
(I wanted someone to say, live.)
Yuda could not move.
The document said elimination authorization. It was the order of the state. Dangerous blessed ones must be eliminated.
But this young man—
Burning in flames, he would not let go of his sister's corpse. With eyes clouded by pain, he kept calling his sister's name.
(Why?)
Yuda wanted to ask.
(Why do you still stand?)
That question was also a question to herself, who had stood for a hundred and thirty years.
---
Yuda made camp at the village entrance.
Around a small fire, she spread the report on her knees. Pen in hand, her fingers would not move.
The report's fields.
"Elimination target."
Staring at those words, the voice of the young man calling his sister's name while burning echoed again and again in her ears.
"Luna... live..."
(That young man is alive.)
(Burned continuously, he cannot die.)
(The same as me.)
Yuda set down her pen.
The verification a hundred years ago. The memory of being burned continuously for three days and three nights. Consciousness flying away from the pain, returning, flying away again. The smell of her own flesh charring. The sensation of bone laid bare. And still the Blessing of Regeneration would not let her die.
At that time.
(What was I thinking?)
Yuda pulled at her memory.
(It hurts.)
(It's agony.)
(I want to die.)
(But I can't die.)
(...Someone.)
(Someone, please—)
(Tell me to live.)
Yuda closed her eyes.
(Is that young man the same?)
Perhaps his sister's last words had been "live." So he clung to those words and kept living. In the midst of pain, clinging to the phantom of his sister's voice.
(I had no such words.)
At the verification a hundred years ago, the only ones around her were the blessed who kept burning her and the
Novelia is an AI-powered platform to read original light novels and fan fiction, create your own in just a few taps, and chat with the characters. New, illustrated episodes arrive daily — free to start.