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Chapter 437. The Story of the Third Cycle [2 Reincarnations] (14)

"what--"

Vera heard a boy's panicked voice outside. She hurriedly lifted her skirt and got out of the carriage, only to find that the Papacy's soldiers had already split open the carriage's inner compartment and captured the boy.

The leading soldier looked at Vera and her group, narrowed his eyes, and said:
"Detain them too!"

At this critical moment, Andor spat in Vera's direction and shouted:
"I trusted you so much, and you betrayed me to the Vatican! Bah! You lackeys of the Vatican!"

The leading soldier paused slightly, glanced at the Vulcan emblem on the carriage, thought for a moment, and then waved his hand, saying:

"No need to detain it. Check the exit tokens. If there are no problems, let it pass."

Vera stood there, watching the boy being carried away by soldiers, his figure gradually disappearing into the crowd.

A chill ran from the soles of her feet to her heart.

She remembered the final fate of Andorra that she had read in the newspaper in the previous life.

He was tortured beyond recognition, and then slowly turned to light and died.

Light-transformation is a unique form of punishment used by the Church of Light. It can cause a part of a prisoner's body to disappear without affecting their life.

So the last boy was left with only his head, yet he still lived on in agony.

In the end, there was no report in the newspapers, only a post announcing his death on a certain day.

This news didn't even appear in the Irving family's own gambling journal.

Vera stood there, stunned, as if she could see the wheels of fate crashing past.

The face that once smiled and called her "Little Prophet" was crushed into pieces.

Despite being the most powerful healer in the world, she was still powerless to help.

“Let’s go, Miss Vera.”

Sylvia patted her on the shoulder.

Vera snapped out of her daze and stiffly walked back to the carriage.

In that instant, she really wanted to rush forward and save the boy.

But she knew she couldn't do that.

She is a healer with no offensive capabilities. Even if she rushed in, she would only expose herself and become a blood bag for the iron spears to pierce.

Reason told her it was time to leave.

But something was violently pounding inside my chest, making my eardrums buzz.

She lifted the car curtain and looked out at the swaying sky. She opened her palm, and the warm, green light rose and fell gently like breath.

For the first time in her life, she felt a slight sense of bewilderment.

The power to heal and bring the dead back to life is the greatest power celebrated by the world.

But why couldn't she even save her friends?

……

"Wow..."

Andorra was taken back to the Vatican and thrown directly into the water dungeon. The murky, foul-smelling water rushed into his mouth and nose, stinging his throat. There was no place to relieve himself in the dungeon, so he urinated in it, struggling incessantly.

The daytime is spent immersed in filth, and the night is another kind of torment.

The Vatican's instruments of torture were used in turn: red-hot iron clamps twisted the arms, and scalding hot branding irons were pressed onto the flesh, sizzling loudly.

The Pope of Light visited him once.

That was the first time Andorra had met this legendary, supreme priest.

He wore a white robe, but had a pair of huge, twisted goat horns on his head, and his no-longer-young face was deeply lined with wrinkles.

He looked at Andorra, a grin spreading across his face, which in the dim light resembled a monster crawling out of a nightmare.

"I'm very curious..."

The Pope's voice was rough and hoarse, as if it had been rusted:
"How did you obtain this intelligence? How did a little mouse like you manage to sneak into the walls of the Vatican?"

He bent down, and the holy face that the world once praised was now only a terrifying shadow.

Andorr, bound to the torture chair and covered in charred scars, still raised his head to meet the other's ferocious gaze:

"You are not worthy to know... inhuman things. I never imagined that the Holy See of Light would be ruled by monsters like you."

"Ah……"

The Pope let out a low laugh from deep in his throat.

"Gouge out his eyes."

……

Andorra lost an eye. The torture continued day after day. Red-hot iron, salt-soaked whip marks, endless filth and darkness stretched time into a thick, painful thread.

In this abyss of despair, the only faint solace is that the Holy Son of Light occasionally comes to the dungeon.

He was completely different from the cold and eerie Pope of Light. Edric seemed to still carry the scent of sunlight from the ground, so clean that he was out of place in this bloody and putrid prison.

When Edric first saw Andorra in such a state of torture, he even staggered back half a step.

"how so?"

His clear voice tightened with shock, his gaze fixed on Andorra's empty, blood-filled right eye socket.

Where are your eyes?

Andor chuckled, his cracked lips curving into a mocking arc that aggravated the scabbed whip marks on his cheek.

"Isn't it all thanks to your 'good Pope'?"

His voice was hoarse like a broken bellows, each word dripping with venom and hatred:
Why bother with this pretense?

"I do not know."

Edric abruptly interrupted him, his brows furrowed tightly, and his usually gentle and clear eyes churned with genuine shock, anger, and bewilderment.

"He just said... he wanted to teach you a lesson and that I would supervise you."

The young saint's voice grew softer and softer, until it almost became a painful murmur:

"I never imagined... he would actually... gouge out your eyes..."

He stood there, looking at the wounded boy on the rack, as if for the first time he truly saw that what was splattered on the dungeon walls was not dirt, but blood that had long since dried and turned black.

The air was filled not only with the stench of decay, but also with something larger and colder, silently tightening its grip on his throat.

That day was quiet. It was supposed to be evening for the branding torture, but Edric sat facing him in a chair, and they remained silent all night.

The next morning, the Holy Son left in a hurry, perhaps to seek confirmation of something, or perhaps to prove something.

Andorra only knew that the next time he saw him, the saint's sincere and bright eyes seemed to have dimmed somewhat:

"you're right."

The Holy Son's voice was very soft, almost swallowed by the dripping sound deep in the dungeon:
"This is not a holy land bathed in light... it is a lair inhabited by monsters."

Andor managed only a sneer from his throat before lowering his head and coughing violently, blood splattering onto the rusty chains.

"I brought my medicine."

Edric held out his hand, and in his palm lay a small packet of powder carefully wrapped in oil paper:

"Would you like some?"

"what……"

Andorra, panting, raised his only remaining eye, which was filled with sarcasm:

"Your Highness is truly merciful. Knowing that the Pope is torturing me, you still use medicine to keep me alive and suffer this torment."

"This is for pain relief."

Edric explained in a low voice:

"It will only make you feel better."

“I dare not accept Your Highness’s ‘favor’.”

Andor turned his head, his limbs making a soft rubbing sound on the rack.

Edric didn't say anything more.

He withdrew his hand and sat quietly in the darkness filled with the stench of blood and decay.

The silence between the two was like an ever-breaking abyss.

Sunrise and sunset, countless confrontations and silences like this.

Eventually, the Vatican began to subject him to the punishment of light, the corrosive light gradually eroding Andorr's body—his limbs disappeared, his torso became mangled, and only his head remained intact, enduring endless suffering.

Until that day, when Edric walked into the dungeon again, he was holding a short knife in his hand.

"I am going to inherit the papacy."

The young man looked up at the mangled mass of flesh on the rack:
"From now on, you are under my jurisdiction."

He paused, his voice soft yet clear enough to penetrate the damp air of the dungeon:
"But the damage caused by the light torture... is irreversible. Do you need me... to help you escape?"

On the rack, the boy, now only a head and a mangled body, slowly closed his eyes.

After a long time, or perhaps just a moment, his chapped lips moved slightly.

"This is the first and the last time," Andorra said gratefully.

"Thank you, Your Highness, Prince Edric."