The Saint had fallen.
Not slain, not shattered—but silenced.
Bruised in body, burned in belief, Kazuki and the remnants of the Knights of Hygiene limped westward—past broken rivers and mold-choked meadows—toward the last place untouched by rot.
The Salt Cliffs of Vareth.
A Land Beyond Decay
The cliffs rose like fossilized waves at the edge of the continent—towering formations of shimmering white salt, wind-carved by centuries. Even the spores feared this place. No fungus could grow here. No curse could root.
Legends called it "The Wound of the World"—where the first saint once wept salt instead of blood.
Kazuki collapsed upon arrival.
And when he woke, he was staring up at a monastery carved from the cliffs themselves, doors crusted with dried prayers and walls echoing with silence.
It was here that he met the monks of the Order of Inner Cleansing—long thought extinct.
They wore no armor. Carried no weapons.
Yet every step they took felt cleaner than any battlefield victory.
Welcome... and Warning
The monastery's elder, Brother Klenz, greeted him with a bowed head and salt-dusted robes.
"We've been expecting you," he said.
"Every purifier must someday realize:
The hardest grime is the one within."
Kazuki—torn by betrayal, haunted by Lila's corruption, shaken by Elrin's words—had no answer.
His hands, once steady with soap and spell, now trembled with doubt.
The monks led him to a chamber of silence. No magic. No speeches. Just reflection.
And there, etched into the wall:
"You cannot clean the world…
if you are unclean inside."
End Scene
Thus begins Kazuki's new battle—not against dirt or demons, but the stains within his own spirit. Here, in the silence of salt and stone, a Saint must be rebuilt…
from the inside out.