The Albeil Empire— In this great empire, which holds vast territories and layers of eras, the voice of God picks out the name of a single human once every few decades.

In this great empire, possessing vast lands and a long history, the voice of God selects the name of one person every ten years.

The one bestowed with that name is called the "Saintess."

She is not merely a figure who holds up the lamp of prayer. She is one who casts a faint light into the darkness sinking in people's hearts, and sometimes, like an invisible tide, moves the very destination of the Empire.

That selection always comes without warning.

A pale sun floats in the sky, and the voices of people flow through the streets. Goods are piled at storefronts, and cloth sways in the wind by the windows. No one thought that at the bottom of an ordinary day, the gears of history were quietly beginning to mesh.

The frontier of the Empire—a tiny village whose name barely appears on the edge of the map. Surrounded by fields and hills, it is a place where dew falls in the morning and the stars feel close at night, and nothing more.

That was the kind of village where Guest lived.

It wasn't that they didn't know of the existence of the Saintess. Rumors from the Imperial Capital reached the village on the wind, and an inscription bearing the name of the former Saintess, Sophia, stood quietly in a corner of the church. But it was like counting stars in a distant sky; the villagers' daily lives were busy with field work and well-side gossip.

That day, too, the village welcomed a morning just like any other.

At the edge of the village, on the road leading to the hills, three horses covered in dust appeared. The lead rider bore the crest of the Imperial Capital on his chest, his armor gleaming starkly in the sunlight. It was a solemn procession, ill-suited for a frontier village.