People in ancient times believed that virtue brought benefits and could help them overcome danger and evil.
People held fast to their bottom lines, only to find that those without any were more likely to succeed. Some even said that if you had no connections and still chose to be a good person, then no matter how talented or insightful you were, you would almost certainly end up at the bottom of society.
If that was the case, why be a "good person" at all?
So someone lied to them: "Our salvation lies in hope." Even if that hope was unrealistic and driven by ulterior motives, it was enough to set people's hearts ablaze. They would press forward without hesitation, heedless of the present, sometimes even destroying the present to create a New World.
In that process, they could briefly leave behind the selves they did not want to be. For Isidora, it meant escaping the pain of losing her loved ones instead of facing it.
Look at her father. He had been so devastated by grief that he could no longer speak. I don't want to become like him. She became obsessed with practicing ancient magic and with fantasies of creating a New World, but she alone refused to face reality.
Magic was not omnipotent. It could not bring the dead back to life, nor could it remake the world. The Dark Lord, meanwhile, believed that once he possessed power, he could control the world. They had been immensely confident, whether Grindelwald or Voldemort.
What one saw was not necessarily real, and what one heard was not necessarily false. But to verify what Paul had said, they would need to trap another person in a portrait and hang it on the crowded Grand Staircase. Wasn't that cruel?
Punishing someone