Puella Magi had little reason to interact with each other. Their lives kept them busy enough, with little time for travelling to new territory. Not to mention the threat of confrontation. There was no excuse when a Puella Magi wandered into hostile territory. Puella Magis mark their hunting grounds like dogs, staining the property with a magical stench that can hold, though faintly, even after death. This made it is easy to tell, just by crossing the border, which were the most violent and hazardous dominions, as they carried the most lingering magic from girls gone by. The owners of these areas were to be feared. They were the strongest, with the most powerful magic and the most hostile natures. Often those areas were run by packs, those who followed their alpha like dogs and hunted like wolves.
The life of a Puella Magi was dangerous and cruel, but it was a fate shared. Shared by many. And with the same outcome awaiting them all, certain affinities, even kinships, were born.
Secretive, underground, and filled with hostility, Puella Magis had their own societies hidden in the dark tunnels and shadowy alleyways of the mortal world. They accumulated in places far from prying eyes. Here they gathered, offered services if a hunting ground became suddenly too hostile, found those who they could sympathize and share with, passed rumors and fears through word of mouth, and formed their clans. From these gatherings was born the idea of something greater than themselves. It spread like wildfire, the hopeful phenomenon of life after corruption, and a following was born.
Mitakihara City was known to the world of men as the City of Hope. A beacon of modern innovation. A perfect union of art and sensibility. Puella Magis shared this idea. Mitakihara became the shining light of faith. In the city, their story, their saving grace, was born.
Puellas became preachers of a faith unknown.
The shining light that was Hope. Hope was what they could call it, for it had no other names. Sermons carried on about salvation, and the radiant light of a heavenly body that swallowed up the weak and dying and carried them to grace and security. The promise of a forgotten legend that they would all be saved. That familiar smiling face.
They preached the radical love of the girl called Hope, who would pull them from the hellfires of the mortal world which plagued by the demonic Wraiths, and lift them up to shining salvation with such faith and vigor, raising their hands to Goddess whose scripture was passed by word of mouth in the forgotten crevices Puella Magis were cursed to hide. The story rewrote the ideas the Puella Magis had always had. That they were never abandoned by Hope, and that Hope would keep their gemstones bright as long as they held the faith in their hearts. That the peaceful wrath of a benevolent entity would eradicate their grief.
They now were armed with faith that their blessings would not curse them.
Girls who once huddled close together from the cold felt the sun on their skin once more as this ideal grew stronger and the following grew stronger throughout the regions. Territories were forgotten when a preacher announced a new sermon was to be given. Girls flocked to hear about salvation, joining hands in rings inside rings inside rings, gathered close to their unordained minister.
The welcoming circles, where rivalries were set aside and all were accepted, were a symbol to the girls even after the services had ended. Puella Magis took each other by the hand as a way to channel a certain divinity. A reassurance that they were not alone in their fight. The intertwining fingers meant that no matter what happened, no girl was left behind. No girl was cursed forever. No one had to be alone.
The Law of Cycles originated in Kazamino. A girl in red stood at the podium in a sanctuary long destroyed and told of a cycle. Despair, Wish, Hope, Battle, Faith, Curse, and Salvation all became one in her sermons. Her ideas were fast spread, and a cycle it became. It became as simply as Life and Death. You make a wish, and you will inevitably have to pay for your miracle. But then you will be saved. It became law.
Her services were something to behold. She was elegant and spoke well, with grace, dignity, and assurance. She became well-known as a reverend to the unholy. She would’ve made her father proud.
But the most powerful doctrine was the one that went unheard. Unnoticed.
The girl who gave a name to the cycle, who cries out evangelical messages of who the cycle really is. She cups a ribbon in her hands, tearfully speaking of a sacrifice no one would ever be brave enough to make again. She says the cycle built everything up from the ashes, eating up the world in three days only to build a new one in the same time. The madness she spoke was not a lesson of hope like the other lectures. This was a tale of despair. It was insanity at it’s finest, as the girl screamed about her own involvement in the creation of the universe. She swore it true, and once she got herself swept up in the hysterics, was a lost cause to her friends who tried to console her.
This was the only follower of the gospel of Madoka Kaname.