Years later I'm suddenly realizing what a powerful symbolic gesture it was when the Penitent One first took Mea Culpa. A woman's guilt, manifested into a sword. A silent warrior, decades later, pulling the sword from her petrified body, denying the sanctity of her suicide.
In this way, Mea Culpa is transformed from a single-use tool into a weapon, a cornerstone of a determined quest. Its purpose twists from ultimate violence against self to violence against others. Its appearance was akin to a divine confirmation that life doesn't matter and you are worthy of punishment - and now it is taken to protect the life of its bearer and to take lives of those who stand in his way. The woman's pain was from her horrible feeling of guilt - the sorrow of the Penitent One is for the suffering of others, who torture themselves and are tortured in the penance made material. Born from individual guilt, Mea Culpa is repurposed for empathy.
No wonder this is heretical and puts the Penitent One firmly against the church - it is not a mindless desecration of a relic, it is a conscious re-imagining of its essence and a conscious denial of canon. A heresy by textbook definition.
It is not just a random legendary sword - taking it is a gesture louder than words that shows at a glance what the Penitent One is fighting for.
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