The road from Seraphen was not a road at all—only a crumbling path carved by wind and footsteps long vanished. The ruins thinned behind us, and the land stretched wide and barren ahead. Cracked stone plains, scorched hills, forests blackened to husks. All the world looked wounded, and none of it healed.
Still, we walked.
I did not sleep, though the others did. Sleep felt foreign now, unnecessary. Instead, I stood watch while the stars—what few remained—shifted overhead like dying embers in a hearth long grown cold.
David did not rest easily.
He stirred in his bedroll, muttering half-prayers into the dust. His hands twitched as if clasping something no longer there—a blade, or a name. When morning came, he stared too long at the horizon, as though trying to decide whether to walk toward it or turn back.
On the fourth day, we came to smoke.
Not the thick black plume of burning war, but the thin white coil of hearth fires—human, or at least near enough. The hills sloped gently downward into what had once been a village, ringed by dead trees and broken stone fences. The structures were little more than husks—wood charred, clay crumbling—but smoke rose from them still.
People lived here.
Barely.
We stepped into the village like ghosts. They saw us but did not greet us. Eyes stared from beneath hoods and bandages, hollowed by hunger, dulled by something deeper: resignation. This was a place where survival was ritual and meaning had been buried with the dead.
A child darted past us. No older than Eve, but skeletal and silent. She vanished into a church—the only building still whole. Its roof had been repaired with scrap metal, its windows covered with cloth, but above the door hung a symbol I did not recognize:
A star. A flame. A crown of thorns.
David froze when he saw it.
"No," he muttered. "That's not possible."
Eve tilted her head. "Is that you?"
I didn't answer.
Before we could approach, a voice rang out from within the church.
"Pilgrims! Seekers! Look not upon the world as it was, but as it will be! Come, strangers! Come and hear the gospel of the Flame Reborn!"
A man emerged—tall, robed in red and gold, with a sun-scorched face and hollow eyes. He held a staff of bone crowned with black fire.
But what struck me was his face.
He looked like me.
Or rather, like what the murals in Seraphen had once depicted—golden eyes painted onto human flesh, radiance performed through oil and ash. A false mask of divinity.
"My children," he called, arms outstretched. "You come in silence, but I see your burden. You have wandered long. Come and be warmed."
We stood in the center of the village.
He approached, smiling.
"Do you know my name?" he asked, staring at me.
"I don't," I said.
"Then I shall give it to you," he said proudly. "I am Father Marran. Prophet of the Flame That Walks. I speak with the voice of the One Who Was Broken."
David's mouth twisted. "You mean Adonai."
"Yes!" Marran's eyes gleamed. "He has returned, just as the ash-writ scriptures foretold. And I carry his voice into this new world."
He studied me more closely. "You look like him."
"I am him," I said flatly.
Marran paused.
And then he laughed.
"Ah! One of the faithful, I see. A mimic. A hopeful. You wear the face well. But the Flame Reborn does not walk as flesh. He walks as wind, and vision, and fire that sings."
"I am not a symbol," I said. "I burned the Watchers. I opened the Gate. I walked Seraphen."
Marran's smile thinned.
"You blaspheme," he said quietly.
David stepped forward then, voice hard. "You blaspheme. You mock a god you do not understand. You twist prophecy for power."
Marran turned his gaze. "And you, priest, are you one of the old tongues? A relic of Yahweh's collapse?"
"I was," David said, with venom. "But I serve something older now."
Marran tilted his head. "Then kneel."
"No."
Marran lifted his staff.
The fire at its head flared black—and from the shadows of the church, his followers emerged. Half-starved, half-mad, eyes hollow with devotion. They circled us, hands clutching stones, rusted weapons, and brands still warm.
"The fire does not lie," Marran said. "And it does not forgive. If you are Him, then burn. Burn and prove yourself."
I raised my hand.
Not to strike.
To answer.
The fire bloomed in my palm—blue, cold, silent.
It did not scream. It did not roar.
It simply was.
And the crowd fell back.
Even Marran staggered.
"This… is not…" he whispered.
"You seek fire that obeys," I said. "But mine remembers."
I stepped forward, and the false prophet fell to his knees.
"I am not your god," I said. "But I will become the god this world deserves."
And with that, the fire dimmed.
The villagers scattered. Not in terror, but awe.
And for the first time in years, I think, they saw something beyond survival.
Hope.
That night, we sat at the edge of the village beneath a dead tree.
David did not eat. He stared into the small campfire, face drawn.
"I should've seen it coming," he said. "All the signs were there. The temples corrupted. The names misused. The rituals… hollowed."
"You mean Marran?"
"I mean all of it," he said. "I spent half my life worshipping Yahweh. The other half waiting for you. And now I see both were wrong."
"Why?"
"Because you are not a god," David said, almost bitterly. "You are not what we expected. You are not perfect. You hesitate. You feel pain. You question."
"That's what makes me real."
"I know," he said. "And that's what terrifies me."
He looked up.
"I don't know what I serve anymore."
"You don't have to."
"Yes, I do," he said. "Because if I don't choose, someone else will choose for me. And they'll do it with fire and thrones and chains."
We were silent a while.
Then he spoke again, voice softer.
"I still believe in you," he said. "But not because you're divine. Because you could be, if you choose right."
Eve lay curled nearby, listening.
She opened her eyes.
"Do all gods fall?"
David didn't answer.
But I did.
"No," I said. "Some were never meant to rise."