CHAPTER 9 — THE WORLD NOTICES
Devak didn't survive the night.
Not because someone killed him.
Because nothing held him together anymore.
His body failed quietly before dawn, veins blackened, heart stopping as if forgetting its purpose.
Rudra watched in silence.
Sirens wailed aboveground.
The cult would come soon.
Rudra crouched beside Arjun.
"You need to understand something," he said. "Judgment isn't power. It's authority. And authority always demands payment."
Arjun looked up. "What kind of payment?"
Rudra hesitated. "Forget that you will get joyful. You will have to give Memory. Sleep. Humanity."
Arjun closed his eyes.
"Mercy is expensive," he said finally.
Arjun sat against the wall, exhausted. His palm was wrapped in layers of sigil-cloth—still bleeding through.
"I felt it," Arjun whispered. "When I judged him. Like something was… disappointed."
Rudra nodded grimly.
"The Throne doesn't like mercy."' But mercy is things that should be there' he thought in mind for a while.
News spread fast in no time.
Not through screens.
Not through speech.
Through absence.
In the city Devak once "protected," miracles stopped. Illness returned. Crops failed. The comfort of blind faith evaporated overnight.
And people noticed.
So did the cult.
Far away, within a cathedral built over a sealed god-prison, the Silent Pontiff opened his eyes for the first time in years.
"A Saint has fallen," he murmured.
Kneeling Prelates trembled.
"Worse," the Pontiff continued calmly. "A God-Bearer has learned to refuse."
He rose, shadows folding into his robes.
"Prepare the Choir."
Arjun drifted in and out of consciousness as Rudra dragged him through the underground. Every step sent fire through his veins. The mark was no longer cracked.
It was changing.
Lines rearranged themselves, sharper, cleaner—less like a wound and more like a seal.
"Rudra," Arjun whispered. "I can still feel them."
"Who?"
"The dead," Arjun said. "And the Throne."
Rudra stopped.
"That's new," he said quietly.
They reached an iron door covered in warning sigils.
Behind it—
Something knocked.
Once.
Slow.
Polite.
Rudra's blade came up instantly.
A voice spoke from the other side.
Calm. Female. Familiar.
"Arjun Vairag," it said.
"I was hoping you'd choose pain over chains."
The door began to open on its own.
Rudra swore. "That voice—"
Arjun's blood went cold.
"—she's like me," he finished.
The gap widened.
A woman stood there, eyes dark as depthless wells, a perfectly stable mark glowing faintly on her palm.
She smiled.
"I'm Mira," she said.
"A Judge who failed."
Behind her, the shadows bowed.
"And the Throne wants to meet you properly." Throne shifted again.
That night—
He dreamed of the Throne.
Closer now.
He saw cracks spreading across it.
Chains tightening.
And behind the seat—
Hands pushing it forward.
When he woke, the mark was quiet.
Too quiet.
Rudra stared at it.
"That's not good."
The air around Arjun felt thin, distant—like reality was stepping back from him.
From the darkness, a whisper rose.
"Mercy logged."
"Deviation recorded."
Arjun's blood ran cold.
"That wasn't the Throne," Rudra said.
Something else was watching now.