CHAPTER 10 — THE GOD-BEARER WHO FAILED
They found him in the ruins of a cathedral.
Stone arches had collapsed inward like broken ribs. Vines crawled over shattered stained glass, their colors long bled into the dirt. What had once been a holy place now smelled of damp earth, old incense, and something metallic—like blood that had forgotten it was blood.
At the center of the ruin knelt a man before a broken altar.
His posture was reverent. His body was not.
His spine bent at an impossible angle, ribs faintly visible beneath skin stretched too thin. His shadow did not obey him. It peeled away from his feet, writhing and twitching across the floor as if it were alive, as if it wanted to crawl somewhere darker.
Arjun stopped without realizing it.
His breath caught in his chest.
Rudra's hand rose slightly, a silent warning.
Arjun whispered anyway.
"What is he doing?"
His voice sounded small in the vast ruin. "I don't understand anything. Why is he praying to… that ruined thing?"
Rudra's eyes never left the kneeling figure.
"This," he said quietly, almost reverently, "is what happens when a God-Bearer rejects worship too late."
The man's shoulders trembled.
Then he looked up.
Half his face was human—sunken eyes, cracked lips, a beard gone gray with dust. The other half was not flesh at all. It was empty light, a hollow brilliance that burned without warmth, as if a star had been carved into his skull and left unfinished.
Arjun staggered back a step.
The man smiled. Or tried to.
"I tried to be free," he whispered. His voice echoed wrong, as though something else spoke behind it. "I refused prayers. I shattered temples. I thought if no one believed in me… I could disappear."
His glowing eye flickered.
"It hollowed me."
The air bent.
The world twisted like wet parchment.
The man lunged.
Stone warped beneath his feet, reality folding inward toward him. His shadow stretched, clawing forward faster than his body, screaming without sound.
Arjun didn't think.
He reacted.
Fear surged up his spine, raw and instinctive. His hand flew up between them, palm facing outward.
The Eye opened.
Not slowly.
Not gently.
It split his skin without blood, a vertical pupil blazing with cold authority. The pressure of it dropped onto the cathedral like an invisible weight. Cracks raced across the floor. Dust lifted and froze midair.
A voice spoke.
Not Arjun's.
Not anyone's.
It came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"JUDGMENT: DENIED."
The failed God-Bearer froze.
His lunge stopped mid-motion, mouth open, light flickering wildly. For a fraction of a second, his human half looked relieved.
Then his body began to crumble.
Not rot. Not burn.
It turned to ash—as if existence itself had lost interest in holding him together. His shadow screamed one final time before collapsing into nothing. The empty light shattered like glass, scattering sparks that died before touching the ground.
A breeze passed through the ruins.
The ash scattered.
Silence followed.
So complete it rang in Arjun's ears.
He jumped, heart slamming against his ribs, as if waking from a nightmare he hadn't known he was inside.
Rudra stood frozen.
Thunderstruck.
Slowly, he turned and looked at Arjun.
Arjun stared at his palm.
The Eye was gone. His skin was whole again, as if it had never opened. As if nothing had happened.
"I didn't decide to kill him," Arjun said. His voice shook. "I didn't even understand what was happening."
His fingers curled into a fist.
"What has happened to me?"
Rudra swallowed.
For the first time since Arjun had met him, fear cracked through Rudra's calm.
"The Throne did," he replied.
Above them, thunder rolled.
Not the distant kind.
Not the natural kind.
It sounded deliberate.
Judging.
Arjun felt it then—a pressure far above the clouds, beyond the sky, beyond thought. Something vast had noticed him. Something ancient had spoken through him.
The broken cathedral trembled.
Arjun lowered his hand slowly, dread pooling in his stomach.
If the Throne could decide life and death without his consent…
What would it do when he tried to say no?