Chapter 20 — When Gods Stop Answering
The miracles stopped at noon.
There was no announcement.
No proclamation nailed to gates.
No sermon explaining divine displeasure.
They simply… did not happen.
The old woman who prayed every morning at the river steps for her joints to loosen found that they remained stiff. The boy whose burns had always faded after a visit to the chapel cried when the pain did not recede. A dockworker crushed his hand beneath a shifting crate and screamed until his voice broke—no warm light came, no sanctified relief, no whispered benediction to dull the agony.
Blackridge Dominion learned what silence felt like.
It was not dramatic at first.
Just uncomfortable.
Adrian felt it from the watchtower before reports arrived.
Not pressure.
Not resistance.
A vacuum.
He stood at the eastern window, hands resting lightly on the stone sill, watching the city move below. People still walked. Still worked. Still argued and traded and cursed.
But they glanced at the chapels.
And nothing answered back.
"They've activated it," Isolde said quietly from behind him.
Adrian nodded. "The Doctrine of Absence."
Helena leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, jaw tight. "They're punishing everyone."
"Yes," Adrian replied. "By withdrawing."
Mirela Quince entered moments later, cloak damp, expression grim.
"It's spreading fast," she said. "No healings. No blessings. Even sanctioned contracts are stalling—priests refusing to certify."
Clara stood near the center of the room, pale fingers clenched around her pendant.
"They're starving faith," she whispered.
Isolde shook her head. "No. They're testing resilience."
Adrian turned slightly. "And blaming me."
"Yes," Mirela confirmed. "Not directly. But the implication is everywhere."
This is what happens when destiny is defied.
This is the cost of anomaly.
This is the price of choice.
The city absorbed the message slowly, painfully.
By evening, anger arrived.
Not explosive.
Directional.
A crowd gathered near the river chapel—one of the oldest in Blackridge Dominion. Its doors remained closed, its bells silent.
A man shouted.
"Open it!"
A woman cried.
"My daughter's sick!"
A stone struck the chapel wall.
Then another.
The doors did not open.
Adrian watched from a distance, unseen among the rooftops, Helena beside him.
"They're going to riot," she said.
"Yes," Adrian replied.
"And you're not stopping it."
"No."
Helena turned to him sharply. "People will die."
"Yes."
Her jaw tightened. "Then what are you doing?"
Adrian's voice was quiet. "Letting them realize something."
Below them, the doors finally opened—not to priests, but to Church knights. Shields raised. Formation tight.
The crowd recoiled.
Someone screamed.
Steel flashed.
The riot died quickly.
Too quickly.
Bodies lay still on sanctified stone.
Helena exhaled shakily. "They're provoking a backlash."
"Yes."
"Against you."
Adrian shook his head slowly. "Against absence."
That night, the underground faltered.
Not everywhere.
But enough.
A smuggling route failed when a blessing meant to stabilize a bridge was withheld. A healer refused service without Church approval. A deal collapsed when contracts could no longer be sanctified.
Fear crept back in.
"They're losing confidence," Mirela said, pacing. "People are whispering that maybe this is your fault."
Adrian sat at the table, elbows resting lightly on the wood, fingers steepled.
"It is," he said.
The room went quiet.
Helena stared at him. "What?"
"I disrupted the system," Adrian continued calmly. "This is the system responding."
Clara shook her head. "But you didn't make them withdraw."
"No," Adrian agreed. "But I made them choose."
Isolde leaned forward. "Then this is the inflection point."
"Yes."
She met his gaze. "What's the plan?"
Adrian closed his eyes briefly.
The silence pressed in.
Not fate.
Responsibility.
"I don't replace miracles," he said. "I make them unnecessary."
Helena frowned. "How?"
"Structure," Adrian replied. "Redundancy. Mutual dependence."
Mirela snorted. "That takes time."
"Yes."
"And people are suffering now."
Adrian opened his eyes.
"I know."
The crack showed.
Just for a moment.
The third night was the worst.
The river swelled unexpectedly, rainwater pouring in from the hills upstream. The old flood wards—once maintained by Church engineers—failed without sanctified reinforcement.
Water surged into the lower docks.
People screamed.
Children were swept from walkways.
Helena moved without waiting for orders, leaping from roof to roof, hauling people from the water with brute strength and practiced precision.
Mirela coordinated evacuation routes, barking orders, sending runners.
Isolde stood at the watchtower map table, redirecting flows, calculating pressure points, shouting for barriers to be moved.
Adrian stood knee-deep in water at the edge of the spillway, cloak soaked, hair plastered to his face.
He could feel it.
The Loom hovering.
Waiting.
Fix this, it whispered—not with words, but with implication.
Reassert yourself. Replace us.
Adrian clenched his fists.
"No," he whispered.
He waded deeper, bracing himself against the current, pushing debris aside, guiding people through safer channels.
A beam struck his shoulder.
Pain flared.
He grunted but did not stop.
Helena saw him stagger. "Adrian!"
"I'm fine," he called back.
He wasn't.
His body screamed.
His control frayed.
A child slipped from a rescuer's grasp, swept toward the spillway drop.
Adrian moved.
Too fast.
Too hard.
Nullblade flashed.
Not cutting matter.
Cutting direction.
The current twisted violently, throwing the child onto a submerged platform.
The Loom surged.
Angry.
Adrian staggered as backlash hit him like a hammer—blood filling his mouth, vision blurring.
Helena caught him as he collapsed.
"You used it," she hissed. "On the environment."
"I know," Adrian coughed. "I won't… again."
But he felt it.
The temptation.
The cost.
By dawn, the flood receded.
The damage was severe—but survivable.
People stood in the streets, soaked and exhausted, staring at the wreckage.
No miracle had saved them.
They had saved each other.
Whispers spread—not of divine wrath, but of human endurance.
Isolde watched from the tower, eyes distant.
"They adapted faster than projected," she murmured.
"Yes," Adrian replied, voice hoarse.
Helena helped him sit. "You can't keep doing that."
"I won't," Adrian said.
She searched his face. "You almost crossed."
"Yes."
"And next time?"
Adrian closed his eyes.
"Next time," he said quietly, "I trust them."
That afternoon, a woman arrived at the edge of the district.
She did not hide.
She did not rush.
She walked through the broken streets in a simple traveling dress, pale blond hair braided loosely over one shoulder, blue-green eyes taking everything in with unsettling calm.
People moved aside without knowing why.
She stopped beneath the watchtower and looked up.
Adrian felt it.
Not pressure.
Recognition.
"Someone's here," Clara said softly.
Adrian nodded. "Yes."
Helena narrowed her eyes. "She feels… different."
Isolde stiffened. "That's because she's outside the absence."
The woman met Adrian's gaze across distance and chaos.
And smiled.
Not warmly.
Not cruelly.
Knowingly.
Adrian straightened despite the pain.
"Who is she?" Helena asked.
Adrian's voice was low.
"Someone fate didn't abandon," he said.
"And someone," he added, "who just walked into a world without miracles."
Far away, in the sanctum, Verena Holt watched the reports arrive.
"The city didn't collapse," an acolyte whispered.
Verena's expression darkened.
"No," she said. "It learned."
She looked at the final report.
A woman, unregistered, unaffected, walking freely through the absence.
"…Then the board is no longer ours," Verena murmured.
And for the first time since the Doctrine of Absence began—
The Church hesitated.