The zealots' doctrine was a slow rot. It did not demand a dramatic day of blood; it asked, politely, for a thousand tiny resignations. A string tied around a wrist, and then acceptance of another string. A ration handed over with a hymn. A night watch taken twice as long for no pay. The small common deaths added up until the cost of life was a number and grief a paperwork item.
When we made camp the next night, the air smelled of wet paper and the metallic tang of rust. Some survivors sat nearer the zealots' fires, listening to the cadence, eyes glazed by the small comforts. Others clustered at the other edge, listening to Juro read his list in whispers: names, dates, small notations next to each — refused concordance, gave blanket, missing. It looked like a roll call of survivors and debts.
I sat alone, sharpening a blade. The metal sang under my hand, a sound I had learned to love for its steadiness. The curse thrummed, content. The rune pulsed like a hungry metronome. I dipped my finger into the groove and tasted iron.
Juro came near enough that I could hear him breathe. He did not offer a sermon. He did not offer a plan. Only the pen clinking in his hand and the quiet of recorded names.
"You could stop them," he said finally.
"I could," I agreed. "But then what?"
"Then you'd have my thanks," he said. "And perhaps the grateful curse of men who prefer being alive to being called holy."
I looked at him. His face was a ledger, and in the margins the ink bled into something like grief. He had an eye and a list and a conscience sharpened by pain. That combination made him a threat — not because he could kill me, but because men in the future might read his list and remember.
"Keep your list," I said. "One day it will be useful."
He nodded once. "Make sure your ledger has my name at the top."
"Why?"
"So I know who to burn first if the world becomes kind."
He left then, and the night folded itself back into the small flickers of zealot fire.
The doctrine spread not with violence but with habit. It turned survival into sacrament and sacrifice into ledger entries counted in the margins. I watched the arithmetic happen and recognized a truth I had denied: belief made the curse sharper. When people truly trusted me, their fear tasted better in my veins. The ritualized consent amplified the feed. It was a parasite's dream.
That realization should have frightened me more. Instead, it gave me options.
The world would bend toward whatever force kept the margins together. I could break the doctrine by force and be the blunt tyrant Juro predicted. I could let it ride and harvest the extra power the ritual gave me. Or I could try a third, crueler thing: steer the doctrine like a rudder and make it more useful than it had to be — for now.
Choice is a dangerous thing when your hand is already stained. But it is still a function, a lever to pull.
I put the blade back into its sheath and rose. The zealots' fires burned like small watchlights. Their chants seeped under the bones of the sleeping survivors. Juro's list waited in the dark like a promise. Genji and Daigo slept fitfully, their faces pulled in lines I'd seen too often.
In the morning I would speak to Maru. I would bend his rituals toward something I could use. I would not stop the doctrine. I would repurpose it.
People say rulers are made by the consent of the frightened. They are wrong. Rulers are made by those who know how to count the frightened and then arrange them like coins to buy a city's silence.
I do not pretend to be kind. I will, however, be effective. And the ledger will keep score.
Through the curse we live. Through the flame we endure.
I whispered the line and felt the rune answer, patient as a mouth closing on a bone.