The Seeker's name was gone.
It had been a slow erasure, beginning with the small bureaucracies. University archives misplaced his publications. Library catalogs listed his theses as "unavailable." Then the government databases trimmed him away like a smudge on glass. His bank accounts blinked into frozen emptiness, and the landlord who had accepted his rent for years now stared at him as if he were a stranger trespassing in his own rooms.
The Lantern Keepers had kept their promise: erasure.
He found himself in a city that no longer recognized him, living among photocopies and falsified identifications that felt thinner than paper. The scar on his chest burned nightly, but in waking hours it smoldered cold, a reminder rather than an alarm. He was both man and ghost, wandering through the bureaucratic purgatory of a world that had chosen to forget him.
Xuemei still gave him soup when he slipped into her bookshop. She shook her head at his disheveled state and muttered that he stank of smoke, though she couldn't tell from where. Yet even she admitted, one night, after pouring bitter green tea into chipped porcelain cups, that she could no longer find his name in her records. "It's like you're ink in water," she said, then added more softly: "Or blood."
The Seeker laughed without humor. "Ink evaporates. Blood stains."
She did not argue.
The riots had worsened. In every city the Seeker passed through, there were splintered sects in half-built churches, cults in basement apartments, fanatics perched on the roofs of abandoned malls waving banners painted in ash and oil. Governments declared states of emergency, though the word "emergency" lost meaning when it stretched for weeks. Politicians invoked "stability" and "order," but what they meant was surrender—surrender to factions, to whispers, to the return of gods they pretended not to believe in.
Father Marius grew louder. His sect filmed him in burned-out cathedrals, robes smudged with soot, eyes incandescent with zeal. He quoted the Seeker's fragmented notes as scripture, twisting his words into threats and promises. "The mark," Marius preached, "was laid upon him for a reason. He is chosen, yet damned. We follow not the man, but the destiny inscribed upon his flesh."
And his followers howled their agreement, crucifixes raised like spears.
The Seeker hated him for it. But worse than hatred was the doubt: perhaps Marius was not entirely wrong. Perhaps the scar was not an accident, not merely a curse but a summons.
It was in this climate that he found the diner.
It stood at the edge of a rural highway, flickering neon sign buzzing EAT against the starless sky. Inside, vinyl booths sagged, the smell of burnt coffee and frying grease clinging to everything. Truckers hunched over plates of eggs, a waitress with tired eyes refilled mugs mechanically, and a jukebox in the corner played something faint and twangy.
The Seeker entered because he was hungry and because he wanted to remember what ordinary life had once been. He slid into a booth, the scar beneath his shirt itching, and ordered whatever was cheapest on the menu.
When the plate arrived—soggy pancakes, butter slick as candle wax—he was no longer alone.
A man sat across from him. Or at least, the Seeker thought it was a man. The newcomer wore a thrift-store suit, threadbare and one button short, and smelled faintly of dust and wild sage. His smile was too wide. His eyes were both kind and mocking, dark and light at once. He stirred a cup of coffee without sugar, though the spoon rattled as if against unseen stones.
"You shouldn't eat those," the stranger said, nodding at the pancakes. "Not because they're bad. Because they're too ordinary. They'll remind you of what you've lost."
The Seeker froze, fork in hand. "Do I know you?"
"Not yet." The stranger winked. "But you've heard me. In fires, in mirrors, in the corners of your dreams where the smoke curls into words."
The scar flared, sudden and vicious. The Seeker hissed through his teeth. "Coyote."
The stranger bowed his head slightly, as though accepting a title he neither confirmed nor denied. "The Whisperer, the Trickster, the one who guides by misleading. You pick the name. They're all wrong, but they'll do."
The Seeker gripped his fork tighter. "What do you want from me?"
"Wrong question." The stranger leaned forward. His grin was knife-sharp. "What do you want from me?"
The diner seemed to lean inward, the walls stretching long, the jukebox's song bending into dissonance. Truckers' voices fell silent. The waitress poured coffee into a cup that never filled. Time folded, the world narrowing to the booth and the two men who sat across it.
The Seeker's throat was dry. "Answers."
"Too vague."
"The truth."
"Dangerous word. Truth cuts sharper than obsidian. What kind of truth?"
"The scar." The Seeker pulled his shirt open, exposing the burn. The glyph glowed faintly, like embers under ash. "Why me? Why this?"
The Whisperer tilted his head. His eyes caught the neon and turned it upside down, spelling words the Seeker could not read. "That mark is a riddle written in many languages, each one incomplete. The Norse call it a rune, the Aztecs a flame, the Egyptians a sigil of balance. They're all right, which makes them all wrong."
The Seeker slammed the fork down. "Stop speaking in circles."
The Whisperer laughed, a sound like coyotes howling in the desert night. "But circles are the only shape that never ends."
The scar pulsed harder. It burned through the Seeker's ribs, as though light wanted to pour out of him. He clutched at it, gasping.
The Whisperer's voice softened, almost kind. "You ask why you survived that fire when so many died. The answer is simple: stories choose their vessels. You were chosen because you hated the idea of being chosen. That paradox makes you useful. To them. To me. To the war that's coming."
"What war?"
"All of them," the Whisperer said, sipping his coffee. "Every pantheon, every faith, every fragment of the divine—they're awake now, jostling for supremacy. The world will not survive all their stories clashing at once. Unless…" He leaned closer, breath smelling of smoke and sweetgrass. "Unless you learn to read what's carved into your flesh before they do."
The Seeker stared at him. The words coiled in his chest like serpents. "You're telling me I'm—what? A prophecy? A weapon? A pawn?"
"Yes," the Whisperer said, with infuriating cheer. "All of them. None of them. Take your pick."
The pancakes cooled on the plate, uneaten. The diner's walls shivered. For a heartbeat, the Seeker saw through them—saw the vast scaffolding of myth pressing against reality, Norse ravens circling overhead, Aztec fire dancing in trash cans, Egyptian glyphs etching themselves across passing clouds. All pantheons at once, as though the diner sat on the seam of every story.
And then the vision collapsed, and he was staring at greasy plates and fluorescent lights once more.
The Whisperer rose from the booth. He dropped a few coins on the table, though they rang not like metal but like bones striking stone. "You'll see more soon. But remember this: the joke is always on the one who thinks they're not part of it."
And then he was gone, leaving only the smell of sage and laughter fading into static.
The Seeker stumbled out into the night air, chest aflame. He tried to breathe, but the scar had become a lantern, light leaking through his shirt. Cars honked as they passed; one driver shouted something obscene, but his face twisted into horror when he saw the glow. The Seeker pulled his coat tight, but the light bled through the fabric.
And that was when the earth shuddered.
Somewhere down the road, a shrine collapsed. Not decayed, not demolished—collapsed, as if invisible hands had yanked its foundation apart. Dust rose into the sky like incense.
Within minutes, the videos began. Phones lifted, cameras whirred, livestreams spread across the city. The internet filled with shaky footage: a glowing man on the highway, a shrine reduced to rubble, a sign of gods at war.
The Lantern Keepers watched. And they named him what they had feared he would become.
Class One Threat.