The fire started in a way that was almost polite.
A cough of smoke, thin as a thread, coiling up between shelves of vellum and mold-stained texts in Xuemei's shop. Then another, darker, denser. Then a crack of glass like knuckles breaking. By the time the Seeker forced the door open, the little bell above it was already shrieking against the rising roar.
Inside, words burned. Pages twisted on themselves, ink turning blacker than black, as if every character fought to cling to its meaning before the flames stripped it down to ash. Xuemei was nowhere in sight. Only her kettle, forgotten on the counter, whistled like some idiot optimist that thought tea was still possible in this place.
The Seeker staggered in, choking. The scar on his chest flared—not just heat but recognition, as if the fire itself had bent down to greet an old friend. His breath came ragged, his mind clawing for Xuemei's shape among the smoke. But the shelves collapsed one by one, their spines snapping, their contents crackling into sparks.
A silhouette darted in the haze. He thought it was her. It was not.
It was a man in cassock-black, face smudged with ash, eyes gleaming with fanatical satisfaction.
Marius.
"You see?" the Jesuit-turned-prophet shouted over the roar. His voice carried the weight of a sermon. "The idols burn first. Then the lies. Then the keepers of lies."
The Seeker coughed, spat soot. "You twist every scrap you find. You'll make scripture from shoe polish if it flatters your cause."
"And you—" Marius leaned closer, lips curling into something like pity—"you were given the first fire, and you hoard it like a miser. Do you think the gods will forgive you? They've already chosen their mouthpiece."
Flame surged between them, greedy as a curtain drawn. When the smoke thinned again, Marius was gone. Only ash swirled in his wake.
The Seeker found no Xuemei. No body, no certainty. Just the taste of her absence in his mouth, acrid as cinders.
⸻
By nightfall, the riot had spread down two streets, then five. The city's sky looked ill—red at the edges, bruised purple in the center. Shop windows wore spiderweb cracks, cars lay overturned like children's toys abandoned mid-game. People shouted in tongues that weren't quite their own, slipping into cadences borrowed from myths older than nations.
And in the middle of it all, the Seeker walked unnoticed. Erased once by the Lantern Keepers, he moved like a ghost through chaos.
At a junction, he paused. Someone had spray-painted a symbol on the wall: a spiral, jagged in its turning, edges lit by a candle stuck in chewing gum. He recognized the shape only because his scar pulsed in rhythm with it. His knees weakened. The mark had not been drawn by hand. The paint shimmered, wet, although the can lay empty beside it. The spiral completed itself while he watched.
A voice came from behind him, casual, almost amused:
"You shouldn't linger. Symbols like that aren't written for mortals to admire. They're doorways. And doorways swing both ways."
He turned.
Hermes leaned against the lamppost, sandals dusty, winged cap tilted at an angle too rakish for comfort. His eyes flickered with restless light. In one hand, a cigarette burned slowly though no smoke left its paper. In the other, he twirled a bronze coin.
"You again," the Seeker muttered.
"Always me," Hermes said, smiling thin as a blade. "Courier, trickster, boundary-crosser. You ought to appreciate the symmetry. You and I both walk lines that are not ours."
The Seeker clenched his fists. "If you've come to mock me, do it quickly. I've lost enough for one day."
"Lost?" Hermes tilted his head. "Loss is just transition with poor manners. Besides, the woman may not be gone. Flames consume, yes—but they also carry. You'll learn that fire delivers as well as devours."
The Seeker's scar pulsed harder. "You know where she is?"
"Knowing is too strong a word. I'm a messenger, not an archivist. Ask Thoth if you want knowing. Ask me if you want hints wrapped in nonsense." Hermes flipped the coin. It vanished mid-air, reappeared between his teeth. He bit it like bread, then spat it out into the Seeker's palm. The metal was warm, branded with a glyph that throbbed faintly.
"Take it," Hermes said. "Spend it where stories trade hands. But be quick—your rival's doctrine spreads faster than plague. You'll need more than riddles if you intend to remain relevant."
Before the Seeker could speak, Hermes was gone. The lamppost still leaned, but nothing leaned against it. Only the spiral on the wall shuddered once, then dried into lifeless paint.
⸻
Days blurred. The Seeker followed trails of rumor and smoke. Marius's followers grew by hundreds, then thousands. They carried fragments of the Seeker's old lectures, twisted and sharpened into creeds. They chanted that the scar was proof of divine mandate—but not his. Theirs.
Xuemei's absence hollowed him. Her sarcasm, her steadiness, her kettle—gone. Without her, each riddle Hermes left felt like a hook without bait.
The Lantern Keepers made themselves known at last.
They cornered him in a subway tunnel, lanterns glowing not with flame but with pale, bottled memory. Six figures, robed, their voices echoing off tiles.
"Seeker," one intoned, "you are marked Class One Threat."
Another interrupted, tone softer, hesitant. "Or Class One Asset. The glyph upon you is convergence. To destroy it may rupture balance further."
"Better to rupture than to burn," snarled a third.
They argued among themselves while their lights jittered on the walls like nervous insects. For the first time, the Seeker saw hesitation in their ranks. The old certainty—erase, suppress, control—was fraying.
He spoke into their discord: "While you debate, Marius builds an empire of ash. And the gods are no longer content to whisper. They stand in streets, they write on walls, they put coins in men's hands. Your vaults cannot hold what leaks through."
The lantern-bearers faltered. One lifted her hood; her eyes were tired, mortal, unsure.
The leader hissed, "Silence him."
But the subway trembled before they could move. A sound like drums underwater rolled through the concrete. A flood surged down the tunnel, impossible in scale, salt on its breath. The lanterns flickered wildly. Tangaroa had turned in his sleep.
The Seeker was carried away in the torrent, tossed like a rag into blackness. The last thing he saw was the lanterns scattering, some extinguished, some stubbornly alight.
⸻
He woke coughing brine, sprawled on a riverbank beneath a bridge. Night clung to him like kelp. Across the water, crowds gathered with phones raised high.
At first he thought they filmed the aftermath of flood. Then he realized they were filming him.
Because his scar had ignited.
Not faint, not hidden, not subtle. It blazed through his shirt like a brand, light searing into the cameras, refracting on every lens.
The crowd gasped as one. Voices rose: prayers, curses, proclamations. Livestreams carried the image outward—millions watching, billions soon. Each pantheon would see the mark and claim it, as they always had. But now the whole world saw too.
The Seeker clutched at his chest, but the light refused to dim. He stumbled forward, vision swimming, ears filled with the roar of mortal voices and something deeper—the hum of gods recognizing their property.
Above the bridge, ravens circled. In alleyways, candles flared blue. Out at sea, waves lifted unnaturally, waiting.
The Seeker whispered into the cacophony, half-plea, half-confession:
"I am no one's."
But the scar burned hotter, and the voices only grew louder.
⸻
And so Chapter 11 closes not with resolution but with illumination too bright to bear. A man caught in the floodlight of gods, his body turned billboard, his defiance drowned by the sheer noise of belief.
Ashes in his mouth. Fire in his skin. And somewhere in the unseen distance, Marius smiling, already composing the next scripture.