The city was louder than any sermon.
Screens screamed from rooftops and storefronts, turning boulevards into a hall of mirrors. Every feed replayed the same tableau until it felt less like coverage and more like liturgy: Father Marius, framed in light, a crown of nails and rosary beads rattling faintly whenever he turned his head. Rust flakes dusted his shoulders like crimson snow. The crown should have looked grotesque, scavenged from ruins and discarded faith. Yet he wore it as though he had been born with it fused to his skull.
The Seeker lingered in the black mouth of an alley, one eye catching the glow, the other buried in shadow. His scar didn't sear tonight—it throbbed, low and steady, like the pulse of a drum deep in the earth. He hated that more than fire. Pain was manageable, explainable. Resonance meant recognition, and recognition suggested kinship.
Not with him, he thought. Never with him.
Marius's voice rolled through the square, perfectly modulated. Once, he had argued in classrooms and sanctuaries for the sheer joy of argument. Now he spoke with the authority of inevitability. He wasn't persuading—he was declaring.
"Bread for the faithful," Marius said, holding up a loaf.
The crowd surged. His hands tore it, passed pieces, tore again. The bread remained whole, stubbornly refusing subtraction.
The Seeker felt bile rise. A trick. It must be a trick. I've read how it's done. False bottoms, sleight of hand, substitution. Yet the tears streaming down the faces of the hungry were real. And real tears sanctify illusions.
"Miracle!" the crowd screamed, and the word rippled outward like a stone striking water.
Above the courthouse steps, a colossal screen looped footage of another man: scarred, stunned, lit by fire. Him. The shrine-collapse replayed endlessly, his body jerking in the light as though someone else's hand had animated him. Commentators speculated whether the nameless figure was the rival prophet.
I am not a prophet, he told himself, nails digging crescents into his palms. I am a scar that learned to walk.
Two prophets. Two flames. One must be false. The phrase hung in the air like mildew, already rooting itself.
⸻
He fled the roar but carried its echo. His steps drew him to a street he had avoided for weeks. Xuemei's bookshop sagged against itself, shutters splintered, shelves gutted. But the ghost of incense clung stubbornly, mixing with the iron tang of old fire.
He pressed his forehead to the frame. For a moment, his imagination painted her there—Xuemei stepping forward with her usual weary smile, sliding him a bowl of noodles, scolding him for his sulking.
But silence, heavy as ash, occupied every corner.
The scar pulsed warmly against the wood.
"Not yours," he whispered. His voice cracked. "She was never yours."
The scar disagreed. Or perhaps it didn't. He could no longer tell the difference.
⸻
Night fell dishonestly.
Some districts glared with blinding light—Marius's acolytes erecting floodlamps, banners screaming Unity in Flame. Other neighborhoods collapsed into Amaterasu's dusk, a selective, unnatural shadow cast like a curtain over streets she deemed unworthy of day.
The city fractured: patches of radiance stitched to patches of twilight. People chose their allegiance by which street they walked.
The Seeker wandered through the quilt, belonging to none. Light will not claim me. Dark will not claim me. Why should I expect mortals to?
In one plaza, makeshift altars sprouted from bottle caps and teddy bears. Cigarettes were piled reverently. A child's toy truck had been painted gold and labeled a chariot. Faith had become improvisation, and improvisation had become contagious.
At one corner, a man in a cheap suit shouted that Marius was Odin returned. On another, a woman smeared ash across her cheeks and proclaimed him Kali's son. Children chalked Hermes's name in loops under his posters.
They cannot even agree on whose puppet he is, the Seeker thought. But they kneel all the same. And when they see me, they kneel, too. Not to me—to the story they think I am. I have stopped being a man. I am scaffolding for their hunger.
From a café window, static hissed into shape. The Whisperer's grin shimmered from the screen.
"You could outdo him," Coyote said, voice light as trick dice rolling. "You've got the scar. The posture. The air of a man ruined by fire. Crowds adore ruins. But you wear doubt like a second skin. Audiences don't want doubt. They want certainty—even if it's poison."
The Seeker sneered. "Better poison than emptiness."
"Emptiness never killed anyone," the god chuckled. "But certainty kills everyone."
Static swallowed him, leaving only the Seeker's reflection.
⸻
By midnight, he forced himself to the courthouse steps.
Floodlights bleached the square. Marius stood radiant, the crown rattling faintly. Lantern Keepers perched on balconies, their fractured order half-reconvened behind him. The Seeker recognized the calculation: Better a prophet we can manage than a heresy we cannot.
Marius spoke with the practiced ease of an actor who has memorized both script and audience. The words he wielded were old notes, scraps once scribbled between himself and the Seeker during long nights. We hunted fragments together, the Seeker thought bitterly. Now he sells them as commandments.
The crowd roared. Murmur became rhythm, rhythm became chant.
The Seeker's fists ached. His chest constricted.
A tug at his sleeve startled him.
A boy no older than ten stared up, eyes wide as moons. "Are you him? The other one?"
The scar betrayed him, pulsing, leaking faint light.
The boy gasped, dropped to his knees, mumbling a mismatched prayer. Names collided—Odin, Christ, Xiuhtecuhtli. He didn't care who answered, so long as someone did.
Others saw. Fingers pointed. Murmurs gained teeth. The rival flame. The second prophet.
No. Not me. Don't make me this.
He shoved past, rage surging hotter than the scar. Prophet. Crown. Rival. Words sharpened into chains, and he had worn enough chains for one lifetime.
He fled the square, the chant gnawing at his back.
⸻
In an alley, washing lines sagged overhead, shirts flapping like surrender flags. He pressed himself to the wall, scar hammering against his ribs.
They will tear me into doctrine whether I consent or not, he thought. The Keepers tried. Now Marius does. Now children in the street. Perhaps I was never anything else but raw material. Perhaps the scar burned away my name the moment it branded me.
A broken radio crackled to life at his feet.
"Crowns are for those who forget how heavy they are," Coyote said, laughter braided with static. "Yours, little scholar, is heavier still."
"I don't want a crown," the Seeker hissed.
"Crowns don't ask," the Whisperer replied. "They land."
The radio popped and died. His thoughts gnawed on the words like rats on bone: What if the scar itself is the crown? What if I have been wearing it since the fire, and every denial is just me bowing more deeply?
⸻
Dawn arrived reluctantly, as if ashamed.
By then, blood slicked the streets. Rival sects had clashed through the night. One group cried Marius's name as the chosen. Another screamed for the Scarred Prophet. Bottles shattered. Knives flashed. Faith spilled more blood than politics ever could.
The Seeker stumbled into the riot's edge. A hand clawed at him. Another pulled his sleeve. "Show us!" voices cried. "Prove it!"
The scar blazed without permission. Light tore across the street, halting the brawl for one stunned heartbeat.
In that frozen silence, a thought erupted unbidden: If I raised my hand, if I uttered one word, they would kneel. Even the gods might pause. Power is one sentence away.
The thought horrified him.
Then the chaos roared back, doubled. "The rival prophet! The second flame!"
He ripped free, fled, chest burning from more than exertion.
⸻
He collapsed in a gutted library. Shelves slumped like drunkards, spines warped by mildew. Dust drifted in moonlight that seeped reluctantly through Amaterasu's dusk.
He sank into a crooked chair. The scar dimmed but left its echo pounding inside him.
"I am not a prophet," he whispered to the shelves. "I am not a crown. I am not yours."
The silence pressed close, and then, softly, a page turned somewhere in the dark.