Rain.
It fell like whispers — gentle, cold, endless. The kind of rain that blurred everything it touched, as if the world itself wanted to forget.
He opened his eyes to a gray sky. The wind smelled of mud and iron. His hands — mortal hands — trembled against the wet earth. No divine light. No power. No voice of creation answering his thoughts.
Only silence.
A broken mask lay beside him, half-buried in the mud. White porcelain, cracked from temple to chin. The painted smile was still there, defiant against decay. It stared back at him, mocking him, or maybe… reminding him.
He reached out to touch it. The moment his fingers brushed the cold surface, whispers filled his head — a thousand voices speaking in every tongue, every tone.Lies. Promises. Prayers.
"Save us, Fool.""Curse you, liar.""Tell me it isn't true."
He tore his hand away. The mask pulsed faintly once… then went still.
He sat up, coughing. His throat burned as if filled with ash. He tried to speak — to name himself — but no sound came. Only a rasp. The curse of silence had followed him here.
From the mist ahead, faint light glimmered — a lantern swaying in the storm.
A figure approached through the rain.A girl in tattered robes, barefoot, her eyes wide and strange — one gray, one gold. She stopped when she saw him lying there.
"You shouldn't be here," she said. "This forest eats men whole."
He tried to respond, but the words twisted in his throat. All that came out was a broken laugh — soft, unsettling, echoing faintly like an old memory.
The girl frowned. "You're laughing at death?"
He tilted his head. Smiled without meaning to.
"Of course you are," she muttered. "A fool, then."
She lifted her lantern, studying him more closely. Her gaze fell to the broken mask in the mud. For a moment, her face drained of color.
"That mark… I've seen it before. In the old scriptures — the Smiling God, the one who—"
Lightning cut across the sky. The forest roared. And for just an instant, her reflection in his eyes wasn't human at all — but something ancient and terrified.
He didn't know who he was. But when he saw her fear, something inside him smiled wider.
The lie was still alive.