The statue did not bleed.
That was the first thing Lemma noticed.
It towered above the plaza where her family's banners once fluttered in crimson and silver. The old sigils of House Heartfilia had been chiseled away and replaced with something cleaner. Simpler. A single starburst carved over a broken crown.
Her face stared down at her from thirty feet of sanctified marble. Not quite her face.
The sculptor had made the eyes gentler. Larger. Patient in a way she had never been. The lips were parted as if mid-prayer. One hand was extended—not clenched, not trembling, not scarred.
They had removed the brand from her wrist.
They had erased the crookedness in her spine from when Seraphina's spell shattered her ribs. They had smoothed the tension from her jaw.
They had taken every ugly thing that made her human and polished it into something worshipable.
Torches ringed the plaza. Incense smothered the air in thick, honeyed smoke. A thousand candles flickered at the statue's feet. And below it—
They knelt.
Men and women. Children. Soldiers who had once worn her family's crest. Farmers. Former rebels. Former enemies. All bowed with their foreheads to stone, murmuring her name like a hymn.
"Saint Lemma."
"Star of the Fallen."
"The Broken Crown Returned."
The words crawled across her skin.
Lemma stood at the edge of the crowd beneath a tattered hood, unseen. The dragon's mark on her wrist pulsed faintly, as if in quiet warning.
"They've made you clean," the god murmured inside her mind—no longer thunderous, no longer sovereign. Just a voice. A presence. Fractured since the First God fell. "They've stripped you of consequence."
"I noticed," she whispered.
A procession began at the foot of the statue. White-robed clerics ascended the marble steps carrying a young girl between them.
The girl could not have been older than ten.
Her hair had been dyed silver.
Her dress was torn deliberately at the sleeves to reveal bruises painted in careful purple. A false brand marked her wrist in red ink.
They had made her into a relic.
The High Devotee raised his arms. His voice carried over the square.
"Behold the Chosen Vessel of the Living Star! She who carries the Martyr's Pain! Through her suffering, Saint Lemma watches us still!"
The crowd wept.
The girl trembled.
Lemma's stomach turned.
"They are building you without you," the god said.
"They don't need me," Lemma replied.
The High Devotee produced a blade—ceremonial, thin. He drew it across the girl's palm. Blood welled, bright and real.
The crowd gasped as if witnessing divinity.
"She bleeds as our Saint bled!" he cried. "Her pain nourishes the Star! Her blood calls forth protection!"
The girl tried not to cry.
She failed.
The sound broke something small and brittle inside Lemma's chest.
She stepped forward.
The dragon's magic did not roar. It did not blaze. It simply thickened the air around her, as if the world remembered she had weight.
The torches guttered.
A few heads turned.
Lemma lowered her hood.
The first scream was small. Uncertain.
The second spread like a crack in ice.
The High Devotee froze mid-proclamation.
The girl looked at her—and hope flickered there.
Hope was dangerous.
Lemma climbed the steps slowly, each footfall deliberate against stone carved in her likeness.
The crowd parted without meaning to.
The god's voice tightened. "Be careful."
"Of them?" she asked softly.
"Of what they need you to be."
She stopped before the High Devotee.
He stared at her face, then at the statue behind her, then back again. His certainty fractured in visible increments.
"You are an impostor," he breathed.
Lemma looked at the blade in his hand.
"I don't remember giving you permission to bleed children in my name."
The man swallowed. "You are a trial sent by doubt. The Saint transcended flesh. She ascended."
"I didn't."
The wind shifted.
The girl's blood dripped onto marble. Red against white.
Lemma reached forward and gently took the child's wounded hand in hers. Dragon fire warmed her palm—not burning, but sealing. Flesh knit.
The girl gasped as pain faded.
The crowd went silent.
Miracle.
They tasted the word like wine.
The High Devotee fell to his knees.
"Forgive us," he whispered.
Lemma stared down at him.
"This isn't forgiveness."
She turned slowly, facing the mass of bowed bodies.
"I am not a saint."
Her voice carried without force. It simply refused to be ignored.
"I am not protection. I am not promise. I am not a symbol for your suffering."
A murmur rippled through them.
"You cannot build hope out of lies," she continued. "You cannot take my pain and sanctify it because it makes yours easier to endure."
The statue loomed behind her, serene and false.
"Your Saint would never condemn us," someone shouted from the crowd.
Lemma's jaw tightened.
"You are right."
She lifted her hand.
The dragon's brand flared.
The statue cracked.
A fracture split from crown to base, a violent jagged line through the marble's perfect face.
Gasps erupted.
"You want a martyr?" Lemma's voice sharpened. "Then understand this—martyrs do not consent."
The statue shattered.
Stone thundered into the square, obliterating candles, splintering steps, sending white dust billowing into the air.
The crowd screamed.
Some fled.
Some stared in horror.
Some wept as if something sacred had died.
Lemma stood amid falling debris.
The god inside her was silent.
Finally he spoke.
"They will not forgive this."
"I didn't ask them to."
—
Word spread faster than plague.
The Dawnwardens declared her a blasphemer.
The cultists splintered—some calling her False, others calling her Proof.
And somewhere within the palace's blackened halls, Seraphina smiled.
"She destroys her own legend," Seraphina murmured, fingers tracing the edge of a demon-bound mirror. "Good. Let her strip herself bare."
Behind the glass, one of the Demon Kings shifted, amused.
"She refuses apotheosis," it hissed.
"She refuses control," Seraphina corrected. "There is a difference."
"Belief does not require her consent," another voice crooned from the mirror's depths. "We can finish what they began."
Seraphina's eyes glinted.
"Then do it."
***
That night, Lemma dreamed.
Not of dragons. Not of gods.
Of herself.
She stood in the plaza again—but whole, radiant, crowned in starlight. Wings of silver unfurled behind her. Her eyes glowed with impossible serenity.
The crowd knelt.
This version of her raised a hand in blessing.
"Peace," the false divinity said, and the word tasted like honey and chains.
Lemma watched from below.
"You look tired," the other her observed gently.
"I am."
"You could stop this."
"How?"
"Let them have me."
The crowd's prayers swelled, feeding the false figure light. Power pooled around her like water gathering in a basin.
"You don't need to fight anymore," the divinity murmured. "You don't need to hurt. Just step aside."
"And die?" Lemma asked.
The false Lemma smiled.
"You don't have to be alive to be useful."
The words struck deeper than any blade.
The god's presence flickered faintly at the edge of the dream.
"This is not me," he warned.
"No," the divinity agreed pleasantly. "It is not."
The crowd began chanting louder.
Saint Lemma. Saint Lemma.
The dream-ground trembled.
"I never wanted this," Lemma whispered.
"You wanted justice," the false divinity replied. "They want salvation. Justice is harder."
The silver-winged version of her descended the steps, barefoot, immaculate.
"You are so heavy," she said softly, touching Lemma's chest. "All that grief. All that rage. Let me carry it."
For a moment—
Just a moment—
Lemma wanted to.
To let the world build something beautiful from her ruin. To let them kneel to an illusion instead of fearing the girl who burned.
"What happens to me?" she asked.
The divinity's smile did not falter.
"You become unnecessary."
The dream fractured.
Lemma woke with her nails dug into her own palm hard enough to draw blood.
The god was there immediately.
"They are feeding it."
"I know."
"If it stabilizes—"
"It becomes stronger than me."
"Yes."
She stared at the cave ceiling.
"What if I let it?"
Silence.
"You would cease," the god said finally.
"Would that be so terrible?"
He did not answer quickly.
"You are not only yourself anymore."
She exhaled bitterly. "That's the problem."
***
Days later, the false divinity appeared in waking light.
A procession moved through a border town—white banners, silver insignias. The child-vessel from the plaza walked at the center, now adorned in jewels. Her eyes were distant.
Behind her floated a luminous figure shaped like Lemma.
Not flesh.
Light.
The crowd wept and followed.
Lemma watched from a rooftop.
"That is not illusion," the god whispered. "That is belief given spine."
The luminous figure raised its hand.
A sick man in the street gasped as his fever vanished.
A crippled soldier stood.
Miracles.
The crowd fell prostrate.
"It's helping them," Lemma said.
"Yes."
Her throat tightened.
"What gives me the right to take that away?"
The god's voice was quiet. "What gives it the right to replace you?"
The luminous figure's gaze lifted.
It met hers across the square and smiled, It was not cruel and that made it worse.
The false Lemma rose into the air, hovering above the crowd. Her voice rang like bells.
"I forgive you," she said—to everyone.
The people sobbed in gratitude.
Lemma felt something tear inside her.
"I never offered forgiveness," she whispered.
"You offered resistance," the god replied. "They prefer absolution."
The luminous divinity extended her hand toward Lemma.
"Come," it said, audible only to her. "Rest."
The offer was sincere.
The temptation was unbearable.
Lemma stepped back.
"No."
The word tasted like ash.
The light flickered.
For the first time, the divinity's expression shifted—faint irritation creasing its perfect brow.
"You would deny them hope?"
"I would deny them a lie."
"They do not care."
The child-vessel swayed below, skin paling.
Belief was feeding the construct.
And draining the living.
Lemma's heartbeat thundered.
"If I erase my name," she murmured, "if I make it so they forget—"
"You would unmake the construct," the god said. "But you would also unmake what remains of you."
She closed her eyes.
To be free.
To be gone.
To end the war over her existence by removing the existence.
The luminous figure drifted closer.
"You are tired," it said gently. "Let me endure."
The child below collapsed.
The crowd screamed
.Lemma moved.
Dragon fire burst from her palm—not wild, not catastrophic. Precise.
She struck the space between the divinity and the vessel.
The air split.
Light faltered.
The false Lemma recoiled, expression finally cracking.
"You would harm them?" it asked.
"I would stop you."
"They need me."
"They need truth."
The construct's glow intensified, fueled by panic, by renewed prayer.
"You are selfish," it said.
The word pierced.
"I know," Lemma replied.
She lunged.
The collision was not explosion but implosion—belief and flesh, symbol and scarred reality colliding in a soundless detonation.
The square went white.
When vision returned, the luminous figure flickered, destabilized.
The child-vessel lay unconscious but breathing.
The crowd stared at Lemma in horror.
She stood over them, soot-streaked, bleeding from the nose.
"Look at me," she demanded.
They did.
"I am not holy."
Her voice cracked.
"I am not mercy."
Tears blurred her sight.
"I am angry. I am grieving. I am unfinished."
The glow sputtered violently.
"Stop praying to something that does not exist."
Some people lowered their heads.
Others began praying harder.
The construct screamed—a sound like shattering glass.
"I am what they choose!" it shrieked.
"And I am what I choose," Lemma answered.
She drove her branded wrist into the light.
Dragon fire consumed belief.
Not gently.
Not cleanly.
The construct unraveled—threads of luminous devotion snapping one by one until nothing remained but falling ash.
Silence fell heavy.
No miracle followed.
No blessing.
Only a girl standing in the aftermath of a god-shaped lie, shaking.
The crowd did not kneel.
They did not cheer.
They looked at her as if seeing something dangerous.
Good.
Lemma turned away.
Behind her, whispers began.
Not Saint.
Not Savior.
Something else.
The god within her stirred faintly.
"You could have let it take your place."
"I know."
"You nearly did."
"I know."
She walked until the town disappeared behind her.
The wind was cold.
"Do you regret it?" he asked.
She thought of the dream.
Of the offer to become unnecessary.
"Yes," she admitted.
A long pause.
"Will you erase your name?" he asked quietly.
Lemma looked at her hands—scarred, trembling, human.
"No."
Her voice was steadier than she felt.
"If they're going to build something, it will be built with me standing in front of it."
The road stretched ahead—uncertain, unkind.
Behind her, belief shifted. Not vanished.
Changed.
More dangerous now.
More divided.
Martyrs were easier to worship than women who refused to die.
And somewhere in the palace, Seraphina watched reports arrive and smiled thinly.
"Good," she whispered. "Let her keep breathing."
Because belief did not need Lemma alive.
But Seraphina did.
The war was no longer for a throne.
It was for authorship.
For who got to decide what Lemma Heartfilia meant.
She tightened her cloak and walked into the dark.
She was alive and unclaimed.