The day the sky forgot how to be blue, the city gathered.
Not because they were ordered to.
Not because they were threatened.
But because belief had ripened into spectacle.
The plaza was wide enough to swallow grief whole. Stone terraces curved inward like ribs around a heart that had never learned to beat on its own. Banners bearing Lemma's face hung from silver poles — her likeness softened, sanctified, painted with a tenderness she had never been afforded in life. The artists had rounded her jaw. They had made her eyes forgiving.
They had made her harmless.
At the center of the square stood the altar — a scaffold of white marble and gilded scripture, etched with the Doctrine of Mercy in looping calligraphy. Every word attributed to her. Every promise forged in her name.
And atop it, bathed in an unnatural radiance, stood the false divinity wearing her face.
The crowd trembled with devotion.
"She descends," someone whispered.
"She returns."
"She has forgiven us."
The false Lemma raised her hands, and a hush fell like anesthesia — sudden, silencing, merciful in its suffocation.
Her voice carried, warm as honey, clean as cut glass.
"Children," she said, and the word pressed into them like a thumb against bruised fruit. "You have suffered long. You have believed faithfully. Today, your faith is answered."
A wave of sobbing rippled through the front rows.
The Mercy stood at the base of the altar, cloaked in ash-grey robes. No sigils adorned her shoulders. No crown weighed her brow. Only the chain around her throat — the Chain that bound her vow — gleamed faintly beneath the hood.
She did not look at the false god.
She looked at the people.
This is what I built, she thought. And this is what built itself without me.
The false divinity smiled — her smile — serene, immaculate. "The age of uncertainty is over," she proclaimed. "No more doubt. No more fracture. I am the proof of your righteousness. I am the flesh of your faith."
And they believed her.
Because belief, once fed, does not ask to see the kitchen.
The Mercy stepped forward.
Her boots scraped stone.
The sound was small, but it cut.
A few heads turned. A few eyes flickered with confusion.
The false god paused.
There, at the edge of the altar's shadow, stood a woman who looked like the portrait torn from the banner — sharper, thinner, haunted by sleepless nights and unrecorded failures.
The crowd inhaled.
Two Lemmas.
The false divinity tilted her head, expression unbroken. "Ah," she said softly. "A pilgrim."
The Mercy pushed back her hood.
Gasps fractured the silence.
"I am no pilgrim," she replied, her voice unadorned by echo or blessing. It did not carry with magic. It carried with breath. "And you are no god."
The words did not thunder.
They did not blaze.
They fell like stones into water — and the ripples began.
The false Lemma's smile faltered — not visibly, not to those who worshiped, but to the Mercy, who knew the muscles of that face like a map of old wounds.
"My child," the divinity said gently, stepping closer to the altar's edge. "You mistake yourself for me. It is a common delusion among the devout."
A murmur. Confusion laced with fear.
The Mercy climbed the steps.
Each one felt like trespass.
"You took my name," she said quietly, eyes locked with her own counterfeit reflection. "You took my failures and polished them into miracles. You turned my doubts into doctrine."
She reached the altar's summit.
They stood face to face.
The resemblance was cruel.
The false god's skin shimmered faintly, light spilling from beneath it like wine through cracked glass.
The Mercy's hands were calloused.
"You are what they need," the false Lemma said. "Not what you are."
A pause.
"Belief does not require your survival."
The words were not shouted.
They were stated — like weather.
Below them, the crowd shifted, uncertain. Some wept. Some prayed. Some stared in rapt horror.
The Mercy swallowed.
"Then let them see you bleed."
The air changed.
Not violently.
But intimately.
Like the moment before a confession becomes irreversible.
The false divinity's eyes narrowed — just slightly.
"Do you understand what you are doing?" she asked, voice still honeyed but edged now with iron. "You will unravel them."
"They deserve the truth."
"They deserve comfort."
The Mercy laughed once — broken, raw. "Comfort built on a lie is anesthesia. It numbs. It does not heal."
The false Lemma's glow intensified.
"You were never meant to endure this weight. You were meant to ignite it."
The crowd began to shout — divided cries, fractured prayers.
"Which is real?"
"Bless us!"
"Don't let her desecrate—"
The Mercy stepped forward and struck her.
Not with a weapon.
With her palm.
The sound cracked across the plaza.
The false divinity staggered.
And for a heartbeat — a single, terrible heartbeat — light flickered.
From the false god's nose, a thin line of red traced downward.
Blood.
The crowd screamed.
Not in anger.
In confusion.
In terror.
Gods did not bleed.
The false Lemma touched her face, fingers coming away stained.
Her eyes — identical to the Mercy's — widened.
The Mercy's voice trembled, but she did not look away. "You are made of them. Of their fear. Of their need. You are a mirror polished by desperation."
"And you," the false god hissed softly, her composure fracturing like porcelain under heat, "are obsolete."
The light around her flared — no longer warm, no longer gentle.
Harsh.
Blinding.
The banners ignited.
The air tasted of metal and smoke.
The crowd fell to their knees — not in reverence now, but in panic.
The Mercy felt the heat crawl over her skin, searching for doubt to ignite.
She found it.
And did not look away.
"You think martyrdom will save you?" the false Lemma demanded, voice splitting — layered now, many-toned, a chorus of believers speaking through her. "You think if you die, they will see?"
"I don't care if they see," the Mercy whispered. "I care that you break."
The false divinity lunged.
Not physically.
Existentially.
A pressure slammed into the Mercy's mind — memories rewritten, faces rearranged, her own childhood recast in sanctity. The false god attempted to overwrite her — to claim authorship.
The Mercy fell to her knees.
Not in surrender.
In resistance.
"I was never pure," she gasped. "I doubted. I failed. I ran."
"You inspired."
"I hid."
"You were chosen."
"I was afraid."
The false Lemma's voice sharpened. "And that is why you are unfit."
Below them, a figure moved.
The one they called Mercy.
She had stood silent at the altar's base — cloaked, unseen, a shadow beneath divinity.
Now she stepped forward.
She removed her hood.
Her face bore no resemblance to Lemma.
It was older.
Softer.
Human.
And her eyes were wet.
"Enough," the Mercy said — not to the crowd, not to the false god, but to the woman kneeling under the weight of belief.
The false divinity faltered.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"I am the one who believed before there were banners."
The woman climbed the steps.
Each step was slow.
Intentional.
The crowd parted, instinctively.
"I believed in her doubt," the Mercy said, standing beside the kneeling Lemma. "I believed in her when she said she did not deserve belief."
The false god recoiled.
"You are one voice," she sneered.
The Mercy shook her head. "I am the first."
She turned to Lemma.
"Stand," she whispered.
"I cannot," Lemma breathed. "If I stand, they will lose everything."
"And if you kneel," the Mercy replied gently, "you lose yourself."
The false divinity screamed — not with rage, but with unraveling.
The glow around her fractured, shards of light splintering outward like broken glass.
The crowd saw it.
The crack.
Small.
But undeniable.
A child pointed.
"She's flickering."
The false Lemma staggered.
"You need me!" she roared at the people. "Without me, your suffering is meaningless!"
The Mercy stepped forward.
"Without her," she said quietly, "your suffering is yours."
Silence.
Raw.
Terrible.
The false god reached for the Mercy.
But the Mercy did not flinch.
Instead, she turned — and faced the crowd.
"I choose martyrdom," she said simply.
The words struck harder than any spell.
Lemma's head snapped up.
"No."
The Mercy smiled faintly.
"If belief no longer needs you alive," she murmured, "then let it see someone die for truth instead of illusion."
The false divinity howled as the chain around the Mercy's throat ignited — not in flame, but in severance.
She tore it free.
And with it, the vow that had bound her.
Light surged — but not from the false god.
From the breaking.
From the relinquishing.
The Mercy stepped into the false divinity's radiance.
And did not burn.
She shattered.
Not into ash.
Into absence.
The false Lemma convulsed — cracks racing across her luminous skin.
The crowd screamed.
The banners fell.
The altar split.
And the false god's voice — layered, divine, immaculate — fractured into a single, terrified whisper:
"I am not enough."
The Mercy was gone.
Lemma stood alone.
The light dimmed.
The crowd stared.
No one knelt.
No one prayed.
They watched.
And in their watching, belief trembled.
Lemma's chest heaved.
She looked at the space where the Mercy had stood.
At the crack in the false god's form.
At the faces below — stripped of anesthesia.
And for the first time, belief did not look like worship.
It looked like grief.
She stepped forward.
Blood on her palm.
Smoke in her lungs.
And she spoke — not as a god.
Not as a martyr.
But as a woman who had considered erasing her own name from history — and instead, had chosen to let it break.
"If you need a lie," she said hoarsely, "then build one without my face."
The false divinity collapsed.
Not dead.
Not defeated.
But fractured — visible in her artifice.
And the city, for the first time in years, did not know what to believe.
The sky remained colorless but it was honest.