I stood there, still watching him. Khon hadn't moved. His eyes stayed locked on mine like I was already in the grave he meant to dig.
And maybe I should've been thinking about him, his posture, his aura, the way the pressure around him pulsed like a barely tethered storm. But my mind was elsewhere. Just for a moment.
The Deities.
He'd spoken like their blessing was fact. Like his superiority was a gift handed down by cosmic architects. The crowd believed it too. Every word. Every drop of it felt sacred to them.
And that was the part that stuck.
Because the more I learned, the more I saw, the more certain I became. The Deities they prayed to, the ones they claimed built this world and its rules... they weren't just figures of faith. They were real. Real in the same way Hellbringer, The Primordial, was.
They called them Deities, but I'd seen what real power resisted. The way my body rejected the mark, again and again, made one thing clear.
These weren't just gods.
