Logout Error: My NPCs Now Worship Me

The silence was a chasm between the kneeling city and the stunned knights on the hill. For Seraphina, the scene below was a complete refutation of her entire worldview. Heroes arrived to fight monsters. They did not arrive to find the monsters already dust and the people they were meant to save worshipping the very darkness she had been sent to purge.

Dawnbringer pulsed with a weak, frantic heat in her hand, a desperate protest against the oppressive cold emanating from the city. The holy aura was being utterly smothered.

"What... what in the Goddess's name happened here?" Sir Kaelan breathed, his military mind unable to process the tactical impossibility before him. "The swarm... it's gone. Utterly."

The knights behind them murmured in confusion and fear. They had steeled themselves for a heroic, bloody battle. This quiet, reverent tableau was far more terrifying.

Down in the square, Kaelus turned his full attention to the newcomers on the hill. He had known they were coming. Their arrival was the final, crucial brushstroke on his masterpiece. He needed a witness. Not just any witness, but the chosen witness. The Champion of his rival.

He began to walk.

His steps were slow, deliberate, and utterly silent. He moved from the center of the square towards the main gate, directly towards the hill where the knights were frozen. The kneeling citizens of Oakhaven did not rise. They merely turned their heads, their worshipful gazes following him as a field of sunflowers follows the sun.

As he walked, the thick frost on the ground dissipated in his wake, leaving the cobblestones merely wet. The oppressive aura of cold began to recede, coalescing around his form, though the chill of his presence remained. He was demonstrating control. He was showing them that the apocalyptic cold was his to command, to unleash and withdraw at will.

"He's coming," one of the younger knights stammered, his hand tightening on his lance.

"Hold your formation!" Sir Kaelan barked, his instincts taking over. "Shields up! He is an unknown hostile!"

The hundred knights, despite their confusion, were disciplined. A line of steel and shields formed in an instant, a glittering wall of defiance against the approaching darkness.

Seraphina, however, did not raise a shield. She dismounted from her horse, Lumina, and took a step forward, her emerald eyes fixed on the approaching figure. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but her resolve was like steel. This was it. This was the confrontation her goddess had sent her for.

Kaelus stopped just outside the broken city gate, about fifty yards from the nervous line of knights. He stood there, a silent titan, making no move to attack, his shadowed face unreadable.

"Demon!" Seraphina's voice rang out, clear and strong, powered by a flicker of holy energy. "What have you done to these people? Release them from your dark spell!"

A low murmur rippled through the kneeling citizens. Some of them looked up at Seraphina with confusion. A few, with nascent anger. Demon? This being had saved them.

Kaelus remained silent. He let her accusation hang in the air, allowing the reaction of the crowd to answer for him.

An old woman, the baker whose shop had been destroyed, shakily got to her feet. "He is no demon, my lady!" she cried out, her voice raw with emotion. "He saved us! The Church's prayers were answered with silence! The Light did not come! He did!"

"She's right!" a wounded guard shouted, clutching his bleeding arm. "The monsters... he turned them to dust! He saved us all!"

The chorus began to build, a rising tide of testimonials from the very people Seraphina was sworn to protect. They were defending him. Defending the darkness against her light.

Seraphina's conviction wavered for a fraction of a second. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. The people should be cowering, praying for her to save them from the dark sorcerer.

"He has deceived you!" she insisted, her voice growing more desperate. "His power is born of shadow and death! It is a profane magic that will corrupt your souls!"

Kaelus finally tilted his head. The gesture was slow, almost curious. Then, for the first time, he spoke. His voice was not the monstrous roar she had expected. It was a deep, calm, resonant sound that carried across the distance without effort, vibrating in the very air.

"Deception?" His voice was a question, but it held the weight of a final judgment. "Your goddess promised protection. Where was she when their homes were burning? Your king promised security. Where were his armies when their children were being slaughtered?"

He raised a single, obsidian-gauntleted hand and gestured to the kneeling crowd.

"I made no promises. I offered no prayers. Yet, I am here. And they are alive." He then lowered his hand and gestured to Seraphina and her knights. "And you... are late."

Each word was a hammer blow to Seraphina's faith. He wasn't using twisted logic or demonic persuasion. He was using the plain, simple, brutal truth. She was late. Her goddess had been silent.

"We... we came as fast as we could!" she stammered, feeling the righteousness drain from her.

"It was not fast enough," Kaelus stated, his voice devoid of malice or triumph. It was a simple statement of fact, which made it all the more devastating.

Sir Kaelan, seeing his champion faltering, stepped forward. "Enough talk, sorcerer! In the name of King Theron IV, you are under arrest for unsanctioned use of catastrophic magic and potential demonic influence!" he boomed, trying to reassert some form of authority.

Kaelus turned his silver gaze from Seraphina to the knight captain. For a moment, there was only silence. Then, from the shadowed helm, came a sound.

It was a soft, almost inaudible chuckle. A sound of pure, deep, cosmic amusement. It was the sound of a god listening to an ant declare it was under arrest.

The sound, more than any display of power, unnerved the knights to their core.

"Arrest me?" Kaelus's voice was tinged with that same, terrifying amusement. "Your king rules a kingdom of grass and dust. I rule the spaces between the stars. Your laws are whispers in the wind. My will is gravity. You cannot arrest a fundamental truth of the universe, little knight."

He took one step forward.

"FIRE A WARNING SHOT!" Sir Kaelan commanded, his nerve breaking.

A knight from a ballista crew that had been frantically assembled at the rear fired. The heavy, iron-tipped bolt, as thick as a man's arm, flew through the air with a deadly hiss, aimed not to hit Kaelus, but to strike the ground at his feet.

The bolt never made it.

Halfway to its target, it simply... stopped. It froze in mid-air, held suspended by an unseen force. Then, it began to crumble, not into dust, but into its base components. The iron tip rusted, flaked, and fell away. The wooden shaft petrified, cracked, and disintegrated. In seconds, the deadly projectile was gone, undone by a casual, unseen application of force.

Gravity.

A collective gasp went through the knights. They had just witnessed a power that didn't just counter magic; it unmade reality.

Kaelus's silver gaze returned to Seraphina. "Go back, little hero," he said, his voice losing its amusement and becoming flat, dismissive. "Go back to your priests and your kings. Tell them what you saw here today. Tell them the age of silent gods and hollow prayers is over."

He then turned his back on them, a gesture of ultimate contempt, and began to walk back into the city of his new worshippers.

"No!" Seraphina cried, a desperate fire reigniting in her chest. She couldn't let it end like this. She couldn't let him win so easily.

She raised Dawnbringer high. "In the name of the Goddess Luminara, I challenge you!"

She poured all of her faith, all of her power, into the blade. It erupted in a blindingly brilliant column of golden light, so bright it banished the shadows and forced the knights to shield their eyes. It was the ultimate expression of her holy power, the divine judgment of her goddess made manifest.

[Divine Smite: Sword of the Morning]

A beam of pure, concentrated sunlight, a weapon meant to obliterate the most powerful of demons, shot from the tip of her sword and lanced across the field, aimed squarely at Kaelus's back.

Kaelus didn't even turn around. He didn't raise a shield. He didn't put up a barrier.

The instant the beam of holy light touched his back, it was as if it had hit a black hole. It didn't explode. It didn't splash. It was simply… consumed. The divine energy, the holy light, the sacred judgment of a goddess—it was all drawn into the obsidian armor of the [Mantle of the Void Star] and vanished without a trace, not even leaving a wisp of smoke.

Seraphina stared, her arm still outstretched, her sword now dim. Her ultimate attack, the pinnacle of her power, had done nothing. It was like throwing a lit match into the sun.

Kaelus paused his stride. He slowly turned his head, his two silver eyes locking onto her once more. The message was clear, though he spoke no words.

Is that all?

The last embers of Seraphina's defiance died, replaced by a cold, unfamiliar feeling she had never known before.

Doubt.

With a final, dismissive glance, Kaelus turned and vanished into the crowd of his new followers, who were now looking at her not with awe, but with a mixture of pity and contempt. She was the hero who had arrived too late, challenged a god, and lost.