NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 17: Chapter 14: The Lie That Saves
Chapter 14: The Lie That Saves
Perspective: Eiren / Klein (dual POV)
"What am I becoming?"
Eiren sat at the edge of the ruined chapel's steps, hands trembling slightly as he looked out into the flickering gaslight fog of District 9. The streets were full of eyes—some human, some not. Every whisper had his name tangled in it, but none of the versions matched.
To one group, he was a forgotten heir of a minor god.
To another, a divine parasite stitched into a human frame.
To the desperate, he was hope.
To the fearful, the first symptom of a new calamity.
But to himself?
He didn't know.
Klein stood behind him, silent for a time, watching the sky like someone reading scripture written in cloud patterns.
"You're not becoming anything," Klein said softly. "You're already three things. And that's the problem."
Eiren turned. "So what do I do?"
Klein smiled faintly.
"You lie."
The word echoed like blasphemy.
But it made too much sense.
Within the Fog
Klein, seated in his throne above the gray sea, opened one of the unwritten tomes — books that wrote themselves according to how belief flowed through the world.
He watched as Velkaris's name curled like smoke across multiple pages—multiplying, splintering, fracturing.
Too many cults, too many heresies, too many rumors.
Velkaris wasn't gaining power through worship.
He was gaining it through confusion.
And that was harder to combat than faith.
Because once everyone started asking, "Who is the real god?", the one with the most seductive myth always won.
So Klein did what no one expected:
He built a better lie.
The Plan Begins
He seeded false gospels.
Wrote contradictory legends.
In alleyway whispers and coded plays, the idea was planted:
The Faceless One was never Velkaris."
"He was just the vessel. The placeholder."
"The real god is a lost soul stitched with memory, love, and pain."
Klein had cultists dress Eiren in symbols from both Lyra and Velkaris — to make them clash, to confuse the theological records further the world itself is chaos of real anymore histories and all is rewritting.
The world's narrative fractured.
And in those cracks, Klein inserted something new:
A myth of a man who bore memory without ego.
The world's narrative fractured.
And in those cracks, Klein inserted something new:
A myth of a man who bore memory without ego.
A being who never claimed to be a god.
Who simply remembered what others forgot.
Who made no oaths, but carried them all.
Thus the Whisper of the Witness began to spread.
At first, it was dismissed as another heresy.
Then it was feared.
Because belief without identity is harder to kill.
Eiren, in his silence and reluctance to speak, became the perfect myth-seed. A god who made no demands.
Which, paradoxically, made people believe in him more.
Within Eiren
And still, the three threads battled within him.
Lyra's fragment warmed his dreams — memories of love, of oaths made beside candlelight, of promises whispered in grief.
Velkaris's shadow played with his voice — tempting him to wear other names, other roles, to take control and stop being vulnerable.
And now the Witness Thread — silent, observing, never pushing.
Instead, it offered mirrors.
Not illusions. Not promises.
Just reflections.
Klein explained it to him:
"The Faker wins by being believed."
"The Heartbound Sovereign won through memory."
"But the Witness… wins by making others remember themselves."
"Your power isn't to lead or to lie, Eiren. It's to make others see what was forgotten."
Keeping close eye on him
He had no interest in ruling.
No, Klein's interest was in control, in seeing how truths and lies could twist themselves into something new — how a forgotten god could rise from the very place where another once stood
Elsewhere…
A bishop in the Church of Storms found a passage in an ancient journal that described a figure eerily like Velkaris's. The passage was unsigned, and when he looked back, the ink had vanished.
A beggar on the street whispered a song that named Eiren as the "One Who Carried the Threads." No one remembered teaching him the tune.
A dying priest murmured, "The Mask wore him… but he bore the Mirror."
And in the shifting mist of faith—
Velkaris's grip loosened.
Not broken. Not gone.
But contested.
And that was enough.
End of Chapter 14