The Gods Are Flat-Broke Again

The arena was not made for mercy. Which made sense. Neither were the gods who licensed it.

Sōma stood alone on the sigil-carved stone. The divine invocation lines around him glowed faintly with pre-approved miracle threading. Someone had tried to scrub off the blood with scented oil.

It hadn't worked.

High above, three watching priests stood in their observation spire, consulting ledgers that shimmered with live WP tracking. Every move from here on would cost. Every breath could be invoiced. Every word—weaponized.

The man across from Sōma—the Disciplinary Cleric with war-scorched hands and branded miracle cuffs—didn't look like someone interested in resolving anything.

He cracked his knuckles.

His god's doctrine mark flared: Yagrash, Blade of Righteous Instigation.

He smiled.

And fire bled out from his palms like divine punctuation.

A faint jingle behind him.

Sōma turned—Kirin had stepped just inside the observation ring's protective boundary. Still technically neutral. Still legally uninvolved.

She extended her hand.

"The Balance Coin," she said. "One effect. One redirection. Use it when choice collapses."

He looked at her.

"You're not going to help?"

"I'm Tezukiri's," she said. "I am bound to stillness unless imbalance strikes first. I cannot act."

"But you believe me."

"I believe this is your moment."

Then she stepped back into the shade and vanished into the observation haze.

He turned the coin over in his hand.

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Twelve Hours Earlier

Tamori handed over the scroll with the same smirk he used to deliver court-mandated apologies.

"This one's flagged as unusual activity, but they didn't specify what. Just a spike. Possibly fake miracles. Possibly real ones being routed from dead gods."

Sōma frowned. "That's a thing now?"

Tamori looked amused. "Everything's a thing now. Especially if it makes money."

The report was stamped in three inks:

Orange: Unverified Doctrine.

Gray: Possible Economical Contamination.

Red: Regional Political Sensitivity.

Sōma blinked. "What's the red one?"

Tamori sipped his tea. "Means if you mess up, it counts as treason."

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They arrived to silence.

The shrine stood on cracked stone and reputation alone, framed by dying prayer trees and a half-burnt doctrine post nailed to the wall like a warning that had outlived its urgency. The gates hung open, not in welcome, but exhaustion. No offerings, no scent of incense—just ash, dust, and the ghost of belief.

Sōma stepped forward, WP badge tucked under his collar like a guilt he hadn't earned yet.

Kirin followed, slow and quiet, her eyes scanning the forgotten architectural geometry for misaligned faith vectors.

"I thought we were investigating doctrine fraud," Sōma said. "This looks like someone already audited it out of existence."

Kirin's silence was answer enough.

The main courtyard was empty, save for a single cushion in the center, bathed in the symmetrical shadow of an unfinished prayer wheel. A woman sat there like a question no one wanted to answer.

Her robe was red—bright enough to offend tradition, loose enough to offend clerical dress codes. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow, revealing thin gold lines etched along her skin, not divine markings, but surgical—devotional scars turned calligraphy. One leg crossed over the other, one hand balancing a tea cup on her knee.

She didn't look up.

"Late," she said. "But I suppose balance moves on temple time."

Sōma didn't reply. He'd learned better than to speak first when the doctrine was unclear.

Kirin, however, stepped forward.

"Identify yourself."

The woman exhaled through a grin and turned her head just slightly.

Eyes like lacquered ink. Lips that curled into meanings she hadn't said yet.

"I'm Rekka," she said. "No title. No standing. Just a heretic with tenure."

Sōma frowned. "You sent the WP spike?"

"I invited the WP spike," she corrected. "It RSVP'd spectacularly."

They entered the ruined main hall. Rekka poured tea—ceremonial, not blessed. She offered no incense, no prostration. Just a table, three mats, and in the center:

A living ribbon of calligraphy—a scroll that twisted upon itself in a perfect, endless loop. It pulsed faintly, like a breath caught mid-prayer. Stray invocations flared and dimmed along its surface, never finishing, looping again.

"What is that?" Sōma asked.

"My altar," Rekka said. "The Loop Scroll. Each person who prays here knots their intent into it. If the faith is real, it tangles in just the right way. If it's false, it slips."

Kirin crouched beside it, studying the shifting glyphs. "It's not sanctioned."

"Neither was the first fire," Rekka said, sipping. "But I hear people found it useful."

"The WP readings," Kirin said, kneeling last. "There were three Category-2 miracles within a span of twelve hours."

Rekka sipped. "Correct."

"And you claim you performed them?"

"No. I suggested them. The believers did the rest."

"Suggestion is not doctrine."

"Neither is silence," Rekka said. "Yet it governs."

Sōma narrowed his eyes. "This isn't how shrines work. You can't just invent a miracle."

"Oh, I didn't invent it. I simply invoked the concept of belief, and let the system catch up. Isn't that what your gods do?"

Kirin leaned forward, voice cool. "There are procedures. Submissions. Divine sponsorship."

Rekka smiled wider. "And does any of that matter when a crippled boy walks for the first time in front of twenty witnesses?"

There was a pause. Not the kind that waits for response. The kind that waits for recalibration.

Sōma turned the teacup in his hands, not drinking. "So your plan is to provoke a miracle economy crash?"

"My plan," Rekka said, "is to expose what your entire system really is: a vending machine for certainty. The only difference between a heresy and a religion is which has better marketing."

"And where does your doctrine come from?" Kirin asked. "You're not aligned to a god. You've declared no formal theology."

"I don't need one."

"That's blasphemy."

"It's efficiency."

The scroll flared. A knot near the center unraveled with a hiss and spun into a new prayer spiral. Someone, somewhere, had just had a miracle answered—indirectly. Illegally.

"You're feeding belief into noise," Sōma said.

"I'm feeding it into recursion," Rekka replied. "Where no god has to answer, and yet, answers still arrive."

"You've created a miracle loop," Kirin said. "This altar echoes invocation."

Rekka leaned back. "A scream still means something, even when no one replies. Why shouldn't faith?"

"You're not absorbing the WP," Sōma realized aloud.

Rekka smiled like a confession she'd been waiting for.

"No. I'm rerouting it. Every prayer processed by the Loop Scroll sends WP to dormant shrines. Forgotten altars. Ghost doctrines. I'm keeping them alive—quietly."

Kirin's eyes narrowed. "That's laundering."

"That's compassion," Rekka said. "If I framed it as a regional subsidy program, would that make you more comfortable?"

Sōma's fingers dug into the tea cup.

"You're rigging the entire miracle economy."

"I'm giving it a fail safe."

"No system like this can survive without order."

Rekka tilted her head. "Order is a luxury the dying doctrines never had."

___________________________________________________________________________

The sky didn't turn red.

It didn't howl, didn't tear open, didn't smite. The gods didn't scream, nor did they whisper.

But the bells—the old divine kind, the kind woven from echo and scripture—rang out across the ruins like they remembered what purpose felt like.

Rekka looked up from her tea. "Well," she said, "someone brought an army."

Kirin moved first. Her hand swept her sleeve back, fingers pressing into her badge. "Authority tag: Tezukiri. Requesting jurisdictional cross-review."

A second later, her badge blinked denied. The system refused to load.

Too late.

The Doctrine Enforcement Squad was already breaching the gate.

The soldiers didn't march—they testified.

Each footfall was a divine assertion, reinforced by miracle-stitched armor and robes bearing the trifold seal of Velquor: Order, Record, and Flame. Their captain moved with a terrible sense of calm, holding a scroll that shimmered with the ink of preemptive justification.

"This shrine has violated sanctified miracle procedure," the captain declared. "The accused—Rekka, unaffiliated doctrinal actor—has ten seconds to surrender for divine interrogation."

Rekka was already kneeling.

"I surrender."

No protest. No resistance. No smile.

Just compliance, like it was rehearsed. Because of course it was.

"Very good," said the captain, already unfurling a miracle-bind chain.

Kirin hissed, stepping forward. "This is a field audit. The shrine is under temporary review—"

"You've been overruled by Doctrine Clause Twelve," he said. "We've been authorized to perform hostile containment in cases where miraculous interference cannot be cleanly processed."

Sōma didn't speak.

He was watching the Loop Scroll.

It was glowing.

At first, it was faint.

A shimmer of stray belief. The kind that lingers like breath after a prayer never spoken aloud.

Then—one of the invocation knots twisted. Another spiraled. And another. The whole altar shivered, loop tightening, curling on itself. Glyphs burned, unraveling and rewriting in real-time.

It was beautiful. And dangerous.

"What is it doing?" he whispered.

Rekka didn't answer. Kirin's mouth opened, but not fast enough.

Because the miracles began.

A cracked roof tile healed. A faded mural reignited in color. An old woman's cane—forgotten beside the gate—lifted into the air, and crumbled into stardust. Each act small. Tender. Unmeasured.

But then—

Sōma's WP badge screamed.

MIRACLE ROUTING ERROR: UNAUTHORIZED FLOW

PROVISIONAL SOURCE IDENTIFIED: AUDITOR SŌMA [ID: 998-XE]

PROTOCOL SHIFTING: You are now the registered conduit.

He stared at the badge. "No—no, that's not—"

The soldiers turned as one.

"You," the captain said, pointing. "You're the heretic priest."

Sōma froze. "I'm an auditor."

"You're channeling miracles. They're routing through you."

"They're not mine!"

"Yet you're the conduit. Do you deny it?"

Kirin stepped between them. "He's unaffiliated. This is a routing anomaly. It can be corrected."

The captain's eyes narrowed.

"No," Sōma muttered. "It's the Loop Scroll. It—chose me."

He didn't know why he said it. He didn't know if it was true.

But somehow, it felt like the scroll had decided he was part of this now. As if the very act of understanding it had triggered something.

Rekka said nothing.

She didn't smile.

She just looked… tired.

The captain snapped his fingers. Two soldiers flanked Sōma.

"You will surrender your badge. Await trial in Velquor custody."

Sōma didn't move. Then he did something even dumber than resisting.

He asked: "What trial?"