The Gods Are Flat-Broke Again

There's a form for everything.

Complaint forms, correction forms, damage report forms, miracle malfunction forms, appeal-to-the-appeal forms, divine intent misfiling forms, and my current favorite:

Post-Combat Compliance Form 1147-C: Declaration of Intent to Remain Non-Hostile While Awaiting Judgment Confirmation.

I was on my fourth copy. The first three had self-incinerated when I checked the wrong god affiliation field.

"Try not to select 'None,'" the clerk said gently. "That usually triggers the fail-safe."

"I don't have a god," I muttered, stabbing my pen into the new form.

"You will," she replied. "It's only a matter of paperwork."

Welcome to Hasamura Shrine's Central Arbitration Office. Or, as the sign outside described it:

DIVINE AFFAIRS – REGIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION NODE 3.

It had marble floors, ceiling runes that tracked eye movement for security, and waiting benches that hummed if you lied. A woman beside me kept twitching and muttering, "I did tithe. I did," and the bench only buzzed louder.

Across the room, Rekka sat cross-legged on a padded bench, bound in four layers of divine red tape. A junior exorcist hovered near her, nervously clutching a spell tag labeled "Do Not Use Near Cultists."

She caught my eye and smirked.

"Nice work out there," she called. "You fight like an auditor."

I was too tired to argue.

Kirin sat next to me, her expression unreadable. Or maybe just unread. She seemed content to let the chaos pass over her like weather. I'd seen statues with more urgency.

"You haven't spoken in ten minutes," I said.

"I'm allowing you space to reflect," she said.

"I'd prefer a drink."

"There's an offering fountain on Floor 2."

"Does it have tea?"

"No. But it does have a beverage labeled 'Essence of Redemption (Peach Adjacent).'"

I groaned. The clerk passed me another form.

After another hour of divine bureaucracy, a trio of magistrates called me into Processing Hall 3B—which had the architectural charm of a guillotine showroom.

"Name," the lead magistrate said.

"Sōma."

"Title?"

"Provisional Auditor, Department of Conditional Compliance, Central Realm."

"Purpose of combat engagement?"

"I was legally cornered into defending a heretic from extrajudicial seizure by shrine enforcement."

"Did you or did you not use unauthorized miracle rerouting?"

"I used a Balance Coin granted by a registered acolyte of Tezukiri. That makes it doctrinal."

The magistrates huddled.

One of them looked over their shoulder. "Did he polish his badge before the duel?"

"I did not," I said.

"Makes sense," murmured another. "Still, the Balance Clause holds. Damn it."

They grumbled, scribbled, sealed the document with a wax sigil that blinked in disappointment, and released me.

_________________________________________________________________________

There are two kinds of scrolls in the divine bureaucracy.

The kind that beg to be opened.

And the kind that open themselves and whisper, "It's too late."

Mine was the latter.

It lay on my desk like a coiled threat made of ribbon and misplaced trust. Five colors of wax, each seal hailing from a department I either didn't recognize or pretended not to. One bore a spiral. One, a symbol that only resolved itself if you weren't looking directly at it. And the center?

Blank.

No department. No stamp. Just space where authority should be.

Kirin stood across the room, not looking at it but radiating judgment at the angle of her posture.

"You shouldn't open that," she said.

"Which is why I'm opening it," I replied.

"Predictable."

"Comforting."

I cracked the first seal.

Nothing happened.

I cracked the second.

The lantern dimmed.

By the third, the scroll shivered in my hand. As if reluctant. As if it didn't want to be read unless I truly, absolutely, idiotically committed.

The fourth seal broke with a sound like whispered red tape.

The fifth screamed.

Not aloud. Not exactly.

It screamed in form—a shriek of improper authorization, of folders updated without cross-reference, of miracles drafted in pencil instead of soul-blood.

And then, it opened.

The scroll unrolled like a bureaucrat falling down stairs. Gracefully, but with spite.

The parchment glowed in tight calligraphy:

FIELD ASSIGNMENT: WP ANOMALY AUDIT

ZONE: HERETIC-AFFILIATED / UNRANKED CONFLICT REGION

CLEARANCE LEVEL: UNDISCLOSED.

REPORT TO NOBODY. SUBMIT TO NOWHERE.IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED.

A beat passed. The scroll pulsed. A second line appeared:

No refunds.

"Of course," I muttered.

Behind me, Kirin exhaled through her nose. "Five seals for a joke directive."

"Four seals for doctrine. One for style."

"And all of them for trouble."

I stared at the coordinates listed below the assignment. They pulsed faintly on the page—as if trying to remind me where belief stopped being a system and started being a rumor.

Kirin didn't approach. She rarely did when the math got dangerous.

But I felt her voice before I heard it.

"Do you know who authorized that?"

"No."

"Then you've already been recorded as guilty. Retroactively, if needed."

She stepped closer, and the light hit her eyes just wrong—too still. Too patient. Like she was already calculating the future cost of this conversation.

"I'll need to come," she said.

"I thought you were only here for balance."

"This is balance," she said, "trying not to vomit."

Before I could reply, the door opened.

Tamori walked in like he'd already filed a complaint about our lives.

Tamori looked worse than usual.

His coat was stained with travel ash, his expression with implied lawsuits. He dropped a sealed folder onto the desk without ceremony.

"That scroll doesn't exist," he said.

"Then I didn't open it," I replied.

"You're not cleared for this. No one is."

"Then I won't survive it. Nice and tidy."

Tamori ignored me. He looked at Kirin instead.

"You're letting this happen?"

"I am," she said, "very precisely not preventing it."

Tamori groaned into both hands.

"She's gotten more sarcastic," I noted.

"She always was," Tamori muttered. "You just thought she was being spiritual."

I tapped the scroll. "This doesn't read like a test. It reads like bait."

"Exactly," Tamori said. "The kind of bait that bites back."

I shrugged. "Then let's go see what teeth look like in divine accounting."

Tamori sighed.

He pulled something from his robe. Travel charms. Poorly folded. Poorly enchanted. The kind of divine transport that stutters when miracles fluctuate.

"If this drops you into a lake," he said, "don't blame me."

"Blame who?"

"Anyone," he said. "Everyone. That's the real faith."

He handed me one.

Kirin accepted hers without looking.

We activated them.

Traveling via low-grade divine charm feels like being shouted through geometry.

Reality didn't break.

It was... edited.

Erased and rewritten mid-breath.

I passed through a corridor of floating administrative citations, each glowing with dead languages of prayer. At one point, I think my own name cited me for a compliance error I hadn't committed yet.

Kirin folded her hands.

Tamori was already gone.

I screamed.

Because bureaucracy, at its most honest, hurts.

We landed in a swamp of ash.

Not metaphor.

Actual ash.

Something had burned here. Recently. Repeatedly. The air smelled like mourning in lowercase.

The shrine ahead was barely vertical. Its pillars cracked like teeth. Its altar split down the center. One prayer flag still fluttered, though its ink had run off. Like belief had decided it no longer owed anyone permanence.

Kirin stepped forward, boots crunching on burnt offerings. She knelt beside the altar and ran a hand along a line of jagged carving.

Words, charred into divine stone:

WE TOOK HER.

Kirin's eyes narrowed by half a millimeter.

"Recent," she said. "Two days. Maybe less."

I opened my WP badge. It blinked yellow.

Faith reception: unstable.

Belief: pending.

Authorization: fragmented.

Just like everything else.

"This place," I said, "was erased."

"Not erased," Kirin murmured. "Repurposed."

Her hand hovered over the altar like it might say something else if listened to sideways.

I stared at the scroll in my satchel. Still warm.

Still humming.

We were here.

Whatever "here" was now.

The assignment had opened itself.

And something—somewhere—was already balancing the math.