The Gods Are Flat-Broke Again

The message didn't ask for interpretation.

It was already past meaning.

WE TOOK HER.

Kirin traced the edge of the carving again, fingertips brushing scorched stone as if to weigh the sentence instead of read it. Her voice, when it came, wasn't soft. It was factual.

"It's not etched with a blessing tool."

I glanced at her. "What is it etched with?"

"Guilt. Probably."

The ruins didn't answer. They never do.

I scanned the perimeter of the shrine—a half-collapsed gate. Prayer trees stripped bare. Ash underfoot, clinging in the folds of my robes like penance. If anyone had survived here, they hadn't left footprints. Just residue. Like memory burned wrong.

"I thought gods couldn't disappear without clerical record."

"They can't."

"So where's the clerical record?"

Kirin didn't reply. She just stood.

I opened my WP badge again. The interface blinked like it was trying to lie politely.

WP Signal: Corrupted.

Audit Functions: Operating in Low-Compliance Mode

.Faith Detection: Distorted. Interference Detected.

The badge hiccuped, then spat out a tiny scroll from its side port.

It was blank.

Even bureaucracy was stalling.

Kirin moved to the center of the ruin.

The wind shifted as she stepped into what must've been the prayer ring—now a faint scorch-mark of belief. Her presence made the air feel geometrically obligated. Like the shrine remembered how to behave in front of her.

She spoke without turning.

"You're not supposed to be the conduit."

"Tell that to the miracle that rerouted through me."

"I have."

"And what did it say?"

"That it regrets nothing."

I sighed. "Do miracles normally have opinions?"

"No. But this shrine isn't normal."

Something crunched beneath my heel.

I crouched.

A prayer tablet—burned black, but not crumbled. Its inscription was still legible, barely:

Protect her. Or erase us, too.

I held it up. "How many people prayed here?"

Kirin walked back, slow. "More than registered. Fewer than believed."

"What does that mean?"

"It means some prayers never wanted to be counted."

She glanced at the tablet in my hand.

Then looked away.

We found the remnants of the doctrine registry inside a broken storage altar.

Most shrines store theirs on blessed wood, lacquered and inked with divine timing spells. This one had it carved into bone.

Tiny femurs, stacked like ledgers. Each etched with a name and a single mark.

I picked one up.

The name read: "Ato."

The mark? A spiral.

Not the kind from the scroll seal.

Tighter. Hungrier.

Kirin didn't flinch when she saw it. But she reached into her coat and withdrew a slip of paper thinner than a thought. It bore her official Balance query stamp.

She pressed it to the spiral bone.

It caught fire.

Burned white.

Kirin nodded. "Not sanctioned. Not sponsored. No divine alignment. And yet…"

"And yet?"

"It registered."

"Registered what?"

"Obligation."

She placed the bone back.

"That doesn't happen."

"It just did."

Inside the shrine's sanctum—the part furthest from the open air—we found the remains of a doctrine circle.

Half-complete.

It had the layout of standard worship circuitry, but with altered glyph orientation. Reversed polarity. The invocation trail looped in on itself. Not recursive. Not heretical.

Just... unsure of what direction was.

I stepped into the circle before thinking.

The air thickened.

My badge glowed—faintly, but not in warning.

In... deference?

Then came the whisper.

Not sound.

Pressure. Language laid flat against the back of my mind like it was testing the contour.

A single word. Spoken backwards.

"Amōs."

Kirin's hand reached toward me instantly, like a reflex.

The moment broke.

I stumbled out.

She caught me with one hand and one insult.

"Idiot."

"Thanks," I wheezed.

She examined the invocation loop behind me.

"It recognized you."

"Bad sign?"

"Statistically."

Outside, the wind shifted again.

A single ribbon of prayer—the only one left fluttering—suddenly tore free.

It whipped through the air and landed at my feet.

Its text was illegible.

But the moment I picked it up, my WP badge updated.

Miracle Report Logged: [0x0000000 – NULL]

Requesting classification.........Classification Failed.

Audit Pending.

Kirin exhaled.

That wasn't the scary part.

The scary part was that she smiled.

Just for a second.

Like someone watching the scales tilt.

And letting them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ribbon didn't burn.

It pulsed.

And that was worse.

Kirin stepped back without a word.

I held it up. Ink smeared. Words swam. Every prayer I'd ever filed whispered at the edges of my memory, trying to match format, syntax, shape. None fit.

My badge blinked.

Miracle Report Logged: [0x0000000 – NULL]Classification: Rejected. Source: Non-Sequential Invocation.RENDERING...

The air cracked.

Not loudly.

Just politely. Like a door opening for someone you didn't invite.

Then, the girl arrived.

She didn't walk. She didn't float.

She was.

Where ash had settled, she stood now—roughly fourteen, barefoot, dressed in formal robes that belonged to a festival that no longer existed. Her face held the vague shape of memory smoothed by time. No eyes. No mouth. Just impressions.

Her presence was soft.

And incorrect.

Very, very incorrect.

Kirin moved in front of me like a curtain closing.

"That's not a ghost," she said.

"No," I agreed, "it's worse. It's a registered miracle trying to approximate grief."

The girl tilted her head.

Her body glitched—just slightly—like a frame skipping in a divine reel.

Then she spoke.

And her voice came from the walls.

"I was here. I was part. I was text. I was proof. Until someone edited me."

The ruined doctrine circle behind us flickered. Symbols scrambled.

The girl's voice doubled—two registers now. Hers, and something ancient mimicking it.

"They prayed wrong. They prayed sideways. They believed in the wrong direction. And it worked."

My badge began to vibrate.

Kirin's fingers hovered above her own, index and middle bent in a defensive miracle hold—but she didn't act.

Yet.

I stepped forward.

"You're the one they mentioned," I said. "In the carving. 'We took her.' Are you her?"

"Not anymore," the girl said. "I'm the ghost of a footnote. The echo of a skipped doctrine clause. The price of unsanctioned hope."

She raised one hand.

The sky above the shrine shimmered—briefly.

An image appeared. Not a memory. Not a miracle. A warning.

A diagram of overlapping shrine networks.

Three shrines. One forgotten. Two still pulsing with sanctioned WP.

But something was wrong.

The faithlines connecting them were tangled. Overriding each other.

Kirin stepped beside me.

Her voice came low.

"That's a doctrinal feedback loop."

"Meaning?"

"Miracles are bouncing between systems. Building pressure. If they were prayer wheels, they'd be vibrating themselves apart."

The girl looked up at us.

"They changed one line," she said. "One word in a ritual. Just to make it kinder. Just to make it work."

She smiled.

A sad, instructional smile.

"Kindness is not compliance."

A new glyph appeared in the dirt below her—drawn not with ink, but with static.

I didn't recognize it.

Kirin did.

Her eyes narrowed.

"That's an undisclosed divine domain."

"A forgotten god?"

"No," she said. "A new one."

The girl blinked.

The sound of it was wrong.

"Three shrines. One lie. Two days. One split. It's coming. The doctrine will rupture."

She began to fragment.

Lines breaking off her body like dismissed prayers.

"The next prayer that gets answered wrong... will collapse the faithline."

Her final words came as she vanished:

"Tell them... don't pray alone."