Of course they did. Why wouldn't they? Can't have a proper disaster without everyone pitching in. Really brings the community together.
Renan carries the evidence to Koshin and I follow—no reason, just follow—with my hands bleeding and the smoke thick in my lungs.
Koshin looks at the fragments. His face doesn't change, but his eyes do. I've seen him manic. I've seen him hungry. I've never seen him like this. This is worse. This is the quiet before something terrible.
"Faith." Not a question.
"Faith." Renan confirms it. "The ritual remnants were amplifying the blast. Making it worse. This wasn't just an attack—it was a message."
Koshin's teeth press together. Blood drips from his temple. His left arm hangs wrong, clearly broken or dislocatedor both, and he's sitting on rubble in the middle of a disaster zone with dust in his hair and nothing behind his eyes.
He stands.
"Sir—" Someone starts.
"Faith dies."
The Discord elites closest to him take a step back. That's what does it—watching grown soldiers flinch from two quiet words. Watching them look at him with something between worship and terror.
"Everyone. Every temple. Every priest. Every believer who signed their name to this. I want them found. I want them brought to me. And I want them dead."
Discord freezes. The elites around us go still, weapons in hand, waiting for the order to move. To strike. To tear Faith apart piece by piece, the way Faith helped tear Discord apart tonight.
I watch him—bleeding, broken, covered in rubble dust and the ash of his own people. Five minutes ago he threw himself over a mother and child without thinking. Covered them with his body. Let a building fall on him so they could live.
Now he's about to burn down a religion.
Both of those things. Same man. Same hour. The hero and the monster, and I can't make them fit together no matter how hard I try. I don't want him to be someone who saves children. It was easier when he was just a dangerous obsessive god. This is—
This is inconvenient.
His eyes find mine across the smoke and hold.
I don't look away. My hands are bloody, my ribs ache from breathing wrong, and I'm tied to a god who saves children and slaughters priests before the dust settles.
He waits. Just for a second. Watching me watch him.
Then he turns to Renan.
"Move."
Discord moves.
I stay where I am. Bleeding. Exhausted. Warm in a way that's probably going to be a problem later.
I follow anyway.
"Faith dies."
Holy fucking shit. He's actually going to do it—right now, with blood still wet on his face and his arm hanging wrong and thirty-eight bodies not even cold yet.
Discord soldiers go still around us, weapons drawn, faces grimy with ash. Every single one of them waiting for the command that will launch them at Faith's throat. Koshin's already turning, already issuing orders, his people shifting into formations. He doesn't seem to notice the gash on his temple or the way his arm is definitely, definitely broken.
And I—Loss of impulse control. That's what they'll put on my headstone.
My feet move.
"Stop."
