Funny how that works. All those allies, all that political capital, and when the moment comes, everyone's suddenly very interested in their shoes. I'd feel bad for him if he weren't a murderer. Actually, no—I wouldn't. I'm too tired for pity and he doesn't deserve it anyway.
"I said—" Koshin's smile stretches wider, all teeth and no warmth. "—come here."
The High Priest doesn't move.
His hands are shaking. The performance is over—no more righteous authority, no more divine mandate—just a man in expensive robes realizing that the story he told won't save him from what comes next.
Koshin stops at the base of the platform steps and waits.
The quiet draws tight. The crowd barely breathes. My father's face has gone rigid with terror, and Seris still can't look at me.
And the High Priest—leader of Faith, architect of massacres, murderer of witnesses—
Hesitates.
The High Priest steps forward.
His hands are shaking and his face is drained pale, but he steps forward because Koshin told him to and because the alternative is—
Koshin moves. Not a lunge, not a dramatic strike. Just movement, fast, and then there's a sound—wet, final—and the High Priest is on the ground with his throat opened and blood pooling under him, spreading across the stone in a dark mirror of his white robes.
I blink. That's—he just—
The crowd screams. Not all at once. It starts at the edges, ripples inward, and then everyone is moving, shoving, pressing against each other in that animal panic of get away get away getaway. Faith's guards scatter. Acolytes trip over their own feet trying to run. The platform where the witness is still bound, still crying, still alive because we got here in time—it becomes an island in the chaos.
And Koshin laughs.
It starts quiet, conversational, and then it builds—rising, cracking open into something unhinged, his head thrown back and his silver eyes bright and his hands still dripping blood. He laughs and laughs and the body at his feet keeps leaking onto the stone.
My stomach drops. Then—no. Lower. Hotter.
Fuck.
He's covered in blood. Arterial spray on his coat, his hands, the edge of his jaw. The Mad God earning his title in viscera. And I'm standing here with my thighs pressed together because this—this unhinged, blood-soaked, genuinely fucking feral display—is what does it for me.
I should probably talk to someone about that. If I knew anyone who wouldn't have me committed.
Renan hasn't moved. He's watching the crowd with his head tilted, that little half-smile on his face, entirely unbothered by the corpse or the chaos or the god cackling in the middle of it. Of course he's unbothered. This is probably a slow Tuesday for Discord.
The laughter stops. Koshin's head snaps down, that too-wide smile still fixed on his face, silver eyes scanning the plaza. Blood on his hands. Blood on his sleeves. Blood soaking into the hem of his coat.
I want to lick it off him.
Stop. There's a body. We're in public. Politics first, then you can think about climbing the murder god.
The crowd is still running. Faith is still scattering. And someone needs to say something before this turns into a full riot.
I step forward. I just watched a man die. I just watched Koshin kill a man, open his throat in one motion and laugh about it, and I'm wet. Actually wet. Standing in a plaza that smells like copper and panic.
Add it to the list of things wrong with me.
"Faith is dissolved."
My voice carries. I don't know how. I don't know where I'm finding the air or the volume or the fucking audacity to stand here with blood pooling four feet away and declare a House dead, but the words come out and they sound steady.
That's new.
Usually my voice is the first thing to betray me.
