"Stop right there!"
The bark cut through the damp alley air, freezing Ederick Croft mid-step. A Patroler of the Luminous Covenant blocked his path, moonlight glinting off his gilded helm as a leather-bound Codex of the Light slapped rhythmically against his armored thigh.
"Yes, sir!" Ederick choked out. Beside him, his sister's tiny hand trembled in his grip—ten years old and clueless about the danger of crossing parish lines.
"Don't recognize your face. Believer?" The Patroler's tone was conversational, but his blade-sharp eyes never left Ederick's twitching jawline.
"Devout, sir!" Ederick forced a grin, sweat soaking through his threadbare coat. In this city, theology was survival; one wrong answer meant a "chat" with Covenant Correctors and their branding irons.
"Do you acknowledge the divine?"
"With every fiber, sir."
"Which deity do you serve?"
Ederick's laugh came out strangled. "The Luminous One, obviously! Who else?"
The Patroler's gauntleted finger tapped his Luminous Canon. "How many gods exist?"
"One. Supreme. Unrivaled."
"Male or female? What form does your god take?"
Ederick's throat closed. Memories flashed—his mother's corpse stiffening in their roach-infested flat, the forbidden idol wrapped in his sister's cloak, its carvings glowing faintly through the fabric. I—
"Relax, I'm just kidding." The patroler's face remained devoid of any smile as he continued, "We received a tip that someone spotted the notorious serial killer—the Rust District Ripper—near here... The informant described them as a young man and a little girl."
Ederick's blood turned to slush. A corner of crimson silk—the idol's shroud—peeked from his sister's cloak.
The idol was football-sized, its cyan-veined stone webbed with lightning-bolt fractures. Grotesque patterns twisted across its surface like drowned sailors' fingers or forbidden alchemical sigils. At its apex sat a hooded figure with void-like eye sockets, left hand gripping a scepter crowned with eight squirming tentacles, right hand curled into a skeletal claw. Its stone robes billowed in nonexistent winds, while blood-red runes pulsed at the base like engorged leeches.
Ederick never wanted this. But when Miryam dropped dead last Tuesday, she'd left them broke—no funeral funds, no rent money, no escape from the taxman's grasping claws even for corpses. This cursed statue from her nightstand was their last hope.
The Patroler's gaze locked on the crimson silk. "What's the brat hiding?" He reached for the cloak.
"Don't touch her!" Ederick leaped forward to block him, surging with sudden strength. The Patroler cursed and grabbed his collar, and the two men tangled in a scuffle within the narrow alley.
These Patrolers were no ordinary policemen—they were divine executors, agents of celestial judgment. For an unarmed commoner like Ederick to hold out this long was already astonishing. He felt his back slam into the cold brick wall, his nostrils filling with the acrid mix of leather and rust from the man's uniform.
Miryam's scream split the night during the chaos. Ederick staggered backward from a blunt strike of the stun baton, flailing his arms to stay upright as he heard the thundering clatter of hooves—a heavily laden wagon was careening toward the alley's mouth.
"Look out!" came Miryam's sob-choked warning. Ederick's back slammed into a protruding cast-iron drainpipe jutting from the wall corner.
The sharp metal edge gashed his temple, exploding sparks across his vision from the pain. His body lurched uncontrollably backward; the moment his skull cracked against the cobblestones, he heard the dull crunch of bone beneath skin, mingling with his sister's heart-wrenching wail. And deep within his cloak, the idol of the forbidden god pulsed faintly, its glow sinister and alive.
The Patroler cursed again, kicking Ederick's limp form aside as he roughly rifled through their clothes. Finding no trace of the so-called "contraband," he spat and reholstered his baton. "Looks like the tip was wrong, little girl. Consider yourself lucky."
With that, he vanished into the shadows at the alley's end. In the growing pool of blood, Ederick's fingers twitched unconsciously, their tips mere centimeters from the idol hidden in the stone crevice.
Ederick refused to give in—he had only wanted to scrape together some coins by selling the idol. Blood trickled slowly from his wounds, spreading across the forbidden statue's surface. As the faint, eerie glow emanating from it brightened, the light melted into a twisting tattoo that coiled across his torso. And in the stillness of death, Ederick's eyelids fluttered open once more.
Six months earlier, Earth—Prague, March 2025
He staggered through Wenceslas Square clutching a box of groceries and moldy textbooks, his body and soul equally battered by another soul-crushing shift.
As a Czech who'd scored an agricultural PhD in China—let's be real, tuition fees were dirt cheap—he'd lived like a minor emperor for years. Ramen feasts! Spacious dorms! Midnight hotpot runs! Why bother returning to Europe? Until a certain golden-haired idiot's political rant got his scholarship axed. That, and his girlfriend of five years ditching him for some K-pop twink.
An idol? His teeth ground at the memory. What's so special about a guy who's younger, richer, skinnier, hotter, and can actually dance? He'd coped the only way he knew—spewing vitriol online about the "plastic-faced lip-syncers" corrupting modern women.
Big mistake.
Fans doxxed him within hours. Brno address leaked. Death threats in seventeen languages. He'd fled to Prague, certain the hipster cafes and Kafka tourism would hide him.
Now, watching a drunk Slavic Amazon suplex a bearded grandpa outside a pub, he pulled out his phone. The lockscreen showed a black-haired girl with inkwell eyes. Should've stayed in China… Can a washed-up PhD even become an idol?
Reality, as always, bitch-slapped him.
He worked at Černý Kůň (Black Horse Books), a crumbling secondhand store in Old Town. His duties? Explaining "No, we don't carry Kafka in English" to tourists, hauling mildewed encyclopedias, and enduring his boss's lunchtime mockery: "How many pints will that 'Alchemical Analysis of Chinese Metallurgy' buy us today, Herr Doktor?"
Fuck your pints. The bastard moonlighted as an "artisan brewer," peddling a swill called Bibliothèque du Diable—filtered through moldy manuscript pulp and spiked with Soviet-era cough syrup. "For that camphor-ball philosophy," the boss insisted.
Never mind that China-returned PhDs usually landed cushy jobs. He'd specialized in "Diffusion of Ancient Chinese Agricultural Texts and Their Impact on European Modernization"—useful as a chocolate teapot in today's job market. Czech employers preferred hiring desperate Ukrainians over overeducated locals.
Then chaos erupted.
A wild-eyed woman charged through the crowd, cleaver glinting. "Keyboard warrior… DIE!" she shrieked, zeroing in on him.
The blade plunged into his lower back before he could blink—piercing skin, muscle, lung.
"Who the hell—?!" He wheezed, collapsing as his box spilled treasures: instant noodles, dog-eared Marx volumes, and the football-sized Taoist statue that now soaked in his blood.
"You're nothing! NOTHING!" The assailant vanished like smoke, leaving him to bleed out on cobblestones.
If there's a next life, he thought, vision dimming, let me be an idol…
"Answer my call, I need your help... please..."
A faint, seemingly female human voice whispered in his ear.
"Are you… a god?"
"All living beings in this world are destined to perish—even deities are no exception."
As consciousness slipped away, his final thought was: If there's a next life, I want to be an idol…
A violent dizziness overwhelmed Edgar, and he felt his consciousness plummeting into the darkness. When he "awoke" again, he was horrified to find he couldn't control his body, not even open his eyes. His hearing and vision had vanished, leaving only a strange sense to perceive his surroundings. The air reeked of decay, mingling with the acrid stench of blood and burning incense. He "saw" himself on a filthy street, littered with sewage and garbage—more ruined and filthy than the Prague he remembered, like a corner abandoned by the gods.
An ancient voice, distant as if echoing from the depths of a valley, spoke.
I wished to become an idol, and I actually became one!? A hysterical thought surged. A goddamn statue of an evil god!