Good news: I had transmigrated to another world and become a deity.
Bad news: I was an eldritch deity, and without worshippers, I was about to fade into oblivion.
At the misty mountain peak, a temple crouched like a forgotten heirloom. Its blue roof tiles and upturned eaves blended into the fog, as if nodding to ancient secrets.
The square courtyard was enclosed by moss-covered walls. The wooden gate was carved with cranes holding lingzhi mushrooms—once symbols of peace, now faded but still recognizable. The door's creaking joints groaned like the long sighs of deceased monks.
The courtyard lay enclosed by lichen-caked walls. Carved into the rotting gate: cranes clutching celestial mushrooms—symbols of peace now flaking to dust, whispering of better days long gone.
Moss-eaten flagstones exuded a bone-deep chill, not biting but persistent. Bronze chimes and wormwood bundles swayed under the eaves, their jade-like clinking tangling with the scent of aged incense.
Beyond the walls, eerie murmurs slithered through the mist—like rusted chains dragged over stone, or a deaf man's off-key organ playing a forgotten dirge.
The Transmigrator slumped onto the altar of the crumbling temple, stony fingertips digging into his palms. The so-called altar? Three cracked bluestone slabs, crevices webbed with moss that mirrored the EKG lines of his past life's hospital bed.
Four rows of rotting wooden shelves lined the courtyard, their beams hosting tattered prayer flags that flapped like scraping cloth in the wind, startling ravens from their nests. In the main hall's corner: a half-human-height spiderweb, and atop the altar, a television set—casing split by three cracks, antenna bent at a grotesque angle, screen filled with static like the snow of his decade-old secondhand TV.
This was no ordinary place. Otherworldly realm? Realm of consciousness? He "stared" at his stony palms, sand trapped between fingers, too weak to twitch. Day one as a deity, and hunger had driven him mad—not the empty stomach kind, but a soul-deep void, as if ants gnawed his essence, warning he was dissolving by the minute.
Now he knew the truth: he was the deity, and that heretical deity statue was his body. Worse, a gnawing need clawed at him—something he'd die without, as vital as breath.
"Like craving food when starving, water when parched." He laughed bitterly in his mind, gaze sweeping the TV. Static cleared to show a man in slate-blue uniform, rapping a prism-light patrol staff against his palm. Matte pauldrons embedded with grain-sized crystal ore fragments sparked faint blue light with every step, like crushed starlight underfoot. Three rusted chains clinked on his cuff, the staff's triangular prism tip worn dull—more scrapyard baton than holy weapon.
"Seen any heretics lately? Or… suspicious statues?" The lawman's voice dripped with weary authority, his uniform's triangular badge glinting under leaden skies.
Fate's mockery: a religious policeman posted beside his own heretical statue? And that uniform—alien sigils, angular motifs—belonged to a faith that would burn him on sight.
But fate stopped at mockery. When Miryam Croft's soot-streaked hand pried into the Graymouse Alley garbage heap, the Transmigrator "felt" his stone core hum. The girl's apron pocket gaped, revealing a stubby pencil—her brother's gift—while her calloused fingertips, raw from scrubbing patrolman uniforms, brushed his cracked robes.
A deity's perk? Understanding this world's tongue, every syllable clear. All languages, or just this region's? Intelligence-gathering was a transmigrator's first rule: know the world, or perish. And one small mercy: this family wasn't devout. Not to his faith, anyway.
As soon as Miryam brought the statue home, she showed it off to Hannah. Weathered, yes—but the nameless deity statue had fine craftsmanship. Cracked robes inlaid with dull metal, unknown material, the kind Old Hawker would pay good coin for.
"Scraped from Grayrat Alley's trash heap." Her whisper sent seaweed flakes crumbling from the statue's torn sleeve. "Old Hawke gave Polly's mum two shillings for a chipped icon last week. This? Twice as heavy. Grooves like it's soaked in seawater for centuries."
"Are you mad? There's a serial killer loose!" Hannah's voice hitched, eyes darting to the window. "Sneaking around now is suicide."
The attic's kerosene lamp cast a flickering bean of light, revealing Hannah's apron—stitched from their father's threadbare work clothes, patch upon patch. Her thimble hovered over mended trousers, needle glinting in the flame. "Inquisitors burned three crates of carved wood at the washhouse last month. Said the grain hid heresy."
"I was just delivering laundry when—" Miryam shoved the statue into Hannah's hands, voice cracking. "Look at it! It has to be worth something."
Hannah turned the statue, studying its upturned palm—no "Covenant's Grasp" here, just an empty cup, as if begging for a blessing that would never come. Her finger traced the corroded crown fused to its brow, metal dull yet alien, unlike any she'd seen. "Maybe… ten shillings?"
"Ten shillings?!" Miryam's shriek echoed off the rafters. Their father worked a week at the docks for half that. Her own wage? Six pence a day, scrubbing noblemen's stains.
(What Hannah didn't say: the statue's weight matched the crystalline shards Father hid in his boot—the last hope to avoid eviction. Even tiny scraps of that ore bought bread. A crown this intact? Worth more than their lives.)
Hannah kicked the sewing machine aside, its scream drowning the landlady's curses below. She stared at the statue's stone fingers peeking from Miryam's apron, throat tightening. "Bury it in the coal bin. Wrap it in Da's old shirt." Her palm ached from the worn prayer band in her pocket, its engravings rubbed smooth by fear. "Aunt Martha sold her candlesticks. Now she's breaking rocks in the mines."
Miryam nodded, shoving the statue into the coal sack. Stone dust settled on her frayed skirt like shattered stars. The lamp's glow caught the statue's half-lidded gaze, fixed on the leaking roof where raindrops slid down its stony cheeks to strike the patched floor—plink, plink, in time with their desperate hearts.
Midnight. Rustlings in the attic. Miryam knelt barefoot before the sack, statue clutched to her chest, lamp casting shadows like bruises under her eyes. "Don't care what deity you are," she whispered, breath sharp with coal smoke. "Just… ease Mama's cough. Let the foreman keep our wages this week."
A tear splashed the statue's face.
And the Transmigrator saw: in the shrine, a fingernail-length red candle flickered to life on the barren stand, flame trembling like the last spark in an endless night.
It listened as Miryam prayed, a strange power seeping into its stony core. On the empty candle holders flanking the shrine, a stub of red wax materialized—feeble, flickering, one breath from extinction.
What did this mean? How to use it? No answers came, only the cold certainty that this candle was tied to her plea.
Then the altar's TV crackled. Static dissolved into text:
[Faith Essence Gained: 10 Points.]
The Transmigrator stared, stone eyelids burning with a human ache. No magical guide, no legendary weapon. Just a girl's fragile faith, a spark in the dark. The candlelight gilded the altar's cobwebs, soft as his grandmother's deathbed lamp—dim, but warm.
As the words flickered, the desperate deity nearly wept.
"Finally. A System. Fate didn't abandon me."