Kai stepped into a cathedral too massive to be contained by space. Its walls looped around non-Euclidean axes, orbiting a god-sized hole in the center. The pews were made of promises, stacked and petrified. The stained glass showed moments of faith dying quietly in mortals’ eyes.
He felt like he’d intruded on the mourning of a god.
There were no statues. Just voided silhouettes, where worship once stood.
“Node 23,” Kai murmured. “A cathedral that lost its deity?”
The silence didn’t respond. It recoiled. Not out of hostility—but shame.
Long ago, the Divine Syntax Engine created gods through belief. They were built atop vows—divine lines of code tied to human desire.
But what happens when a god’s final believer stops believing?
They collapse. Not violently. Not loudly.
But as if language forgot them.
This cathedral was the last remnant of a god no longer remembered by any timeline. It didn’t have a name anymore. Just a persistence glitch, echoing the vow:
“I will protect all who believe in me.”
But no one believed now.
Except, maybe…
Kai.
Pillars of null-light unfolded as Kai stepped forward. The cathedral responded like a haunted server—old code waking up.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
A Voice echoed—not spoken, but printed into his thoughts:
“Are you here to believe?”
“Or to bury me again?”
Kai whispered, “I don't know yet.”
That was enough.
Suddenly, the air vibrated with vow-fragments—living codes swarming him like bees. Each fragment tried to latch onto him, to rebuild faith, to recreate the conditions of a god’s existence.
Vow Fragment: “I will never abandon the weak.”
Vow Fragment: “I shall answer when you pray.”
He pushed them off.
“No,” Kai said. “You don’t get to live off borrowed faith anymore.”
The silence screamed.
A figure emerged from behind the shattered altar—a Deacon, not made of flesh but of unfulfilled promises. Its robe trailed scriptures written in vanishing ink. Its voice was hollow, syllables stitched from abandoned prayers.
“Faith must be kept!” it shrieked. “You must vow!”
It launched forward, its arms stretching into runes, slicing through reality.
Kai dodged, sliding behind a pillar of repentance. His own faith? Nonexistent.
But his will? Absolute.
“I don’t make vows,” he muttered. “I make choices.”
He summoned Pre-Verbal Instinct, and ducked just as a temporal hymn tried to rewrite his heart into an organ of prayer.
Instead, he countered with a silent rejection—a movement that hadn't been codified.
The Deacon staggered, as if struck by something not yet invented.
Kai let the fight move into abstraction.
He let go of resistance.
He allowed the Vowless God’s fragments to touch him—but not to bind. Instead, he used them to reflect the lie: that faith must always be reciprocal.
He created a new spell, "Singular Belief"—a paradox:
One who believes in something knowing it will never believe back.
The Deacon shattered.
And from the broken altar, something emerged.
A soft glow.
A new vow. Untethered. Unchained.
Description: Grants immunity to narrative control by divine systems. Instead of being influenced by godlike or worship-based effects, user reflects belief systems as neutral echoes, voiding their power.
As Kai walked away from the ruins of the cathedral, he whispered—not to a god, but to himself:
“I don’t need gods.
I need the silence they leave behind.”
And for the first time, the cathedral smiled.
No longer begging for faith.
Just resting in peace.
End of Chapter 103