That night, Kael did not sleep.
He walked until the streets thinned and the smell of salt gave way to old stone and rot, until even Blackwake's constant noise dulled into something like breathing. He had hoped movement would shake the feeling loose—the pressure behind his eyes, the sense of being leaned toward by the world itself.
It didn't.
He found the shrine by accident.
That, too, was dangerous.
It sat in a narrow square where three alleys met, tucked between a shuttered net-maker's shop and a collapsed stairway that led nowhere anymore. No guards. No chanting. No priest hovering to claim authorship.
Just a circle of stones laid with care.
At its center, a shallow basin filled with seawater caught the last light of the sinking suns. Sol Aurex's gold faded first, leaving Sol Noctis to bleed its red across the surface until the water looked like a wound that refused to close.
Around the basin lay offerings.
Not extravagant ones.
Human ones.
A length of knotted cord, worn soft by use.
A short blade with a cracked hilt, placed carefully as if it might still be needed.
Three copper coins rubbed smooth.
A child's scrap of blue cloth, frayed and washed thin.
Kael stood very still.
This wasn't worship the way gods demanded it—no fear-soaked kneeling, no promises of obedience. This was worse. This was gratitude trying to make itself permanent.
Someone had left a bowl of bread beside the stones. It was still warm.
Kael's hands curled into fists.
"No," he said softly, to no one.
The word felt small in the square.
He stepped forward and kicked the basin.
Water spilled across the stones, washing the reflected suns into nothing. He grabbed the nearest stone and hurled it against the wall, where it shattered into chalky fragments. Another followed. Then another.
The circle broke apart under his hands.
He overturned the offerings, scattered them into gutters and shadow, crushed the bread beneath his heel until it smeared into the dirt like an accusation.
His breathing came hard and fast.
The pressure behind his eyes flared—and then steadied.
Not gone.
Rearranged.
Kael backed away from the wreckage, heart pounding.
"That's it," he muttered. "It ends here."
But the city did not exhale with him.
The pressure did not vanish.
It spread.
He felt it like heat radiating outward, diffusing through streets and homes, slipping into conversations, settling behind eyes that had seen him pull bodies from the sea. The shrine had not contained belief.
It had been a convenience.
Kael turned sharply as footsteps approached.
A woman stood at the mouth of the alley, hands clasped in front of her. She was young, hair still wet from the storm, eyes bright with something that hurt to look at.
"I didn't build it," she said quickly, as if afraid he would accuse her. "I just came to see if it was true."
"What?" Kael asked.
"That you don't want it," she replied. "That you don't want… this."
She gestured at the broken stones.
Kael swallowed.
"You shouldn't be here," he said. "None of you should."
She nodded. "I know."
She hesitated, then stepped closer, careful not to touch him.
"My brother was one of the men you pulled from the docks," she said. "He can't swim. He never could."
Kael said nothing.
"He keeps saying you didn't do anything special," she continued, a faint, shaky smile touching her mouth. "That you just didn't let go."
The words struck deeper than praise ever could.
"I don't save people," Kael said quietly. "I react."
She studied him, really looked at him, as if trying to reconcile the man standing in front of her with the shape growing around his name.
"That might be worse," she said.
She reached into her pocket and held something out—a simple shell, polished smooth.
"I won't leave it here," she said quickly, before he could object. "I won't tell anyone where I saw you. I just wanted you to know…"
Her voice faltered.
"…that some of us aren't asking you to stay," she finished. "We're just afraid of what it means if you leave."
Kael stared at the shell, then gently pushed her hand back toward her chest.
"Be afraid of yourselves," he said. "That fear is safer."
She flinched—but she nodded.
When she left, Kael remained in the alley long after the suns had set, the wrecked shrine cooling at his feet.
Elsewhere in Blackwake, candles were being lit.
Not in one place.
In many.
A sailor whispered his name before sleeping.
A dockhand pressed his forehead to the floor in thanks.
A mother murmured a prayer she insisted wasn't one.
No basin.
No stones.
No focus Kael could shatter.
Belief no longer needed a home.
It had a direction.
Kael felt it then with crushing clarity—not as power, but as inevitability.
Gods were born when belief had nowhere else to go.
And humans, desperate and brilliant and terrified, were very good at making nowhere feel necessary.
Kael turned his face toward the sea, fists shaking at his sides.
"I won't become this," he whispered.
The waves answered by breaking gently against the harbor walls, unconcerned.
Somewhere in the city, someone spoke his name for the first time as a prayer—and did not feel foolish for doing so.
That was when Kael understood the truth that gods never admitted until it was too late:
Once belief finds a living shape, destroying the altar only teaches it how to live without one.