The city lay flattened. The divine pressure crushed every soul, every will, into the cold stone of the plaza. Awe and terror were the same emotion.
From the golden fissure in the sky, the light did not just pour. It congealed. The pillar of energy connecting the heavens to the altar solidified, a column of liquid divinity preparing to strike. It hummed with a sound that was not a sound, a vibration that shook the very idea of a person.
On his balcony, Sir Leon's face, once a mask of vengeful satisfaction, was now slack. The power was too much. This was not the simple cleansing fire he had envisioned. This was the wrath of a star. He was on his knees, and he did not even remember falling.
Cardinal Valerius, the architect of this moment, trembled on the altar. He had asked his god for a tool. His god had handed him the sun. The Purification Scepter lay abandoned at his feet. His face, a canvas of horrified awe, was pointed upward.
"Glory…" he breathed, the word a ragged puff of air. "The ultimate glory…"
The pillar of golden fire descended. It was not fast. It was deliberate, a judgment with all the time in the world. It aimed for the single defiant figure standing on the altar.
The crowd, their faces pressed against the grimy cobblestones, watched through splayed fingers. They saw the heretic boy, the stain, about to be erased by a power beyond comprehension. They felt a grim, holy satisfaction. This was justice. This was order restored.
The beam of Celestial Flame was a foot from Arthur's head.
Then, he moved.
He raised his right hand.
Not his left. His right. The one that was a dull, ashen gray. The one that looked like a dead branch, unremarkable, forgotten. He lifted it calmly, palm open, to meet the descending torrent of divine energy.
A fine idea, Su Ling's thought was a cool, silken thread in the back of Arthur's mind. To use fire to burn away impurities. But they brought the wrong kind of fire.
The Celestial Flame touched the Ash Hand.
There was no explosion. No shattering impact. No roar of conflicting energies.
There was only silence.
The pillar of blinding, world-ending golden fire, the physical manifestation of a god's power, struck Arthur's palm and vanished. It did not splash. It did not rebound. It was… drunk. The Ash Hand was a hole in the universe, a patch of absolute thirst, and the divine light was a river pouring into a desert that could never be filled.
The stream of gold flowed into his small, gray hand without a ripple. It was devoured. It was unmade. It was consumed.
On the high balcony, Lady Annelise shot to her feet. The veil could not hide the sudden, rigid stillness of her body. The serene aura of the Living Saint fractured like dropped glass.
Beside her, Sir Leon's jaw fell open. It hung there, disconnected from his face, a rictus of pure, unadulterated disbelief. The sound he tried to make was a dry click in his throat.
On the altar, Cardinal Valerius's eyes widened. They bulged from their sockets. The prayer of glory died on his lips, replaced by a single, choked word.
"No."
The torrent of light from the heavens did not stop. It continued to pour down, and the Ash Hand continued to drink. It was an endless, silent feast.
"Is this their 'god'?" Su Ling's voice echoed in Arthur's soul, tinged with a faint, almost lazy amusement. "The energy is so… noisy. Full of the cloying desperation of a billion prayers. So many impurities. It's barely a meal."
She paused in his mind.
"Still, one should not waste food. It will serve as a light snack."
Then, the nature of the feast changed.
The Ash Hand, now saturated with stolen divinity, did something impossible. The flow of energy reversed. The devouring did not stop at Arthur's palm. A current of absolute nothingness, of pure entropy, began to crawl up the beam of light. It was a tide of anti-creation flowing back to its source.
The golden pillar began to flicker.
High above, the crack in the sky convulsed. A low, agonized groan echoed across the heavens, the sound of a great machine grinding its gears against an immovable object. The golden light pouring out of it wavered, sputtering like a dying candle.
The boy was not just defending. He was attacking. He was siphoning. He was feeding on the source.
"Fools!" a raw, broken voice screamed from the altar.
It was Theron. The old alchemist, his mouth a blackened ruin, had pushed himself up on one elbow. His feverish eyes were wide with ecstatic, manic joy. Tears streamed down his face, carving clean paths through the grime.
"He's drinking it! HA! He's drinking their god! He's drinking the lie!"
His mad laughter, half-choked with pain, was the only human sound in the plaza.
Valerius scrambled backward, away from Arthur, away from the abomination he had summoned. The anchor lantern at his belt, the tool that suppressed all heresy, was now just a dull, useless piece of metal. Its holy light was utterly extinguished.
"Heresy… Abomination… This is not possible…" he stammered, his mind shattering.
Arthur ignored him. He ignored the screaming alchemist. While his right hand drained the heavens, he placed his left hand, his normal hand, flat against the dark wood of the purification altar.
The altar was the focal point of the ceremony. It was also, at that moment, the nexus for the city's entire defensive grid, a system powered by the Eternal Sacred Flame that burned in the high cathedral.
His left hand touched the wood.
The power of the Ash Hand, now overflowing within his small body, needed another outlet. Su Ling directed the excess.
A network of fine, gray cracks spread out from his fingertips, racing across the surface of the altar.
The grand, glowing runes carved into the plaza stones flickered once, then died.
The magical wards on the city walls vanished.
High in the cathedral, the Eternal Sacred Flame, which had burned for five hundred years as a symbol of the Church's unyielding power, sputtered. It shrank from a mighty bonfire to a single, pathetic flame.
Then it went out.
Darkness.
One moment, the city was bathed in the golden light of a miracle. The next, it was plunged into absolute, suffocating blackness. The sun had been blotted out by the sheer divinity in the sky, and now that divinity was being eaten. The city's own light had just been extinguished.
Panic erupted. The oppressive awe was gone, replaced by primal fear. Screams echoed in the sudden night. The crowd, no longer prostrate, became a stampeding herd of terrified animals.
In the heart of the chaos, on the altar, a single point of light remained.
It was the last of the Celestial Flame, a final, beautiful stream of gold being drawn into Arthur's right hand. It illuminated his small, ragged form, casting a long, distorted shadow that danced over the cowering Cardinal.
He stood as a god of twilight, wreathed in stolen light.
The last drop of gold vanished into his palm. The crack in the sky sealed itself shut with a final, mournful hum.
The world was dark. The world was silent.
Arthur turned his head. In the gloom, he looked up, past the panicking crowds, past the useless guards, to the high balcony. His gaze settled on the one figure who remained standing, a stark white silhouette against the night.
Lady Annelise.
He held her gaze for a single, long moment.
A small smile touched his lips, a gesture that held no warmth, only a deep, bottomless amusement.
Then he stepped back. He did not run. He simply dissolved into the shadows that now ruled the plaza, becoming one with the chaos he had created.
He was gone.
But his voice remained. It did not echo in the air. It bloomed in the mind of every single person in the plaza, from the highest noble to the lowest beggar. It was a calm, clear, and absolute statement.
"God? From today, I am the miracle."