The Relic Train hissed to a halt in a cloud of ash, steam, and sanctified soot. Its relic-whistles gave one last tremble, echoing through the vaulted parade station like a dying titan exhaling his final absolution.
Then, silence.
A stillness deep enough to smother breath.
Thousands waited beyond the platform gates, pilgrims, soldiers, clergy, nobles, beggars. All eyes on the train's brass-edged doors.
Aaron stood behind them, flanked by Aleric, Trenaxa, and the front ranks of the Ashborn. His armor clinked faintly as he adjusted his pauldron, more out of anxiety than necessity. He could hear his own heart pounding louder than the horns.
He stepped forward.
And the world held its breath.
There's no trumpets, no cheers.
Just him—awkward, bone-thin, eyes sunken with sleeplessness and sanctity. He looked more like a survivor than a savior. His hair was still matted with relic-dust. His boots were cracked, one toe exposed.
He didn't glow or float.
He just blinked against the morning light, squinting up at the distant banners.
And still, they fell to their knees.
The wave of it was tidal. Clergy, soldiers, merchants, war-princes, all sank to the ground like wheat before fire. Even the air seemed to lower itself in reverence.
Aaron took another step, trying not to trip on his own sanctified robe.
From the tallest spires of Virex-Cathedralis came the sound:
The Miracle Tones.
Massive relic-horns, each one hewn from mountain-wombs and etched with ancient hymn-runes, let loose a deep, aching groan. The air vibrated. Dust fell from the banners above. Birds scattered. Infants stopped crying, as if even they knew something sacred was underway.
Aaron, eyes wide: "I really need a bath."
Some faithful wept uncontrollably.
Some convulsed in rapture.
A few reached through the railings to touch the floor where Aaron's boot had stepped.
One child, no more than six, sat atop his father's shoulders. The man wept openly as the boy leaned forward, hand outstretched. Aaron, blinking, stepped toward him.
The boy held out a small carved figure. It was wooden, rough-hewn but careful, meant to resemble a soldier in tattered armor, holding a torch.
Aaron took it, gently.
Admired the craftsmanship.
The edges were soft from being held. There were little scratches where tiny fingers had polished it. On its back, someone had etched a crude flame.
"Did you make this?" Aaron asked quietly.
The boy nodded.
Aaron smiled. "It's perfect."
He tucked it into his coat pocket—just over his heart.
The crowd gasped as one.
A scribe somewhere declared it the "Sanctified Acceptance of the Icon of Childhood Innocence."
A new sect would form within the hour.
From the cathedral gates came a slow procession: twelve Cardinal-Militants in blood-crimson armor, visors open, heads bowed. Behind them walked Chapel-Guard, Incensarii, and Golden Thurifers, swinging vast censers the size of tombstones. Waves of smoke poured out—thick with holy sap, sweat, and burning relic-fronds.
A high voice, disembodied from the fog, rang out:
"We welcome the Flame-Walker, the Ash Saint, the Grave-Risen.
We welcome the Hand of God dragged from death itself."
Aaron blinked at them. Then looked past them.
At the throne.
A golden monstrosity of a chair had been built at the plaza's center. Raised high on a blood-soaked dais, surrounded by stone angels stabbing one another in ecstasy. Banners flapped in the ashen wind.
It looked like something built for a god.
"…You're kidding me," Aaron said flatly.
Aleric leaned in, sweat beading down his neck. "It's ceremonial your eminence. You only have to sit for forty-seven hymns and three thousand genuflections."
Aaron ran a hand through his hair. "I miss the trenches."
The crowd waited for a pronouncement.
Tens of thousands, their faces turned skyward, eyes shimmering with dust and devotion. Some were smeared with ash, others slick with blood—not from violence, but from crawling across broken stone to reach this spot, to glimpse this moment, to be part of it.
They came from shattered fronts, from bombed-out sanctuaries and hushed trench-hospices. Some limped on mech-crutches. Some held rusted reliquaries to their chests like sacred infants. A few wore chains of penance so heavy they left grooves in the stone where they'd knelt.
They came with shattered faith, hoping to see it pieced back together.
To weep.
To witness.
To be blessed.
Aaron felt every eye on him. Every breath caught in throats stretched thin by prayer.
He raised one hand, slowly. Uncertainly. The simple movement sent ripples through the crowd like a seismic wave of hope.
He meant to say something noble.
Something befitting the figure they now saw in him.
Something a Saint would say.
What came out was:
"It's not about winning… it's about sending a message."
The words drifted across the plaza, caught and carried by relic-echoes. The silence that followed wasn't simple awe. It was a vacuum, dense and sucking the air from every chest, as though the universe itself had stopped to parse meaning.
Then—
Roaring thunder.
Not from artillery, but from human throats.
It began with a gasp, rose into a shriek, then exploded into a sound beyond belief. Howls of ecstasy. Shouts of revelation. The chorus of thousands finally understanding something they didn't know they needed.
A woman collapsed sobbing, clutching her chest, howling, "The MESSAGE! He said there's a message!" as others tore at their robes to catch the syllables before they disappeared into memory.
Scribes shrieked, scrambling over one another to scratch the words into parchment with blessed charcoal, some tearing their own skin to ink the syllables with blood.
One priest fell to his knees, arms outstretched to the clouds, and screamed, "THE FLAME-SENDER SPEAKS!"
A woman tore open her blouse and declared herself "Messenger-Mother of the Ash Saint's Cipher." By the end of the hour, twelve had gathered around her as disciples. One had already branded Aaron's words into their shoulder with a relic-seal.
A new schism had already been born(again).
Aaron blinked.
"Wait… that was just—"
Aleric, openly weeping, fell to one knee beside him. His robes were soaked with sweat, his quill already broken from furious note-taking.
"Your Eminence… please… more."
Aaron stared ahead, dead-eyed, trapped between panic and disbelief. He raised his hand again, as if on reflex.
"May your dice always roll high… and your ammo never jam."
A silence followed, brief and tense, like a relic-fuse about to spark.
Then again.....
Rapture.
A trench general collapsed where he stood, dropping to both knees. He cradled his bolt pistol to his brow, whispering the line again and again like a litany. "Dice... high rolls... ammo blessed…"
A canoness screamed, toppled backward into a pile of sacred vestments, limbs twitching in devotional seizure.
The nobility began to chant.
Rhythmic and fevered.
"High rolls! No jams! High rolls! No jams!"
The chant spread, infecting the square like divine static. Even a battle-worn skald began thumping his helmet with a relic-horn for rhythm.
Aaron groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I meant that like a joke, what's with this reaction?"
Aleric, scribbling on what was now the back of his own arm, gasped:
"It was holy, they know and they feel it. You've given them language for the divine."
Aaron looked around.
At the nobility, tiered like relic-statues awaiting anointment. Their faces were desperate, expectant. Yearning not just for a blessing, but for a reason.
He sighed.
Raised both hands again.
"To the Nobles—may your Wi-Fi be eternal, and your lattes ever warm."
It was as if someone had detonated a joy-grenade in the elite.
The Duke of Oathiron, resplendent in his gold-draped armor, let out a wail and fell sobbing into his steward's arms. He lifted his head, hair matted with incense ash, and declared:
"Let my estates be consecrated as Sanctums of Connectivity! Every cup of caffeine a sacrament!"
His heir, overcome, drew a blade from his boot and, without hesitation, carved the phrase into his own scalp. Blood poured freely, and scribes surrounded him in reverence, pressing paper to catch the droplets.
"To the Warriors—git gud, or die trying."
The Pilgrim Templars erupted.
Swords were unsheathed.
Palm after palm was slashed open and held to the sky, red rivers streaming down chromed vambraces.
"GIT GUD!" they roared. "GIT GUD!"
Within seconds, trench artisans were burning the phrase into power armor with bayonet tips. A Captain impaled his own training manual on a relic-spear and declared the phrase "a new strategic doctrine."
"To the Hierarchs—may your spreadsheets be blessed, and your bureaucracy never loop."
A thousand scribes moaned in unison, falling into stacks like reverent dominoes. Some bit their tongues and bled willingly, eager to taste the holy order.
"To the Broken—lag is temporary. Glory is forever."
There was a groan in the crowd.
A Redemptionist veteran—half-machine, all scar, threw down his rusted crutch. He rose to stand, trembling, for one impossible moment.
And collapsed.
The snap of his ribs was audible.
And still, the square roared.
"A MIRACLE!"
Three canonesses rushed forward to cradle him. One blessed his brow with the sign of the holy ping. Another began stitching the words "Lag Is Temporary" into his warcloak.
Aaron turned to Aleric, desperate.
"Why do I remember this garbage? These are memes. Internet memes. I was just—"
Aleric, eyes shining as though he stared directly into the face of god:
"Because it was prophecy, Your Eminence."
High above, the Bells of Virex-Cathedralis—twenty-seven in total, each named after a slain martyr or lost world, began to toll.
But not in harmony.....
No, each one struck off-tempo, chaotic, wild. Yet it formed a new kind of music, syncopated, irregular and pulsing.
The crowd chanted fragments, warped echoes of Aaron's words:
"The Message is Holy!"
"Blessed Wi-Fi, Eternal Bandwidth!"
"High Rolls! No Jams!"
"Git Gud! Git Gud! Git Gud!"
Children wept.
Veterans sobbed.
Someone had already spray-painted "LAG IS TEMPORARY" on the side of a blessed ambulance.
A new youth order had already formed in the plaza's northeast quadrant, naming themselves The Divine RNG. Their leader held a pair of six-sided dice carved from martyr bone.
A tattooist fell to his knees in the mud, weeping, carving tiny dice into his knuckles with a broken relic stylus.
Above them, a new chant:
"HE ROLLS FOR US!"
The High Clergy bowed again.
A Cardinal-Militant stepped forward, voice solemn, armored knees sinking into ash:
"Will the Ash Saint take his throne?"
Aaron looked up at the monstrous golden chair waiting on the dais. It gleamed like a burning lie.
No way I'm sitting in that, he thought.
He looked down.
At his scorched boots, dusted with ash and miracle-puke.
He reached into his coat.
Touched the wooden toy the child had given him.
And said, softly, not for drama, but because it was the only truth left in his heart:
"No."
A gasp.
"But—" the Cardinal stammered, "You are meant to—"
Aaron raised a hand.
"I don't need a throne, I have people."
He turned.
Gestured behind him.
To the Ashborn.
To Trenaxa, limping, bandaged, helmet slung from one arm like a trophy.
To Aleric, already drafting six proclamations of faith with the side of a communion plate.
To the others: war-weary, ash-crusted, eyes hollow with wonder.
Their banners were tattered. Their prayers were half-remembered. But they stood tall.
"I'm not your god," Aaron said, stepping forward. "I'm just the guy who didn't die. And now I have to make that mean something."
He stepped off the dais.
Walked among the people.
They reached for him to touch and too see, or believe that the broken could rise again.
He knelt beside a wounded pilgrim and touched his forehead. Took a handful of flower-ash from a reliquary urn and smeared it into a trembling sign across the man's brow.
A true benediction.
The square held its breath.
A child whispered, just loud enough to be heard:
"He's real."
And from the gates of the city, the Parade began.
Not with him on a throne.
But with him in the dirt.
Walking beside his people.
Smiling faintly.
Carrying a wooden toy in his pocket.
And the echo of something larger than legend—
the memory of the trenches,
the fire that did not consume him,
and the message only the broken could ever understand.