Location: Dune City – Three Days After the Fall
The wind no longer howled.
The flames had died down. The smoke had lifted.
But the fear still lingered—heavy, suffocating, unshakable. Not a single soul left in Dune City dared to whisper Yobokari's name aloud.
Not unless they were prepared to kneel.
Or to worship.
They called him "Kami no Metsuki" — The Eye of the God.
They called him "O-Kami-sama" — The One Who Does Not Bow.
In the shattered temples, once dedicated to ancient desert deities, new murals were already being painted—not by order, but by belief. Devotees scrawled his visage in crimson ash and molten sand, replicating the swirling aura of his Viatra and the twisted geometry of his Dream-Decay Muti hybrid.
In the refugee camps beyond the cliffs, some still resisted.
They would not last long.
Because word was spreading—Yobokari was no longer just a warlord.
He was becoming a belief system.
Beneath the City – In the Hollow Sanctum
The core of the old Seeker citadel had been converted.
A throne of fused steel and sand sat where Seeker Command once convened. Around it, the remaining Red Order elites stood watchful, silent. The temperature inside the sanctum was ten degrees colder than the desert above—residual effect of Yobokari's aura, which twisted the very nature of the air.
He sat calmly, his hands steepled, his red eye closed.
Until the acolytes approached.
They were once merchants, Seekers, outlaws, or scholars. Now they were something else.
Kneeling, they offered a relic—an ancient shard discovered deep beneath the ruins during the Red Order's sweep.
The Shard of Sūn-Cho, a pre-Arc Sigil artifact pulsing with sealed Muti.
Yobokari touched it gently.
Then inhaled.
And the shard crumbled into ash.
Not consumed. Absorbed.
"Another piece," he murmured. "Another voice joins the chorus."
Behind him, his right hand—Tenza the Hollow-Faced—bowed.
"My lord," he said softly, "they now worship you in five cities. A sixth asked to join us. We denied them. They must choose devotion, not convenience."
Yobokari didn't nod. He didn't need to.
"Their belief," he said, "is the first gateway."
"To what?" Tenza asked.
Yobokari opened his eyes.
"To a world where truth is no longer illegal."
Meanwhile – Across the Known World
At the Voyager Association, urgent meetings began. The word "godhood" had entered the reports.
At the Seeker Academies, young students began whispering tales of the red-eyed ghost who could steal your Muti through a dream.
And at the ruins of Sundermarch, where the Red Order first rose, a new kind of temple was being constructed—half cathedral, half monument, all designed around the shape of Yobokari's Omen Eye.
Back in Dune City – That Night
As the moons rose, and the stars blinked uncertainly overhead, Yobokari stepped to the edge of the citadel cliffs, watching the black sands of the desert stretch endlessly before him.
He lifted his hand.
From the sand, a hundred new followers rose in unison, each with a red mark now etched into their flesh—a whisper of the Viatra, passed down through exposure alone.
Tenza stood behind him. "They believe you are a god."
Yobokari didn't look back. "Then let them."
He turned, cloak billowing behind him.
"Because when gods return to the world," he said, "the world forgets how to kneel to men."