The moment Mira's trembling fingers made contact with the sphere of golden energy, the world dissolved.
It was not a painful sensation, but one of overwhelming, absolute dissolution. Her consciousness was ripped from her body and plunged into an ocean of pure, divine power. She felt the birth of stars, the silent turning of galaxies, the slow, patient grinding of tectonic plates over millennia. She experienced a single second of Ravi's eternal existence, a glimpse into the vast, lonely, and omnipotent consciousness of the Creator. It was an experience that would have shattered the sanity of any other mortal, reduced their mind to a puddle of incoherent madness.
But Mira was different. Her soul had been tempered in the fires of The Pit's suffering and then annealed by her constant proximity to Ravi's divine aura. Her unwavering, fanatical devotion acted as an anchor, a tether that kept her sense of self from being utterly obliterated by the infinite.
The golden light surged into her, not as a destructive force, but as an infusion. It flooded her veins, her bones, her very cells, rewriting her mortal limitations. She felt her old aches and scars, the lingering malnutrition from a lifetime of squalor, burn away, replaced by a vibrant, thrumming vitality. Her senses, already sharp, exploded. She could hear the frantic heartbeats of every person in the Sanctuary, smell the distant rain on the wind beyond the city walls, see the very motes of dust dancing in the air as if they were stars.
And then, she felt the power itself settle within her, coiling in the core of her being. It was a fraction of a fraction of Ravi's own power, a single drop from his infinite ocean, but to her, it felt like a sun had been ignited within her soul.
The experience lasted an eternity and an instant. When her consciousness slammed back into her body, she was on her knees, gasping, her body drenched in sweat. The sphere of light was gone.
"Breathe, Mira," Ravi's voice commanded, calm and steady, cutting through her disorientation.
She took a shuddering breath, then another. She slowly looked down at her hands. They looked the same, but they felt different. A faint, golden energy now flowed just beneath her skin, a visible web of power that only she could see. She felt… strong. Strong in a way she had never imagined possible.
"Slum God… what… what did you do?" she whispered, her voice hoarse with awe.
"I have removed your mortal shackles," Ravi stated simply. "You are no longer merely human. You are my Warden, an extension of my will. The power that now flows through you is a sliver of my own. It will grant you strength beyond mortal men, senses that perceive falsehood, and the ability to command obedience through a portion of my own authority."
He gestured, and a loose stone on the floor lifted into the air and floated towards her. "Focus. Will it to dust."
Mira stared at the floating stone. She reached out with her mind, not her hand, trying to touch that new, burning sun within her. She focused on the stone, and with a surge of will, she commanded it to break.
The stone didn't just break; it silently, instantly, disintegrated into a fine grey powder that drifted to the floor.
Mira gasped, staring at her hand, then back at Ravi, her eyes wide with disbelief and dawning, ecstatic power. "I… I can…"
"You can," Ravi confirmed. "That is the power of a Blessing. A gift I bestow upon those who prove their absolute loyalty. You are the first. You will not be the last."
The change in Mira was immediately apparent to all in the Sanctuary. It wasn't just the way she carried herself, with a new, unshakable confidence. It was the aura around her. A faint echo of the Slum God's own pressure now clung to her. When she gave a command, people didn't just obey out of respect for her position; they obeyed out of a new, instinctual fear and reverence. She had become a demigod in their eyes, the chosen Archangel of their vengeful God. Her authority was now absolute.
Shiv, the newly-recruited Mire Snake survivor, felt it most acutely. He could almost taste the power radiating from her, and he trembled, renewing his vow of utter obedience. He knew he had made the right choice in submitting.
News of the impossible, localized storm and the complete eradication of the Mire Snakes sent a new and more potent wave of terror through the remaining powers of Veridia.
In the Onyx District, Baron von Hess, a portly man with a jovial face that concealed a soul of utter depravity, was in a state of panic. He had heard the rumors of the 'Slum God's hit list' and the mysterious 'Lady in Black' who was supposedly guiding his hand. His lucrative child trafficking ring, which supplied the darkest appetites of the city's elite, had made him a very wealthy, and a very sinful, man.
"This is unacceptable!" he blustered to his inner circle of business partners, fellow degenerates who partook in his vile trade. They were gathered in a secret, sound-proofed chamber beneath his opulent mansion. "A slum-dwelling lunatic is tearing the city apart! The City Watch does nothing! We are not safe!"
"The Watch is terrified, Baron," one of his associates, a gaunt man named Lucius, pointed out nervously. "Valerius has declared The Pit a 'quarantined zone of divine activity'. He won't touch it. He won't touch him."
"Then we must take matters into our own hands!" the Baron declared, slamming his fist on the table. "I have spent a fortune on mercenaries. The best in the city. The Silent Blades. We will send them into that cesspool and have this 'Slum God's' head on a platter!"
"Send assassins against a man who turns people into gold and commands earthquakes?" Lucius asked, his voice trembling. "That is madness!"
"It is survival!" the Baron retorted, his face red with a mixture of fear and fury. "We cannot simply wait for him to come for us! We strike first! We find his weakness. Everyone has a weakness. Perhaps it is one of his followers, that slum girl who leads his 'Sanctuary'." A cruel, desperate light entered his eyes. "Find a weakness. And then we cut his throat while he sleeps. I will not be made into a statue or buried under a mountain!"
Seraphina Vayne, now fully established as Ravi's 'Hand', caught wind of the Baron's desperate plan through her extensive network of informants. She immediately sought an audience.
She found Ravi not in his den, but standing on the highest point of the reclaimed slaughterhouse, looking out over the city as if it were his personal chessboard. Mira stood silently at his side, her new, powerful aura a stark contrast to her simple slum clothing.
Seraphina felt a brief, sharp pang of jealousy at Mira's transformation, at the tangible mark of the God's favor she now wore, but she pushed it down. Her role was different, but no less important.
"Slum God," she said, bowing deeply. "As you predicted, the rats are scurrying in their nests. Baron von Hess, the child-trafficker, is panicking. He has hired the Silent Blades, the most ruthless mercenary company in Veridia, to assassinate you."
Ravi did not turn. He continued to gaze at the city. "Assassinate a god? A bold, if foolish, endeavor."
"They are not to be underestimated," Seraphina warned. "They are masters of stealth, poison, and ambush. They may try to use your followers as leverage, or create a diversion."
"Let them come," Ravi said, his voice flat and dismissive. "Their sins will only hasten their judgment. They will find that my Sanctuary is not so easily breached." He then turned his gaze to her, his eyes holding an ancient, calculating light. "The Baron's fear makes him predictable. He believes he is the hunter. He is, in fact, the panicked prey, running headlong into the snare. Your information confirms the path. The time is approaching for his judgment."
He looked at Mira, whose eyes now glowed with a faint, golden light of her own. "Warden. The assassins will come. You will be my first line of defense. Show them the meaning of my Blessing."
"It will be my honor, Slum God," Mira said, her voice filled with a fierce, eager loyalty. The thought of testing her new powers, of defending her God and her home, sent a thrill through her.
Ravi then addressed them both, his new inner circle, the two women who were becoming the pillars of his mortal reign. "The Baron's fear is a symptom. The hiring of mercenaries is an act of defiance. The city's elite believe they can fight me with their gold and their hired swords. They have not yet learned the fundamental truth."
He turned back to gaze at the sprawling city, a dark silhouette against the bruised twilight sky.
"You cannot kill an idea," he said, his voice a low, terrifying promise. "Especially when that idea is a god. And the judgment he brings is salvation for the world he seeks to create from the ashes."
The hunt was about to begin again. But this time, the prey, in its terror, was foolishly trying to hunt the predator. The results would be a lesson written in the blood of mercenaries, and finalized in the screams of a truly worthy sinner.