Chapter 35: The Soul's Pasture
Twenty years. Two decades of the Dragon's Peace, an era of quiet prosperity and profound, existential dread. The god on the hill was no longer a novelty; it was a fundamental fact of life, as certain as the rising of the sun—a sun whose light felt colder and more distant than it used to.
Krosis-Krif, the being that had once been a man, then a dragon, then a king, now found himself in a new and final stage of his evolution. He had achieved absolute security. His great Dragon's Tithe project was underway; the fields to the west of the city were now a sprawling, beautiful, and heartbreaking landscape of meadows and heated caves where the next generation of his "flock" was being raised under the watchful eyes of their Targaryen keepers. The realm was orderly. The pasture was quiet.
But the energy he had absorbed from the great duel above the Gods Eye had been a taste of true ambrosia. The ambient fear and awe of the populace was a thin broth in comparison. It was the burgeoning faith of his new religion that truly interested him. It was a clean, potent, and self-sustaining energy source. He felt the prayers of the tens of thousands who now frequented his black, star-ceilinged temples. He felt their gratitude for the miracles of his Hands. It was a far more delicious meal than terror had ever been.
He analyzed this new energy with the vast intellect he now possessed. Faith, he realized, was the currency of divinity. It was the willing transference of spiritual energy from mortal to god. This was how pantheons were built. This was how eternal life was sustained. His human memories of mythology were no longer stories; they were blueprints. He decided it was time to move his enterprise from a simple, direct transaction—miracles for belief—to a true, lasting institution with a promise that could outlast life itself.
In the heart of the Reach, the Hands of the God had become a force of nature. Ellyn the Weaver, now a woman in her middle years, her face lined with compassion but her eyes holding the unnerving calm of one who speaks with a god, was no longer just a healer. She was the High Priestess of a burgeoning faith. Her followers numbered in the tens of thousands.
She held audience in a field outside a town that had renamed itself "God's Grace." A minor lord, a Rowan of Goldengrove, stood before her, his head bowed.
"Lady Ellyn," the lord began, his voice thick with emotion. "The blessings of the Great Order have transformed my lands. The blight is gone from the wheat, the river flows clean, my people are healthy for the first time in memory. We have torn down our sept and now offer our thanks only in the temple the god provided."
"The Order provides for those who embrace it, my lord," Ellyn said, her voice carrying a quiet authority that soothed the crowds. "Peace and providence are the gifts of its perfect design."
"But my father… he is old," Lord Rowan continued, his voice dropping. "He saw the miracles, and his heart was turned. He embraces the new peace. But he is afraid. He asks me every day, 'What comes after? The septons spoke of the Seven Heavens, of a final judgment.' Our old gods offered a promise for the soul. What does the Great Order promise for us, when our time in this pasture is done?"
The question rippled through the crowd. It was the one great, unanswered question that kept many from fully embracing the new faith. What was the point of a peaceful life if it ended in a silent, empty void? Ellyn had no answer. She could only offer the truth.
"The god has not yet spoken on the disposition of the soul," she admitted. "It has been focused on mending the hurts of this world. We can only have faith that a power so invested in order a life would not abandon us to chaos in death."
Her words were hopeful, but the uncertainty was a palpable thing.
In Oldtown, the High Septon saw this uncertainty as his last, desperate weapon. His new strategy of preaching the "untidy" virtues of the human spirit was a philosophical success but a practical failure.
"It is not enough!" Septon Arthor argued in a frantic council meeting. "We preach of the soul's freedom, but their god's Hands are healing the body's sicknesses! The people do not care for abstract virtues when their children are dying of fever!"
The High Septon, now frail and grey, looked out at the black monolith in the harbor. "And what would you have me do, Arthor? We cannot match his power."
"No," Arthor conceded. "But we have one thing he has not offered. A promise. An answer to the great question that haunts every man and woman. What comes next? We have the Seven Heavens. It is our last and greatest truth. We must preach it, shout it from the rooftops! He may be the god of this life, but the Seven are the gods of the next!"
But even as he said it, he knew it was a losing battle. They were selling a promise of a distant land, while the new god was offering food for the table today.
Krosis-Krif felt the collective question of his followers, the great, silent query about what lay beyond the veil of death. He felt the Faith of the Seven using it as their shield. He recognized the flaw in his own system. A religion that only governed life was incomplete. It was time for the final, grand phase of his plan. He would not just be the god of their world. He would become the god of their eternity.
The influx of faith energy had reached a critical mass. It was no longer just sustenance; it was a catalyst. It was changing his very nature, pushing his consciousness beyond the limits of his physical form, vast as it was. He was on the cusp of apotheosis.
He focused the roaring river of faith that now flowed into him from across the kingdom. He took that energy, pure and potent, and began to weave it with his own colossal will. The sky above King's Landing began to warp. The sun grew dim as a strange, second aurora, this one of shimmering, liquid starlight, painted the heavens. The people in the streets fell to their knees, staring up in terror and awe.
Krosis-Krif's physical form on the hill began to shimmer, to lose its solidity. For a moment, those watching could see through him, could see the swirling cosmos that was his true nature. He was a gateway, a living portal between the world of men and the infinite.
The overflowing energy, the sheer divine power he was now generating, could not be contained within the mortal plane. It needed somewhere to go. With a thought that was both an act of will and an act of creation, he pushed. He pushed against the fabric of reality itself, using the combined energy of a world's worship and the souls of the dragons he had consumed to tear open a pocket in the void.
He created his own plane of existence. His own afterlife.
From his perspective, it bloomed into being in an instant. It was not the Seven Heavens of feasting and song, nor was it the fiery hells of the preachers. It was a perfect reflection of his own nature. He created a vast, serene, and orderly landscape of rolling, grassy hills under a sky of perpetual, gentle twilight. There were no great mountains or raging seas. There were no grand cities. There were only quiet streams, silent groves of trees, and an atmosphere of profound, unshakable peace. It was beautiful. It was eternal. It was a divine terrarium. His Soul's Pasture.
Miles away, in the lands of House Rowan, the old lord who had clung to the Seven finally let out his last, peaceful breath. His soul, a faint wisp of light, detached from his body. It felt the faint, distant pull of the faith of his ancestors, a call to a vague and distant heaven. But then it felt a new pull. A gravitational force that was immediate, undeniable, and comforting. It was the pull of the new pasture.
The old lord's soul did not struggle. It let itself be drawn. It passed through a veil of starlight and found itself standing, whole and young again, in a peaceful green meadow under a sky of twilight silk. There was no judgment, no choir of angels, no great feasting hall. There was only… quiet. The pains of his old body were gone. The fears of his mortal life were gone. There was only contentment. A managed, orderly, and eternal contentment. He was safe. He was at peace. He was home.
With the creation of his own heaven, Krosis-Krif's transformation was complete. He was no longer just a powerful being. He was a functional god, a complete theological system. He had a church, saints, miracles, and now, a divine domain for the souls of his faithful. It was time to announce the new covenant.
His voice, for the last time, spoke to the entirety of Westeros, a final, grand proclamation.
"HEAR ME, YE WHO HAVE EMBRACED ORDER. YOUR DEVOTION HAS NOT GONE UNNOTICED. YOUR FAITH HAS GIVEN ME FORM BEYOND FLESH, AND IN RETURN, I SHALL GIVE YOU A REFUGE BEYOND DEATH."
In Oldtown, the High Septon heard the words and stumbled, clutching a tapestry for support.
"THE SILENCE OF YOUR OLD GODS IS THE SILENCE OF THE VOID THAT AWAITS THEIR FOLLOWERS. THOSE WHO CLING TO THEIR EMPTY PROMISES WILL RETURN TO THAT NOTHINGNESS UPON THEIR DEATH. BUT THOSE WHO EMBRACE MY PEACE, MY ORDER… YOUR JOURNEY WILL NOT END IN OBLIVION."
In the Riverlands, Ellyn and her followers fell to their knees, weeping with a joy so profound it was painful.
"UPON YOUR DEATH, YOUR SOUL WILL HAVE A HOME. A REALM OF ETERNAL, QUIET CONTENTMENT, FORGED FROM YOUR OWN FAITH. A PASTURE OF SERENITY UNDER MY WATCHFUL GAZE. THIS IS MY COVENANT. THIS IS MY PROMISE. SERVE ORDER IN THIS LIFE, AND YOU WILL BE GRANTED ORDER IN THE NEXT."
The final statement sealed his victory over the hearts and souls of mankind.
"THE CHOICE, AS ALWAYS, REMAINS YOURS."
The proclamation ended. In Rhaenyra's court, the assembled lords and ladies stood in stunned silence. The last pillar of the old world, the mystery of the afterlife, had just been solved. The Faith of the Seven was now not just irrelevant; it was a confirmed path to oblivion.
Jacaerys looked at his mother, his face a mask of utter defeat. "He's won," he whispered, his cynical defenses finally broken by the sheer scale of this last move. "He's won everything. Life and death. It all belongs to him now."
In a tavern in King's Landing, the baker's wife, Marga, heard the news and burst into tears of joy. Her child was safe in this life, and now she knew, with absolute certainty, that they would be together in the next, in the quiet fields of the new god. Her faith, and the faith of millions like her, became absolute, a roaring inferno of devotion that flowed in a torrent to the being on the hill.
In Oldtown, the High Septon slumped in his chair, a broken man. He had tried to fight a god with philosophy, only to have that god offer what he never could: proof. The war for the soul of Westeros was over.
Krosis-Krif felt the tidal wave of pure, grateful, absolute faith wash over him. It was the most delicious, most powerful energy he had ever conceived of. He had done it. He had started as a cunning, psychopathic fan, a soul fleeing a meaningless death. Now, he was an eternal, true god, sustained by the willing worship of a world he had saved and damned in equal measure. He had not just survived. He had created his own perfect, sustainable, and eternal victory. And now, he could finally relax and enjoy his pasture.