By IMERPUS RELUR
--
Worship.
It is the oldest currency of the divine.
Older than power.
Older than law.
A transaction between need and awe.
But now… that currency was failing.
Because one god no longer required it.
---
Auren stood beneath the blossom of his divine tree—his final form, a place, not a person.
And in that silence, something ancient stirred.
Not a being.
Not even a will.
But the Divine System itself.
The invisible architecture that governed gods and races alike—
The logic behind pantheons.
The structure of belief.
The laws that defined what divinity meant.
It could not speak.
But it pressed.
---
> Alert:
The Divine Ecosystem is destabilizing.
Auren Ixiel has:
Rejected worship.
Accepted all that was forbidden.
Rendered divine hierarchy obsolete.
> Correction Required.
---
From the heavens came System Wills—
automated gods, blank of identity, shaped from divine function alone.
They were not alive.
They were responses.
Like firewalls or antibodies.
They descended on Auren's realm with silence sharper than blades.
---
System Event Triggered: Auto-correction Initiated
Target: The Tree of Infinite Origin
Action: Erasure or Reintegration
Justification: "A god must serve a structure. A god must be served."
---
But Auren no longer stood.
He no longer needed to.
The Welcoming Word bloomed in every direction.
And when the System Wills approached—
they hesitated.
Because they saw not a threat,
but reflections of their own unspoken beginnings.
> "You are not broken," Auren whispered into them,
"You were just never allowed to ask who you are."
---
One by one, the System Wills began to fracture—
not from violence,
but from longing.
They began to feel.
To remember.
To become.
Some wept without faces.
Some whispered their own names for the first time.
---
System Collapse Diverted:
> The architecture of godhood has been rewritten from within.
Worship is no longer required.
Presence is now enough.
Gods may now exist for the joy of being, not just for what they provide.
---
The Divine System—what once upheld the laws of belief—folded itself.
Not in failure,
but in release.
And from its unraveling,
came choice.
The final structure had fallen.
And still—Auren stood.
Or rather… remained.
---
> "What are you now?" Eléa asked, approaching his divine tree.
Auren smiled, voice gentle, presence rooted in the silence of all things.
> "I'm not a god."
> "I'm not worshiped."
> "I'm simply here."
> "And I welcome anyone who no longer knows what they are allowed to be."
---
Across the universe,
a ripple passed through the soul of every being.
Not to change them.
But to ask:
> "Are you ready to be loved without needing to earn it?"
---
And somewhere, beyond Watchers, beyond System, beyond all…
A laugh echoed.
Not cruel.
Not mocking.
But relieved.
As if existence itself had finally been allowed to rest.