The third morning began not with bells or Mara's hand but with voices. Arin woke to sound filtering through the temple shutters—laughter, bargaining, the clatter of carts over cobblestones. He sat up slowly, the weight of yesterday still pressing on him. The shard glimmered faintly from its bowl. It looked smaller than it had two nights before, as though it had burned some part of itself into him and was content to rest.
He washed his face at the basin, the water sharp and cold, and tried to piece together the remnants of the dream he had just left. He remembered only fragments: the feeling of standing on a hill above a sea of torches, the sense of thousands of eyes turned toward him, and the certainty that every flame was a story waiting for him to carry. The rest dissolved like steam.
Mara appeared at the door, already composed. "You will not stay hidden here," she said without greeting. "People have spoken. They are waiting."
"Waiting for what?" Arin asked, though he already knew.
"For you," Mara replied. "For the hand that healed fever, that eased a child's breath. They don't care what it costs. They only care what it gives."
The thought unsettled him more than he wished to admit. Yesterday, each touch had felt like a negotiation he had not consented to. He wondered how much of himself had already been traded away. Still, he followed Mara out into the market streets.
The town was alive with color and dust. Merchants shouted over one another, hawking cloth, pottery, salted fish. Children darted between stalls, chasing each other with shrill delight. Yet as Arin walked, heads turned. Murmurs rippled. A woman touched her neighbor's sleeve and nodded toward him. A man bent low in a whisper and then gave Arin a bow that looked too heavy for its sincerity.
By the time they reached the fountain at the center square, a small circle had formed around him. Not hostile, not yet, but expectant. Eyes pressed against his skin more than hands ever could.
"Arin Velas," someone called. He turned to see a farmer with cracked hands and hollow cheeks. "They say you carry the spark. My wife cannot rise from bed. Come."
Others added voices—requests, pleadings, accusations. "My mother's sight is dim." "My boy broke his leg." "The gods gave you a gift; why do you not share it freely?"
Arin's throat tightened. He looked to Mara, who only watched with her usual measured stillness. "If I help them all," he murmured, "what will be left of me?"
"That is the lesson," Mara said softly enough that only he could hear. "A god is defined not by what they can do but by what they refuse."
But refusal was harder than he thought. The farmer's face bore the weight of desperation, and behind him a girl clutched her stomach with silent tears. Arin's feet moved before his mind agreed. He knelt beside the girl.
Her skin was pale, her breath shallow. Without ceremony, he pressed his palm to her side and called the shard's warmth. Light whispered between them, not blazing but steady, like embers coaxed into flame. The girl gasped, then coughed, then sat straighter. Color returned to her lips. Around them, the crowd sighed like one body.
And Arin felt the loss immediately: the memory of a melody—his father had once whistled while mending cart wheels. That simple tune, always there when Arin worked, vanished. He tried to hum it and found only silence.
The crowd erupted in thanks, in awe. Hands reached for him. "One more," someone begged. "Just one more."
Mara stepped forward at last, her presence sharp. "Enough for today," she said, her voice like iron wrapped in cloth. "Do you want him emptied before the week ends?"
The words cooled the crowd, but resentment flickered in a few faces. People shuffled back, muttering. Still, some left coins at Arin's feet, others small tokens—a ribbon, a carved trinket, a loaf of bread. Offerings, Mara called them later.
When they returned to the temple, Arin sank onto the steps and buried his face in his hands. "I cannot do this every day," he said. "Not if every act peels me apart."
"You are beginning to see," Mara replied. She crouched beside him, her eyes level with his. "The spark feeds on exchange. But exchange is not always fair. You must learn to ration, to choose, to accept that sometimes mercy is refusal."
He let her words settle. He wanted to believe he could manage the burden, but even now he searched for the lost tune in his head and found only the hollow echo of absence.
That night, when the temple quieted, he sat alone before the shard. It pulsed faintly, answering a rhythm he had not known existed in him. He touched the cloth, and for an instant he thought he heard a whisper—not words, but hunger.
"Do you listen?" he asked it softly. "Do you know what you take?"
The shard did not answer. Or perhaps it answered too well, in the silence that followed.
Morning came again with news. Mara found him sharpening a tool, more out of habit than need. "The priest wants you," she said.
In the inner hall, the old priest unfurled a scroll. "Word has traveled beyond our town," he said. "Pilgrims are coming. Already, two families from the coast arrived this dawn. They bring gifts and requests. The world is quick to crown saints."
"I am no saint," Arin muttered.
"You are worse," the priest said without cruelty. "You are possibility."
That day, pilgrims arrived indeed. A woman bearing seashells. A man carrying grain. They knelt, they begged, they praised. Arin granted some, denied others. Each choice tore at him, though in different ways. He gave health to an old sailor and lost the smell of rain on freshly turned soil. He refused a merchant's demand for wealth disguised as healing and endured curses spat at his back.
By evening, he was hollow. The shard's glow seemed brighter, fed not only by his losses but by the growing stories told in the streets. He realized belief itself was food for it. Every whisper of his name, every rumor, gave it weight.
Mara watched him closely. "The tide has turned," she said. "You are no longer a man among men. You are becoming an altar."
Arin shivered. He did not want to be an altar. He wanted to be whole. Yet as night fell, he could not deny that the path before him was already set in motion.
He lay awake long after the temple stilled. The shard pulsed at his side like a second heart. He wondered how many hearts he would need to carry before his own finally failed.
And for the first time, he asked himself not whether he could endure the cost but whether he wanted to.