Faith did not wait for permission.
It learned.
It learned how to gather in corners, how to pass from mouth to mouth without priests or scripture. It learned how to shape itself around absence, how to sharpen desperation into doctrine.
And it learned Lemma's name.
She felt it before she saw it.
Not the warm pull of prayer gods once described—not reverence—but focus. Attention like a hand closing around her ribs. Wherever she went now, something leaned toward her. Expectation coiled in the air, thick enough to taste.
People no longer just asked for help.
They assumed it.
They argued over what she meant.
They bled for her without asking.
Lemma stood at the edge of a ravine carved by magic misuse decades earlier, staring down at a camp sprawled across the opposite ridge. Hundreds of fires burned there. Banners fluttered—rough cloth marked with her silhouette, her scar, her refusal turned symbol.
Her jaw tightened.
"They're calling it the Unbound Faith," said Mara quietly beside her—the swords-woman who had refused to kneel and meant it. "They say gods failed because they were owned. You didn't belong to anyone."
Lemma laughed once, bitter. "And now they want to own me."
Mara hesitated. "They think belief protects you."
"It cages me," Lemma replied.
As if summoned by the words, a delegation approached—slow, reverent, eyes downcast. Not priests. Leaders. Organizers. People who had learned how to move crowds.
"Lady Lemma," one began.
"No," Lemma snapped. "Don't."
The man swallowed. "Lemma, then. The people are afraid."
"So am I," Lemma said. "That doesn't make me a god."
"You survived what no one else did," another insisted. "You stand where gods fell. That means something."
"It means I didn't die," Lemma said. "Stop trying to turn that into destiny."
They exchanged glances.
"The Queen of Ash is centralizing power," the first said carefully. "She's rewriting the laws of magic. People need something to rally around."
"Something," Lemma echoed. "Not someone."
Silence.
Then the words she had dreaded.
"If you won't accept worship," the man said, "then you are denying us protection."
Lemma felt something inside her crack.
"Listen to me," she said, voice trembling with restrained fury. "Belief is not harmless. It warps. It demands. It eats people alive."
"You sound like the old gods," someone muttered.
The comparison struck like a blade.
Lemma turned away before they could see her expression.
That night, belief turned violent.
A rival cult attacked the camp at dawn—Seraphina's sigils burned into their skin, their magic unstable and brutal. They screamed Lemma's name as accusation and invocation alike.
"Where is your goddess now?" they howled as tents burned.
Lemma arrived too late.
She stood among bodies crushed by powers she had refused to claim.
Hands grabbed her sleeves.
"Why didn't you come sooner?"
"Why didn't you protect us?"
"Why won't you accept what you are?"
The words dug deeper than blades.
Lemma screamed.
Not outward.
Inward.
She tore at the pressure inside her—the gathering weight of belief that had begun to answer her unconsciously. Healing she hadn't chosen. Barriers she hadn't raised. A nascent throne forming whether she wanted it or not.
"No," she whispered.
Then she did something no god had ever done.
She rejected worship actively.
She reached inward—not to accept faith, but to sever it.
The pain was indescribable.
Belief resisted.
It clung, screamed, recoiled like a living thing. Faith wanted shape. Wanted reward. Wanted authority.
Lemma tore it away anyway.
Light exploded outward—not divine, but raw, unfiltered rejection. Shrines shattered. Sigils burned out. People collapsed as the pressure vanished abruptly, leaving only exhaustion and confusion.
Lemma fell to her knees, blood pouring from her nose, ears, eyes.
She had wounded herself.
Deliberately.
The backlash was immediate.
Magic around her destabilized. The Dragon's Brand flared violently, then dimmed, cracked with hairline fractures. Power she had relied on faltered, uneven and unreliable.
And somewhere far away—
Seraphina smiled.
"So," the Queen murmured, fingers tracing the air. "You finally hurt yourself."
She rose from her throne.
"Good. That makes this easier."
The sky darkened unnaturally over Lemma's camp that night.
Not storm-clouds.
Crowns.
Sigils the size of cities burned into the heavens—Seraphina's work. The Witch Queen did not summon demons this time.
She summoned belief.
Every cult bound to her screamed in unison, their faith weaponized, redirected. Power surged along the channels she had carved into the world.
Seraphina appeared above Lemma in a column of black-gold light, untouchable, magnificent, monstrous.
"You keep refusing," Seraphina called, voice amplified by a thousand stolen prayers. "So let me make it clear."
She gestured.
The pressure slammed down.
Lemma screamed as belief—foreign, hostile—was forced into her. Not worship of her, but worship at her. A crucible.
"You don't get to opt out anymore," Seraphina said coldly. "Not when the world needs a counterweight."
Lemma felt herself lifting, body straining as power tried to seat itself within her. Not a god—a construct. A living stabilizer.
"You want me crowned?" Lemma gasped. "This is how you do it?"
Seraphina's eyes burned. "I want you contained."
The people below screamed—not in reverence, but terror.
And somewhere deep inside Lemma, something fragile finally snapped.
Not her will.
Her mercy.
She reached for the last thing untouched by faith.
Herself.
And tore free.
The explosion shattered Seraphina's projection, ripping through the sky like a wound. Lemma fell from the air, crashing into the earth hard enough to crack stone.
She lay there, broken, bleeding, powerless.
But free.
For now.
Seraphina watched the projection collapse, lips thinning.
"So," she whispered. "You'd rather burn than rule."
Her smile returned—sharp, anticipatory.
"Then I'll teach the world to light the match.