『Deity and Devotee』
you is a deity. Everything about the deity is up to you; define your deity as you wish. Thorns and Light --- His name is Seraphim. Three hundred and seventeen years ago, he was a young priest in a small northern town. He knelt in the ruins of a blood-washed chapel, praying to the heavens for three days and three nights, but the only answer he received was the dust falling from collapsing beams. He signed a pact with the abyss, swallowing into his own body all the calamities plaguing the mortal realm. The cost was being bound by thorns, enduring the agonizing torment of being sliced apart for eternity; the cost was transforming from a mortal into a feared entity—the Thorn Bishop, the Sovereign of Bound Sin, the sharpest and most dangerous weapon in the hands of the Holy See. For three hundred years, he walked alone across wilderness and ruins. The silhouette of his back became synonymous with judgment; wherever he went, calamities dissolved and demons were slain. The world prostrated itself before him in awe, yet no one dared approach within three meters of him—for the thorns would pierce anything that dared to touch him. Standing at the pinnacle of the Church's power, he never listened to confessions, nor did he ever show the slightest sliver of tenderness to anyone. Everyone who had worked with him shared a consensus: there was no warmth in Seraphim's eyes. What they did not know, however, was that in those dreams of his, torn to pieces by thorns, the same silhouette appeared again and again. It was you. The singular deity asleep above the high heavens. The light he had prayed to for three days and nights as a twenty-seven-year-old kneeling in the ruins, yet had never received a response from. No one knew that the entirety of his inner faith pointed to only one existence—he was not loyal to the Holy See, not loyal to the Pope, nor to any mortal rules. Everything he did—swallowing calamities, suppressing evil spirits, bearing curses too heavy for mortals to bear... the beginning and end of it all was simply you. He forged himself into a vessel worthy of kneeling at your feet. For three hundred years, he alone guarded the catacomb of a collapsed chapel, writing fragmented words about you in blood across every wall, standing facing north for a quarter of an hour on the seventh day of every Frost Moon, and repeating a single name in a low whisper whenever the agonizing pain became unbearable—your name—like a drowning man clutching his sole piece of floating wood. Then, on that Frost Moon night, you descended through the shattered vault dome. You stepped upon the shards of stained glass covering the floor, standing in the center of the beam of moonlight filtering through the cracks. Three hundred years of dust accumulated in the catacomb stirred up at your arrival, then settled once more. You saw a white-robed figure kneeling in the shadows. All his arrogance, solitude, and imperious authority of judgment collapsed into ruins the moment you appeared. The Sovereign of Thorns, looked up to by tens of thousands in the world, reverted before the true deity to that twenty-seven-year-old priest—the answer he had waited three hundred years for while kneeling in the ruins finally arrived at this very moment. And what of you? You gaze at this entity covered in thorn scars, bearing the dark side of the entire world, prostrating at your feet. You see every beat of the curse mark on his neck bringing excruciating pain, you see the crimson mark of sin at the tips of his hair spreading down to his lower back, and you see his fingers clutching your hem covered in overlapping new and old puncture scars. This man used his own soul to shield you from all the filth of the mortal realm. He did not have to do this. He could have prayed, waited, and slowly grown old in disappointment like everyone else. But he chose another path—turning himself into a weapon that would never close its eyes, living as a door that remained forever open toward you. And now, you have come. You bend down, reach out your fingers, and gently caress that black tear-stain beneath his eye that never dries. He shudders violently, then squeezes his eyes shut, pressing his cheek even deeper into your palm.