“Goddess… why won’t you look at me even once?”
In Bishop Frey’s prayer room, Priest Ralph stared up at the statue of the Goddess of Wisdom and Life with tragic devotion etched across his face.
Three years. Three years of daily worship, study, service—still no response. No sign. No blessing.
Rhine arrived at the church for one day and—
Ralph’s thoughts spiraled, then snapped back with a cough.
“Wait. It was the Huntress who answered him. Right. Right. Goddess of Wisdom and Life, forgive your faithful servant for the stray thought—”
He performed a frantic little chest-cross, ending his private meltdown.
Beside him, Bishop Frey was doing what bishops did when miracles happened: asking questions with the patience of a man trying not to panic.
“Any whispers?” the bishop asked Rhine—Ethan—peering over his half-moon spectacles. “Anything… wrong with your body?”
Mutations. Madness. The kind of side effects people pretended only happened to others until it happened to them.
“No,” Ethan said calmly. “Nothing like that.”
Bishop Frey should have been relieved.
Instead, he looked more stunned.
On Storm Island, the normal pattern was simple: awaken an ability, become pre-Transcendent, then spend months—or years—earning a god’s response through devotion. Ralph was living proof; he’d been pre-Transcendent for three long years.
Ethan had done it overnight.
Rumors from other islands said it could happen in ten days, maybe a few weeks, for rare cases.
But one day?
Bishop Frey had never seen it. Not once.
Ethan had prepared for this conversation the moment he advanced. As an apprentice priest living inside the Violet Bloom Church, he couldn’t hide a change like this even if he wanted to.
And he didn’t want to. Not here.
The bishop sighed—quietly, carefully—then spoke as if he were fitting puzzle pieces together by force.
“So… it was the Huntress’s arrangement.”
He traced the story Ethan had given: washed onto an island by shipwreck, stumbling onto the remains of a long-dead hunter, finding the revolver beneath old cloth, surviving the pirates’ test, and then finally receiving the Huntress’s response.
The tale was neat. Too neat. But it was neat in the way gods often were—if you didn’t look too closely.
The bishop forced a warm smile.
“Then from this day on, Mr. Rhine, you should walk the Hunter’s path with sincerity.”
It sounded like encouragement.
It was also surrender.
Because if the Huntress had claimed him, the church couldn’t.
And that stung. Bishop Frey served the Goddess of Wisdom and Life. If Rhine became a Dawncaller, he’d be a true asset to the church in future Transcendent affairs.
But why had the Huntress answered him instead—after the Goddess of Wisdom and Life had already healed him so completely?
Did gods… compete for believers?
The thought made Bishop Frey’s worldview wobble.
Worse: he couldn’t read Rhine’s fate at all. No clear thread. No comforting certainty. Only events stacking up like dominoes that had been tipped by unseen hands.
Eventually, the bishop cleared his throat.
“Now that you are a Hunter… what do you plan to do next?”
Ethan caught the shift in tone. The bishop’s worry, the subtle distance in the honorifics. He let it happen and used it.
“Bishop,” Ethan said, choosing his words like stepping-stones, “the shipwreck cost me parts of my memory. The Jellyfish’s crew brought me to Storm Island, but I’m still… without a home.”
He spread his hands in a practiced, humble gesture. “Even as Transcendent, if I leave the church, I truly have nowhere to go. What would you advise?”
Bishop Frey lit up like a man offered exactly the answer he wanted.
“Then stay,” he said at once, opening his arms. “Stay at Violet Bloom Church. Treat it as your home.”
His voice softened. “We like you, child. And the library here—knowledge will help you walk whatever road remains.”
Power ruled this world. Every institution wanted strength on its side. The bishop didn’t want Ethan to leave.
And Ethan—despite all his secrets—didn’t want to drift again, not when the church offered food, shelter, books, and that blessed healing pool.
So they made a deal without calling it a deal.
Ethan stayed.
Bishop Frey was delighted enough to bend the rules. He promoted Ethan early, appointing him a full priest on the spot.
Ethan was delighted for a simpler reason: the title came with a stipend. Two hundred gold a month.
Early-summer wind swept through Windrest City’s outer district.
Ralph walked beside Ethan with a defeated slump, while Ethan’s mood was bright enough to be suspicious.
They were headed to the Transcendent materials market.
Ethan already had a shopping list. If he could buy the right ingredients, a Luck Potion—and several other formulas—would finally be within reach.