Reborn As A Slave: The Fallen God's Revenge

Chapter 9

Not the warmth he usually knew, not the fire he had once controlled with a single movement of his hand, not the heat of battle that had always accompanied his steps like a loyal shadow. This was a different kind of warmth. Small. Simple. Like a thin blanket laid over a body that had been frozen far too long without realizing it.

God Mervous opened his eyes slowly.

The ceiling above him was not rough, damp stone. Not the ceiling of a prison cell with long cracks he had once memorized one by one because there was nothing else to look at. This was different. Higher. Cleaner. There were delicate carvings at its corners, motifs of winding plants rendered with precision, not excessive ornamentation, but enough to indicate that this room belonged to someone of importance. Candlelight flickered softly from the right, casting shadows that danced along the walls in a calm and steady rhythm.

He did not recognize this place.

God Mervous tried to move, and immediately regretted it.

Pain surged from his shoulder through every part of his body at once, like a current detonating from a single point and not stopping until it reached every extremity. He clenched his teeth, holding back any sound from escaping, forcing himself to stay still. This mortal body was more fragile than he had calculated, or more precisely, the lashing yesterday had been deeper than he realized while receiving it.

Slowly, with as little movement as possible, he turned his head.

And saw Teresa.

The woman was seated in a small chair beside the cot, her body angled slightly forward with her back not resting against anything, the posture of someone accustomed to sitting straight but currently concentrating on something that had drawn her attention elsewhere. Her hands were wringing a white cloth into a basin of water that had already turned faintly pink. Her hair had come somewhat loose from whatever neat arrangement she must have worn in the morning, a few strands falling thin against the sides of her face. She had not yet noticed that the man before her had opened his eyes.

God Mervous watched her in silence.

In candlelight like this, Teresa's resemblance to the Mother Goddess felt painful in a way that was different from usual. Not painful like a knife, more like a pressure that came from deep within the bone, from a place that could not be pointed to. The contours of her face, the way her hair fell to one side of her shoulder, the way the woman drew her brows together slightly when concentrating, all of it was too familiar, until God Mervous's chest felt as though it were being wrung from the inside by an invisible hand.

But this was not the Mother Goddess.

The Mother Goddess was gone. He himself had witnessed it, or at least, that was what he had believed with all the fury that had once burned through him until he tore down the gates of the kingdom of Megarana with his own hands, until he could no longer tell the difference between will and vengeance.

"You're awake."

Not a question. Teresa said it quietly, evenly, without lifting her gaze from the cloth she was wringing. Her tone was not surprised, not gentle, and not cold either, only like someone confirming something she had already known for several seconds.

God Mervous did not answer.

Teresa finally looked up. Her eyes met God Mervous's, and for a moment, the two of them simply looked at each other without saying anything. Neither turned away first for several seconds, until Teresa finally did, returning to her work with an expression that had not changed.

"Silence is fine." She picked up a clean cloth from the pile beside her, dipped it into the warm water, then wrung out the excess. "But don't move too much. Some of your wounds are still deep and only halfway closed."

She drew closer then, sitting on the edge of the cot at just the right distance, not so far as to feel awkward, not so close as to cross something she had not defined. Her hands began wiping the wound on God Mervous's upper arm, and her touch was light. Far lighter than God Mervous would have expected from someone who had looked at him yesterday with a gaze nearly as sharp as Libradon's.

Several moments passed in a silence that was not entirely uncomfortable. Only the sound of cloth dipping into water, being wrung, then pressed carefully back into place. A small, repeated sound, like a metronome that calmed without intending to.

"Why did you bring me here."

It came out on its own, not a planned question, more like something that had been circling inside him for too long and had finally found a way out.

Teresa did not stop working. Did not lift her face, did not pause to consider her words. "Because I misjudged you."

The sentence was simple in a way that made it heavy in its own right. No defense. No lengthy explanation. No undercurrent of wanting something in return, only an acknowledgment delivered in the manner of someone who had already decided something and felt no need to make it sound larger than it was.

God Mervous studied the profile of the woman's face from the side. Her sharp cheekbones. The clean line of her jaw visible in the candlelight. There was something in that face he had never found in the face of the Mother Goddess, something sharper, more guarded, like someone who had long since learned that the world does not always make room for softness.

"Your servant," he said then, his voice still hoarse from a long sleep that had not truly been sleep. "What did she tell you?"

Teresa dipped the cloth into the basin, pausing for a moment with it still in her hands. "She said she saw someone." Her voice was careful, like someone measuring the weight of each word before setting it down. "A girl. Who looked very much like me."

The room suddenly felt quieter than before, though nothing had changed, the candles still flickered, the wind still brushed against the outer walls now and then. But there was something different in the air.

God Mervous did not move. But his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, and his eyes, which had been heavy and dim, now held something inside them, something that glowed faintly, like embers presumed dead that still carried heat beneath their ash.

"Impossible," he said at last. His voice was low. Flat in a way that felt forced.

Teresa glanced over briefly, observing the change in the man's face with a look that did not judge, only watched. "That is what she said."

"Impossible." He repeated the word more softly, this time more to himself than to Teresa. "She was already—" The sentence broke off midway, unfinished, hanging in the air.

Teresa did not press. She did not ask who or what had happened or anything else she instinctively wanted to know. She simply continued her work, letting the unfinished words remain in the air without being pushed anywhere.

And precisely because of that, God Mervous continued on his own.

His thoughts moved fast, tracing every possibility, dismissing them one by one with the precision he had spent years honing. He had been there. He had witnessed it himself. Nothing survived that kind of destruction, no body could withstand the force he had unleashed that night.

But if it was impossible, why was there a girl resembling the Mother Goddess wandering near the southern border?

Why was Teresa, with the same face, with the same way of making his chest feel too full for a single breath, standing before him now, not as a painful memory but as someone real, whose hands were warm and felt deliberate when pressing cloth against his wounds?

Coincidence. That one word surfaced and he dismissed it immediately. There was no such thing as coincidence among gods, no such thing as coincidence in a war that had been going on this long.

Then another thought slipped in, slow and painful like a sliver of glass that cannot be seen but is felt the moment a foot comes down, what if he had been wrong?

What if the rage that had consumed him, the vengeance that had driven every step he took for years, the war he had begun with full conviction and hands that did not tremble, what if all of it stood on a foundation not as solid as he had believed?

What if the loss that lay at the root of everything, was not as complete as he had been certain it was?

That thought was not born tonight. It had existed for a long time in the darkest corner of his mind, kept tightly locked because it was too dangerous to let wander. But this small opening, the servant's account of a girl, of a face that should no longer exist in any world, made that lock feel just a little less tight.

"Hey."

Teresa's voice pulled him back, not loud, not urgent, but enough to sever the thread of thought that had nearly wound itself around him.

The woman was looking at him with an expression he found difficult to name. Not pity, pity was too soft for eyes like those. Not mere curiosity. More like someone who had noticed something and decided that what she saw was worth remarking on.

"Your wounds are still open." Her tone did not shift, flat and direct. "Don't spend your strength thinking too hard tonight."

God Mervous held his gaze on the woman longer than was necessary. "Where did your servant see her?"

Teresa paused slightly, weighing whether to answer or not, before finally saying, "At the market. Near the southern border."

"What did she look like?"

"I haven't asked for more details." Teresa wrapped his arm with a clean cloth, her fingers moving neatly and with certainty. "But I will find out."

That last sentence came out on its own, not a planned promise, not a carefully considered offer. Just something she said before she herself had decided to say it. Teresa did not explain why she wanted to find out, did not add conditions or questions in return. She simply tied off the last bandage neatly, set her hands in her lap, and was quiet.

God Mervous did not answer. His eyes returned to the ceiling, tracing the carvings at its corners that felt too ordered, too calm for the thoughts churning beneath them.

*Impossible,* something in his mind said, quieter this time. *This cannot be.*

But the conviction was not as firm as before. The wall still stood, but something had cracked near its foundation, a thin fissure he could no longer ignore simply by looking away.

Teresa did not rise to leave.

She remained seated there, looking at her own hands that had gone slightly red from the warm water, or perhaps not looking at anything at all. God Mervous looked at the ceiling. Neither spoke, neither filled the silence with anything unnecessary.

The wind outside moved gently. The sound of leaves brushing against each other drifted faintly through the gap in the window that had not been shut all the way, a small sound he did not usually notice, but tonight it came through more clearly than it should have.

Time felt different in this room. Slower. Softer. Like something that had been taut was being allowed to loosen slightly, though not fully released.

He did not know how long they had been like this. One minute, ten, half an hour, his exhausted body did not give him signals he could trust. All he knew was that beside him, Teresa remained seated and still. Not leaving. Not filling the silence with words that were not needed. Not asking about the things he knew she wanted to ask.

Simply there.

And God Mervous, though his mind was still full of questions that had not met their answers, though inside his chest something was beginning to crack slowly like earth after a drought that had gone on too long, did not send the woman away.

He only closed his eyes.

And let that small, simple warmth stay a little longer than he should have allowed.