Chapter 29 – Divinity (1)
Weeks passed.
Sword drills, mana lectures, late-night experiments with nails and wire – they all blurred together into a rhythm that almost felt normal.
Almost.
On this particular morning, instead of being out on the training field sweating under Garen's whistle, I was sitting on a polished bench in a high, echoing hall on the Divination side of the Academy.
"Divinity and Doctrine – Introduction."
Or, in normal words: state religion class.
Stone walls. Tall windows. A carved symbol of a ring encircling a stylised sun on the far wall. The mark of the state Church.
The mark of Vastriel.
The professor – or priest, really – stood at the front in white and gold. His robe was trimmed with the same sun-ring sigil, embroidered so many times it was almost aggressive.
"Settle, children," he said, voice smooth and practised. "Today, we speak not just of doctrine, but of why you even have an Empire to live in."
That got everyone's attention.
Even mine.
He picked up a pointer and tapped a large wall map – not the detailed one used in geography, but a simplified circle with rough landmasses sketched like petals around the centre.
"The world before the Covenant," he began, "was not the calm realm you know now. In the age of ash and teeth, demonkin and beastkin pressed from four sides."
His pointer traced the edges.
"From the north and south, demonkin hordes – twisted by cursed mana, burning and devouring. From the east and west, beastkin tribes, swollen in number and driven by hungers they could no longer contain. Human kingdoms stood in the middle, divided, ignorant, small."
He let that hang.
Even the nobles in the front row were listening now, backs straight.
"Four tides of destruction," he said lightly. "No escape. No safe shore. Humanity would have been ground to bone between them."
A murmur ran through the room.
I watched the map, and somewhere in the back of my mind, remembered other worlds' maps. Other wars. None of them had a god officially listed in the credits.
Here, it did.
"Then," the priest continued, "Lumia looked down upon the chaos."
He gestured upward, toward the carved ring-and-sun sigil.
"And the God above the light… answered. Vastriel, Lord of the Universe."
At the word "Universe," a few students bowed their heads reflexively.
My fingers twitched.
Universe.
On Earth, that meant… everything. Space. Stars. Galaxies. The whole fabric of reality.
Here, it meant something else.
The priest turned from the map and wrote on the slate in flowing script.
[ Universe = Lumia, the Sun, and all beneath their light. ]
Universe, in this world, was just… here.
One star. One world.
Nothing beyond.
"The Universe, children," he said, tapping the word, "is not some endless cold void, as certain fringe heresies whisper. It is Lumia and the sun above, and all land and sea under that light. All that Vastriel has chosen to show."
My lips pressed together.
So for them, "Universe" was basically "our sky and our ground plus the star that warms us."
Neat. Contained. Manageable.
Wrong, but I wasn't about to raise my hand and say, "Actually, there are likely other stars and—"
I liked my neck unburnt.
"Now," the priest went on, "at the height of that four-sided war, when demonkin and beastkin pressed in and human kings fought each other for scraps, Vastriel acted."
He flipped the map to a painted panel.
Six figures stood upon a ruined plain, cloaks whipping in some unseen wind. Their faces were indistinct, but their silhouettes were heroic in the way only religious paintings could manage.
"Six heroes," he said softly. "Chosen from different peoples. Different lands. Different sins."
He pointed them out one by one.
"One, a fallen knight."
"Two, a beastkin who turned from her pack."
"Three, a demonkin who tore out his own core rather than devour another child."
"Four, a hunted mage."
"Five, a nameless slave."
"Six, a king who had already lost his kingdom."
The chalk tapped the panel after each name, quietly.
"Vastriel gathered them," the priest said, "and showed them the future."
The room went still.
"This is the core of our Covenant," he continued, eyes sweeping over us. "Vastriel does not merely command. He reveals. He shows the path – the end of all things as they would be, if no one moved. If no one changed. And to those who believe, he grants a chance to step off that path."
He turned, wrote again.
[ Vastriel – God of the Universe. He Who Shows the Future. ]
"Understand this," he said. "Our state religion is not just worship of power. It is gratitude for warning."
I almost laughed.
Quietly.
In my head.
Warning.
Being shown the future once, violently, with bullets and a collapsing life.
Being shoved back into the past to try again.
Yeah.
I knew something about that.
"And so," the priest continued, "Vastriel showed the six heroes the end. Cities burning. Oceans boiling. Lumia's light dimmed above a world devoured by four tides."
He rapped the panel sharply.
"They saw it. They believed. And belief was the key."
His voice dropped.
"To those who truly believe, Vastriel opens a road. Not easy. Not gentle. A road through blood and loss. But a road away from the end they first saw."
He looked out over us again.
"The six walked that road. They united scattered armies. Calmed beastkin tribes. Bound demonkin with new oaths. They bled. They broke. But in the end, the world did not burn. And that is why there is an Empire for you to complain about homework in."
A few students snorted softly.
The priest smiled thinly.
"Thus, the Church of Vastriel became the spine of the state. We hold the records of visions. We teach the shape of the Universe. We counsel those who must make choices that ripple through generations."
He underlined "Universe" again.
"Remember," he said. "When you see that word in scripture, it does not mean countless distant stars we will never touch. It means this: Lumia above. Sun, moon, land, sea. Our world. The only one Vastriel has shown us. Anything beyond is not our concern."
My hand tightened around the quill.
Not our concern.
From a religious point of view, maybe. From a physics point of view… ignoring the rest of creation because your god hadn't drawn a map that far felt like cheating.
"You will find," the priest added, "that Divination Campus trains its clergy and administrators to think in these terms. Not of 'infinite possibilities' like Staff theoreticians dream of. Of paths Vastriel has already laid down, and the choices that move us between them."
Paths.
Future.
Being shown what would happen if nothing changed.
Belief as the key to being allowed to change it.
I stared at the words on the slate and, for a moment, the classroom faded.
Was that what this regression was?
A "road" granted to someone who believed the first ending?
Did I believe?
I believed in bullets.
In whiteboards.
In a world ending.
In another life where Father died.
In another run where everything burned.
If something had shown me that, had I chosen this?
Or had I just been shoved?
"Milton."
I blinked.
The priest was looking at me.
"Yes, sir?" I said.
"You are frowning," he observed. "Do you object to the doctrine?"
A few heads turned.
Tamara, two rows ahead, shifted slightly to see my face. Lyra, off to one side, had her quill hovering over her notes.
"I'm… just thinking," I said carefully. "About the six heroes. Did Vastriel show only them the future? Or did others receive visions and fail?"
The priest's expression flickered – just for a heartbeat – from smug certainty to something sharper.
"Ah," he said. "A dangerous question. Good."
He leaned on the desk.
"Scripture tells us of the six who walked the road," he said. "There were others who were shown pieces. Not all believed. Not all obeyed. Some tried to run from what they saw. Some tried to profit from it."
His eyes were very calm.
"Most of those stories do not end well."
He straightened again, smile returning.
"But that is for a later lecture. For now, remember this: Vastriel's gift is not simply knowledge. It is the chance to act on it. Those who pretend they see the future, yet do nothing, are liars. Those who see and refuse to move are cowards."
He tapped the panel where the six heroes stood.
"Those who see, believe, and step forward anyway… we call them heroes."
The class fell quiet.
My heart beat a little harder than before.
See.
Believe.
Step.
I looked at the rough painting of six vague figures standing before a broken world.
Then down at my own ink-stained hands.
I didn't know if Vastriel existed.
I didn't know if he cared.
But I did know this: I'd seen endings.
More than once.
And I was already walking a road to change them.
State religion or not, they could keep their sermons.
The only thing that mattered was whether, when everything wrapped back around to the edge of disaster again, I'd done enough.
The priest cleared his throat.
"Now," he said lightly, as if he hadn't just dropped that weight on us, "please write down the names of the six traditional hero Aspects and their associated virtues. This will be on your exam. The saving of the world is important, but so are grades."
Quills began scratching.
I dipped mine in ink and wrote, slowly:
Vastriel – shows the future.
Universe – Lumia, sun, this world only.
Six heroes – walked the road away from the end.
I hesitated, then added, in the margin where no one else would see:
And one regressor, currently pretending to be a normal student, trying not to make it worse.