The Grief Of Gods. by |mran

*THE GRIEF OF GODS* *Chapter 1: When the Sky Stopped Praying* The rain did not fall that night. It wept. It came down in thick, black ropes from a sky that had no stars, no moon, and no mercy. The city of Kaveran had not seen sunlight in forty-three days. The priests said the gods were mourning. The scientists said it was an atmospheric anomaly. The people who were still alive knew better. The gods were not mourning. They were angry. Elias Varn stood on the roof of the last standing church in the district and watched the world drown. He was thirty-four years old. He had buried his wife and his daughter three weeks ago. Their names were carved into a piece of wet wood behind him, because the ground was too saturated to take another grave. He was not a priest. He was not a soldier. He was a coroner. And for the last month, his job had been to count the dead. The first sign had been the whispers. At 3:13 AM every night, every radio, every phone, every baby monitor in Kaveran would crackle to life and whisper the same sentence in a voice that was not human: _"We remember what you did."_ No one knew what "it" was. The second sign had been the statues. Every statue of every god in every temple, church, and shrine across the world opened its eyes on the same night. Stone eyes, bleeding black water. And then they began to cry. The third sign was the silence of the heavens. Prayers went unanswered. Rituals failed. The faithful knelt in blood and got nothing back but echoes. And then the fourth sign began. It started with grief. Not ordinary grief. This was weaponized. People would wake up and suddenly remember every person they had ever lost, all at once, with the same intensity as the moment of loss. Fathers collapsed in supermarkets remembering sons they lost twenty years ago. Wives tore their hair out over miscarriages from a decade prior. The grief was so loud it had a sound. You could hear it in the streets — a low, keening hum, like the planet itself was sobbing. And where grief pooled, things came. They didn’t have names. The church called them “Penitents.” The military called them “Anomalies.” Elias called them what they were: the dead, but wrong. They looked like people you loved. They had your mother’s face, but their eyes were hollow and their mouths were full of teeth that clicked when they spoke. They would stand at the foot of your bed and say, “You forgot me.” And if you answered, if you said their name, they would take something from you. A memory. A finger. Your ability to feel warm. Kaveran was dying one grief at a time. That night, Elias got a call. It was not on his phone. It was in his head. _“Come to the cathedral. She is waiting.”_ He knew whose voice it was. He should not have gone. The roads were rivers. The Penitents walked freely after midnight. But grief makes you stupid, and he was so, so tired of being alone. The cathedral of Saint Maris was a mile away. It took him two hours to get there. The water was up to his waist. Bodies floated past him. Some of them opened their eyes. The doors of the cathedral were open. Inside, the air was colder. The stained glass windows were all shattered, but moonlight still came through, even though there was no moon. And there, at the altar, stood a woman. She wore a white dress. It was the same dress Elias had buried his wife in. Her hair was wet. Her feet were bare and bleeding. She turned to him and smiled. It was his wife’s smile. Perfect. “Elias,” she said. “You came.” “My god,” he whispered. “You’re dead.” “I am,” she said. “We all are. But the gods are grieving too, Elias. And their grief is bigger than ours. So big it’s breaking the world.” Behind her, the altar was not stone anymore. It was a slab of something dark and wet, and on it lay dozens of bodies. Children. Old men. All of them with their chests open, and where their hearts should have been, there were small, glowing stones. Black and pulsing. “The gods lost someone too,” the woman said. “A long time ago. And they have never forgiven us for it. So now they are taking payment. One heart for every year they have mourned.” Elias took a step back. “What do you want from me?” The woman tilted her head. Her smile did not waver. “I want you to choose. Come with me. Be with me again. Or stay here. And watch what happens when a god’s grief finally runs out.” Outside, the keening sound got louder. The rain started falling up. On the altar, one of the black stones cracked. From inside it, something screamed. And Elias realized, with a horror that froze him to the bone, that the scream sounded like his daughter. The doors of the cathedral slammed shut. ---