Blasfemy of the Gods

Tanaka’s heartbeat drummed in his ears. The words of the shadowed man rang through his bones like the echoes of a forgotten prophecy. Do you wish to kneel, or do you wish to reign?

He did not answer immediately. His mind was still catching up to the impossible—the sky without a sun, the symbols burned into his skin, the weight of unseen eyes pressing down on him.

The shadowed man studied him with something between amusement and expectation. Then, with a slow gesture, he raised his hand. The void shifted.

A vision swallowed Tanaka whole.

He saw gods—hundreds of them—not as they were depicted in human stories but as they truly were. Zeus, mighty and resplendent, sat upon his crumbling throne, lightning dull in his grasp. Odin, his single eye burning with defiance, sharpened his spear while ravens whispered of his inevitable doom. Anubis stood at the gates of the underworld, his jackal’s gaze turned toward the heavens, where new angels had taken the seats once belonging to elder deities.

But then Tanaka saw the ones the world had long forgotten.

Obatala, the Yoruba god of creation, carving new beings from white clay, his face grim. Tlāloc, the Aztec rain god, standing amid an empty temple, waiting for sacrifices that would never come. Sedna, the Inuit sea goddess, drifting in the cold abyss, her long fingers weaving storms that no one worshipped anymore.

“They are fading, M’fana,” the shadowed man murmured, pulling Tanaka back to reality. “And they know it. The new god grows stronger. The old ones grow desperate.”

Tanaka clenched his fists. “And you?”

The man grinned. “I am what remains when gods are no longer remembered.”

The void rumbled as he extended a hand. “Choose, Tanaka. Be a pawn of the gods…

or become something more.”