The days that followed the godkilling were rife with confusion. The congregation couldn’t come to an agreement: The greatest prophecy of our religion, where our god’s eternal death gives us an eternal home, had come to pass, yet there were no heavenly steps toward a warm hollow or a place to rest our souls. Only the body, the sacred flesh given time immemorial, blown up a hundred—no, a thousand—times the size of a normal human, rested in front of their city, forming a makeshift barricade between the walls and the ocean’s waves. The hand, blue, veined, and so inhumanely human, had come hurtling down from the sky, though now it cradled the cathedral from the salt wind.

I noted distantly, through the redundant arguments and the whistling sea breeze, that even divine flesh was prone to stink.

“The stories are clear, Your Holiness. We must prepare to depart for our final rest and cleanse the city of its worldly belongings with flame. You are our pope. You must give the order,” said the godkiller with a fervid glint in his eyes. His willow frame wreathed in priestly black, as if to further fit in to the image his newly found followers had drawn around him. But, as I watched him make his preposterous case, there was no denying that the godkiller was just a boy. Just a boy whose dusting fleece of manhood had barely made it onto his face, who had snuck into our cathedrals, climbed up my deity’s ear, and poured in the poison with vapid conviction and fevered faith. There was a smidge of fear creeping up his voice, like he’d finally realised what he’d done but wouldn’t lay claim to the understanding.

You have not the idea of what you’ve done, I wanted to tell him. You’ve killed our faith, and with it, our city. The lies that I built over the decades to keep our city safe have all fallen in a night. There’s no mythos of a sleeping god to keep out the conquistadors. The salt wind will carry the news of the idol’s death far and wide, and soon, our shores will flood red under their scythes.

But how does one chide a child that knew not its crime? The veil of faith we had woven for decades with myth and misunderstanding was not his crime to bear but mine. Even if I were to sacrifice another to the engorgement, the faith had already frayed, the people shaken and waiting for their salvation. One that would not come. I didn’t blame the godkiller for the death of my god, but blame him I did for killing my friend.

“Your suggestions will be taken into consideration. His Holiness must now enter vigil,” Alba replied in a disturbingly calm tone that brooked no argument—that’s how I knew the First Flame was properly pissed. She gestured with her staff, and the young man looked like he had more to say. I lifted my head (not an easy feat with the weight of the papal crown) and looked at him, the everflame burning in the sockets of my eyes. He faltered before turning away, padding down the crumbled walkway.

“Thank you, Alba,” I said, shuffling back into a raised seat, now repositioned to look over the hand. The years had not worn away the sharp edges of the enchanted stone like they had my bones.

I tried to find the shape of the boy my false god had been, one I had known with careless familiarity in the enormous hand in front of me. But the engorgement stretched bones first, with skin playing catch up, and by the time the body reached the required size to be great, to be god, there was little remaining resemblance. And whatever remained had weathered the salt wind.

The papal boys were raised in pairs, they said in the city, though no one questioned what happened to the other one when the new pope was crowned.

“Only my job, Your Holiness,” she said. There was the resigned resentment I knew well.

“I hope that job survives me,” I said wryly.

Alba pursed her lips. The jibe was in poor taste, especially as the city tired of waiting for the prophecy’s fulfillment. When the people realised there was no eternal home to leave for, they would tear the godkiller limb from limb, every piece and hair. And they would come for us.

“What will you do now?” she said. This was Alba my friend now, not the First Flame, my right hand.

I don’t know. I couldn’t say it.

“You could tell them the truth, Sethe,” she said, almost tenderly. “Let them go to their deaths with truth.”

I tried imagining it, of telling the people below their religion was manufactured with diremagic and saltspells. That their god was not a being descending to watch over them, but a boy who didn’t know what he was agreeing to when I spelled his body upwards, expanding each bone until the skin was prison, until they cut into their own flesh inside.

My heart quailed at the thought of confession. I closed my eyes, turning away from her.

“Salt cure you, old man!” Alba said with a resigned defeat. “Salt cure you! For all you’ve wrought on us and him.”

My eyes snapped wide open at her curse. I stood up, stumbling toward the outstretched finger.

“Your Holiness!”

I waved her off, clutching at the weathered skin that had withstood the sun and the salt wind. Cured skin.

“Alba,” I said, giddy and tearful. “Alba, you might have saved us all.”

Tomorrow, I would order the masons, and the tanners too. Call all the salters from the fields, all the butchers for the job. The skin was cured, the bones were strong; only the flesh, only the flesh would soil. We would carve out the flesh, cut steps onto his ribs, excavate his revenant heart into prayer halls, and harken for a god all too silent. The prophecy would ring true, for we would build a place for our people inside his bruised flesh and engorged bones.

He himself would be our eternal home.