Still, the priest wouldn’t let go, and one by one, more joined in. For a moment, it seemed like they’d completely stopped Adonis’s movements, when one of them hurtled away from Adonis. His chest was black, like it had been burned—but it wasn’t fire. Adonis’s bare left hand grabbed another priest by his mask, and a dark stain moved over it, charring and distorting it.
The priest shuddered. With Adonis’s grip on his mask, the man’s hands fell limply to his sides, and his body twitched as he crumbled to the floor. Adonis did the same to the other priests. His rust-colored claws swept them away, causing flesh, cloth, and metal alike to decay.
He roared. Adonis let out a cry that erupted from his throat, which was losing the ability to form words. Within that desperate, guttural howl, he spoke his final question.
“What is God—Deus Ex Machina?!”
At that moment, everything suddenly went completely silent. The priests said nothing, not even screaming as he cut them down. The only one making noise, screaming and producing cruel tearing noises, was Adonis.
The king, too, remained silent, observing Adonis the whole time. It was as if he was trying to discern what drove Adonis, what stood at his back, pushing him to do this. But when Adonis asked his last question, that changed.
“Skeptic…,” whispered the king’s two faces, followed by the sound of the God Tree stirring its branches, ordering the priests to stop moving. They all retreated at once.
“Finally feel like answering me, King?” Adonis bellowed.
His breathing was heavy, his shoulders rising and falling as he climbed up to the stage. He was engulfed in emotion, the mental pressure of being before the king threatening to crush him.
“King, is me being here today—me doing this—part of God’s preordained harmony, too?!”
The king’s faces suddenly narrowed their two sets of eyes. Maybe it was his expression of pity at this inconsequential young man driven to his limits with doubt.
A gruesome expression came over Adonis’s face, fangs bared, every strand of fur on his body standing on end, silently demanding an answer.
“Perhaps…it is, Skeptic.”
“What…?!”
“All is within harmony preordained and contains the entirety of tonality, at the center of which sits God and the Sword Tree He occupies. Your doubts do not stray from the Thema. Behold, can you not see the aftermath of what your sword hath wrought behind you?”
The king’s words rang out sonorously, melting into silence. Adonis’s expression stiffened. He stood frozen to the spot with that gruesome grin still fixed to his face, his glinting, glaring eyes turning back to look behind him, bit by bit. His breathing was haggard, but by the time he had turned completely around, he choked up.
There was a pause. And then a wheezing, stifled laugh spilled from his lips.
There was nothing there.
No trace of that hard, bloody battle, none of the dozens of corpses he’d cut down, no spatters of blood, no shattered masks. It was all gone, simply lingering in Adonis’s mind as a baseless delusion. The only thing left were the remains of the swords Adonis had used, littering the ground in their warped, broken forms.
“No way…,” Adonis murmured, holding back laughter. “There’s no way…”
Filled with desperation, Adonis had chosen to resist and wage war on God, but now all traces of his struggle were gone. He hurriedly patted down his clothes. He’d bathed in blood on his way to the throne—he should be drenched in it. But there wasn’t so much as a drop. The dry fabric seemed to whisper that there was no way Adonis could ever have rebelled against country, king, or God.
“Surely you already know,” said the king’s top face.
“That the reason for your doubts is but another affirmation of the Thema,” finished the lower face.
“Trial ashes are spread so that the God Tree may expand Its branches and support Its seeds.”
“It begins as lethal ashes and, by ravaging the body of a Solist, becomes sacred ashes.”
“Cancerous swords are steel cells that propagate endlessly…”
“They bring death to death itself, producing an eternal being.”
“You have been an outsider since birth, owing to your curse.”
“Such outsiders are granted a great aptitude to rule from God and are raised to a higher tone.”
“Thus, the Examiner.”
“Thus, the King Minor.”
Adonis’s face drained of color. “King Minor…?”
“The king is the greatest servant to God, who, through that role, is allowed to rule over the people.”
“Yet two tones are needed to assume the position of king.”
“A king to be the visible face of God, reigning over the lives of the people…”
“A king to be the hidden face of God, reigning over the deaths of the people…”
“Are you joking…?!” Adonis shouted, wrapping his arms around himself and gripping his own shoulders as if in agony. His fur still stood on end, and his teeth were bared at the king. “That wasn’t what I wanted…!”
“What is it you seek, then?” the king asked, his voices solemnly speaking in unison.
“Well…”
“Behold, for what you seek is already within the harmony predetermined by God,” the king demanded with grave conviction.
Adonis followed the king’s gaze once more, looking up at the spectator seats above the stage. A blue shadow near a set of closed doors was descending the steps toward them. A priest. He carried in his hands a set of blue robes, a mask, and a sword. When he reached the stage, the priest held them up like tribute, standing across from Adonis.