Chapter 4: Lessons in Godhood

Isaac drifted above the world, letting himself hang weightless while the panic of the last few minutes bled out of him.

The memory of that impossibly vast presence—that burning, searching gaze—still clung to him. He didn't know who or what had looked at him, but he was sure of one thing: if they had wanted to snuff him out, they could have.

That thought did nothing for his nerves.

'Okay, step one: don't get caught again. Step two: figure out what I just did before I accidentally trigger an apocalypse.'

He focused on the faint thread still pulsing in the back of his awareness. It was distant but unbroken, stretching eastward.

That was the farmer, he realized. The man whose prayer he'd stolen.

'Answered,' he corrected himself.

Isaac hesitated, then gave the thread the slightest tug.

For a moment, he felt a rush of emotion that wasn't his own—relief, joy, something so warm it made him ache. He jerked back instinctively, like he had touched a live wire.

'Right, that's a thing now. Good to know.'

So he could… feel his believers? Followers? Worshippers? Whatever you called them. That was new. And unsettling.

He decided to test something.

Carefully, he pulled at the thread again, softer this time, just enough to feel it hum against his awareness. He felt a flicker of thought—the man thinking of his wife, his son, the rain soaking the earth. It wasn't words, not really, more like impressions, emotions colored by gratitude.

The emotion deepened, no longer just gratitude, but something heavier. Not worship, exactly.

Need.

A raw, gnawing kind of relief that made Isaac's formless chest tighten. This man had been praying not just for rain, but for survival. The edges of the thread trembled with images that weren't quite memories—his wife coughing over a pot of boiling roots, a child with arms too thin for his age, goats that once filled the yard now nothing but empty pens.

Yet, because of Isaac, that man believed he'd been heard.

It was a beautiful thing.

And a terrifying one.

Then the man thought of the flowers.

Isaac stiffened.

Even from this high up, he could sense them—a circle of black marks on the field, radiating something cold and sharp that set Isaac's teeth on edge, metaphorically speaking.

'Yeah,' he said quietly, 'that's probably not normal.'

He turned his attention elsewhere.

There were other prayers, countless ones, flickering across the planet like distant radio signals. Most were too faint for him to make out, but when he focused, he could catch snatches of them.

A soldier begging to see home again.

A woman asking for her sick child to recover.

A thief praying to not get caught.

Each one was a thread he could, if he wanted, grab hold of.

He didn't.

Another prayer flared—brief, sharp, and full of panic.

A child's voice.

Isaac turned toward it instinctively, catching only the tail end: something about a cave, a brother who hadn't come out, and the fear of monsters.

He hovered there a long moment, torn.

Just one prayer.

Just one miracle.

But the presence—the one that had burned through him—still haunted the edges of his mind. He looked away.

And the thread faded.

The memory of that vast, burning presence still made him wary. If answering one prayer nearly got him obliterated, what would happen if he started handing out miracles like candy?

Still, he couldn't deny the temptation.

Isaac floated lower until he was just above a forest canopy. Sunlight dappled the leaves, birds wheeled between the branches, and somewhere below, a river murmured its way through the undergrowth.

'Okay,' he said. 'Let's try something small.'

He focused on a single patch of forest floor and thought, 'Grow.'

At first, nothing happened.

Then a tiny sprout broke through the soil, unfurling into a pale green shoot.

Isaac grinned despite himself.

'Nice! Nature magic unlocked. Kind of?'

He tried again, this time with more focus. Two more sprouts broke through the dirt, then three, until a small circle of greenery stood where there had been bare ground.

It was slow, clumsy, and felt like pushing molasses uphill, but it worked.

Then, just as before, a single black flower bloomed among them.

The soil around it darkened unnaturally, the moisture thickening into something viscous, almost oily. Its petals opened in silence, and for a brief moment, Isaac thought they twitched toward him.

Isaac frowned.

'Huh? Why do you keep showing up?'

The flower pulsed faintly, just like the ones in the farmer's field. It wasn't hostile, exactly, but it radiated a kind of presence that made Isaac's awareness itch.

He reached toward it—and the world tilted.

Suddenly, he could see not just the flower, but the ground beneath it, the moisture in the soil, the faint network of roots spreading out like veins.

He could feel the life in the insects crawling through the dirt, the trees breathing around him, the distant presence of a deer moving cautiously through the brush.

There was no boundary to his perception—just infinite layering. He felt ants navigating root tunnels, tasting the molecules in the soil. He felt the pressure of stones compacting over centuries, the slow drift of tree branches turning toward the sun. Every thought in the forest—the hunger of wolves, the still patience of snakes, the curious tilt of a crow's head—bled into him.

He tried to pull back, but it was like trying to breathe underwater.

For a moment, he wasn't Isaac anymore.

He was everything.

And then he wasn't.

It was overwhelming.

Isaac pulled back with a gasp, his awareness snapping shut like a trap.

'Yikes,' he thought shakily. 'Lesson learned: don't poke the creepy magic flower unless you want an info-dump from Mother Nature.'

Still, the experiment had taught him something. The flowers weren't just decoration, somehow, they were tying him more closely to the world.

Which meant… he could probably use them.

He didn't know how yet, but the idea already took root in his mind.

Isaac drifted higher, letting the forest shrink beneath him.

He still had a thousand questions:

Could he see other gods if he tried?

Was there a limit to how many prayers he could answer?

Could he hide from that foreboding presence forever?

But one thing was clear: he wasn't powerless anymore.

And if he was going to survive in this world, he needed to get stronger.

He turned his attention back to the faint thread leading east, to the man in the cracked field.

Isaac hesitated, then sent a single, wordless impulse down the line. It wasn't a message exactly, more like a feeling.

'I heard you.'

On the other end, he felt the man stiffen, then bow his head. The emotion that came back through the thread was a mixture of gratitude and fear, sharp enough to make Isaac wince.

The thread pulsed hard—too hard—and for a second, Isaac saw the man's face.

Not just a memory. A present image.

Tarin, kneeling in the mud, head bowed, eyes wide with something between faith and fear. Not because of the rain. Because of what he had felt.

Because someone had answered.

The moment snapped shut like a closing door. Isaac cut the connection fast, the emotional whiplash leaving him dizzy.

'That is going to be a problem.'

Because now he knew he could talk back.

And if he could talk back, it meant sooner or later, he was going to have to decide what kind of god he wanted to be.

Far below, the black flower in the forest turned its petals skyward.

And for the briefest moment, it smiled.