Chapter 44: Ch44 Leap Of Faith (or Not)
The old man bowed so low his forehead almost kissed the floor. For a ridiculous second Luther sat frozen, eyes wide, pulse thudding like a drum. Then sense prickled through the daze: this was absurd. He jolted up and grabbed the Father’s shoulder with both hands, hauling him upright.
"Don’t do that," Luther barked, half panic, half mock authority. "You’re an elder. Elders are fragile. You cough once and the whole lot of you go brittle." Luther said, not even caring he was talking to someone 50 years older than him.
The Father only laughed — a booming, full-bodied laugh that filled the room and bounced off the polished walls like a bell. It was absurdly loud for someone who had been knelt over as if the world were collapsing.
Luther blinked. The sound lodged in his head and, of all things, he pictured Jobin: the tavern owner, stooping and laughing, the same careless, booming cackle after a good prank. It was an utterly useless mental image, and Luther hated that his brain conjured it now. He rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. Great. Even my subconscious ships me back to the tavern.
"I’m perfectly fine, don’t worry" the Father said between chuckles, beating his chest as if to prove his robustness. "The poison took little to no hold. A body touched by the divine heals differently."
"Divine, right," Luther muttered, the sarcasm slipping out before he could clamp it down. "Because that’s the sort of thing you say while the floor still smells like burnt offerings. Sure. Very reassuring."
The Father’s smile softened. "You must not scoff. There are things you do not yet understand."
"Enlighten me then," Luther said, grabbing the staff Aithur had once held in the temple — not to menace, but because he liked to stand with something vertical to lean on. "Tell me what miracle scribbles in your ledger make me the world’s number-one project."
The Father’s bright eyes went grave. He took a step back, then nodded slowly as if confirming something he had only whispered to himself for fifty years. "Perhaps it is too soon. You do not yet believe, and yet—" He gestured toward Luther’s ears with a gentleness that would have been at home in a whispered benediction. "Listen, child. The prophecy given to us spoke of one who would wield magic without a crystal. The child of Asmethan."
Luther’s mouth tightened. He had half a mind to laugh, half a mind to scream. He tried a quip to bridge the panic. "So I’m a walking horoscop—no, wait, a walking magical anomaly. Cute. Do I come with warranty?"
The Father did not smile. He took slow steps to the window and, like a man performing an honored ritual, pointed. "You will believe, eventually, when you see the mark. Look."
Luther’s heart thudded so loud it drowned the Father’s words. He moved without thinking — a clumsy lunge to the mirror he’d noticed at the dresser. His reflection was a stranger: pale, pupils raw, hair mussed from sleep. He raised a hand and his fingers hovered over his ear like someone checking for a burn.
Gold crawled along the thin skin where the crystal pin used to sit — small filigree lines, curling and warm to the touch. Two faint, gilded sigils, like molten script inked at the base of each ear. They caught the light even under the dim room lamp, humming faint and impossible.
"Of course they’d mark—of course," he said, and the words tasted like rust. "This is exactly the brand I wanted this week. Top of my ’Things to Avoid’ list."
The Father watched him with the steady patience of someone who had planted a sapling and waited decades for it to take root. "Asmethan left His sign. It is not a brand of shame. It is a promise. The world is shifting, child. The hour has come."
Luther pressed his thumb into the warm gold and felt an odd, brief tingle that walked up his arm like a shy insect. Images thrummed at the edge of memory — the motes of light, the Yarian, the flash of Alisa’s laugh. That wild, stolen power in the cave. He had used it. He had touched something that should not have been his to touch. Now it had threaded itself into his flesh.
"Righteous," he said sarcastically. "So in short: fate, destiny, mark of the divine, all wrapped up with a neat bow. How convenient."
The Father cleared his throat. "I will leave you to think," he said gently. "Do not fear. Rest. The elders will attend to your recovery. In time you will understand."
He bowed — not the faint nod of a servant but a deliberate, reverent dip — and then he moved to the door. Luther, still replaying alarm bells in his head, followed the movement with a wild, helpless urge. He lunged. "Wait—"
But the Father was already at the threshold. He turned once, just enough for the light to catch the rim of his staff, and smiled as if bestowing benediction. "Sleep on it, child. We have waited long. Now that the sign is upon you—take all the time you need."
The door closed. The snap of it felt like a pin in Luther’s chest.
He stood in the middle of the dazzling room and laughed, a nervous, thin sound that nearly broke into a sob. "I did not sign up for this," he muttered to the empty space, half-pleading, half-annoyed. "I’m not built for divine purpose. I trip on my own shoelaces. I drop soup on confessions. I lose the plot, literally."
The desire to flee rushed at him like a tide. He needed fresh air. He needed trees that didn’t whisper prophecies and tavern noise that didn’t smell of incense and sainthood. He moved to the window. It took a second for his pulse to slow from the run. Two stories down. Barely a mortal leap — theatrical, maybe, but survivable if you were Luther and not paying attention to your own doom record.
As he pushed the glass open, a slight rustle became sound — someone on the other side of the door. The latch clicked and the door eased inward.
An apprentice stood there with a bundle of folded clothes balanced on her arm. She blinked, took in the sight of Saint-robed Luther at the window, and then squealed. "Oh, please don’t—" she began, voice equal parts shock and reprimand. "Sir, you can’t just stand there! That’s—" She looked down, aghast. "That’s the second floor!"
Luther gave the most incongruous, guilty little grin he could muster, that sheepish, ’caught-in-the-well’ smile he used when the world had gone sideways. "Evening exercise?" he offered lamely.
The apprentice’s eyes narrowed into a stare so deadly in its disappointment that Luther’s legs went warm. "Get down right now, sir," she said with the briskness of someone who had been taught dozens of emergency lectures in a short time. "Please. Don’t make me beg."
He looked down at the drop. He looked at the bundle of ordinary clothes — less divine, more breathable — in her hands. He looked back at the gleaming crown still perched on his head, the Father’s staff leaning in the corner like an accusing finger. The world had cracked into two simple options: be the saint everyone wanted him to be, or be Luther, the escaped idiot, the boy with a taste for chaotic freedom.
He weighed them both in that strange, adrenaline-scented silence, then shrugged. "When in doubt," he muttered to the empty room, "exit stage left."
Without really thinking — because thinking had never been his strong suit in tight situations — he swung his legs over the sill and launched.
He jumped.