The joy that filled Leo was dizzying. To possess the power of a god on Earth—a world he knew, after twenty-plus years of living there, to be devoid of any genuine supernatural force—was a game-changing revelation. The gods worshipped in temples, shrines, and churches were nothing more than idols of stone and wood. He, on the other hand, was the real deal.
"The United Nations estimated a global population of 7.5 billion people in 2018," he mused, pacing the hotel room, his mind racing. "Thera, from what I gleaned from Fane's memories, is vast but far less populated. The barren land, the low crop yields… its population can't hold a candle to Earth's."
The logic was simple and intoxicating. "If I can convert Earth's population into my followers, the sheer volume of belief would grant me power to rival all the gods of Thera combined."
But he had to be smart. He was a False God, a fledgling deity. His power was directly tied to belief. He needed followers, and he needed them fast. Enough faith could elevate him from a "False God" to a "True God," and then he could return to Thera without fear of being hunted down.
"Just appearing and performing miracles is too risky," he thought, his fingers tapping a nervous rhythm on the cheap wooden desk. "It would attract the wrong kind of attention. Governments, scientists, the military… they'd treat me as a threat to be studied, contained, or eliminated."
He recalled a story from Fane's memories. In Thera, Netharos, the Undying King, had once masqueraded as Adonis, the Glacial God, spreading his faith in the frozen north and usurping the domain of ice. The deception lasted for centuries.
A new, far more insidious idea began to form. "I don't need to compete with the established gods of Earth. I can become them."
Gods could only absorb faith directed specifically at them, but they could absolutely impersonate other deities to receive it. Earth's mythological landscape was already established. Forcing a new god upon humanity would be an uphill battle against millennia of culture and tradition. But reviving an old one? That was different. A native god performing a real miracle would have an innate advantage, a built-in cultural affinity that would be almost impossible for any government to suppress.
"I'll start here. In Japan."
He closed his eyes, focusing his will. The black-red sun of his divine form appeared behind him, not as a celestial body, but as a man-sized, intricate disc etched with swirling, umber glyphs. In front of it, his own form shifted. His casual clothes melted away, replaced by a pristine white ceremonial robe embroidered with gold thread. A grand coronet settled upon his head, from beneath which a cascade of snow-white hair flowed over his shoulders. His hands, now long and slender with a faint golden hue, emerged from the wide sleeves, grasping a staff of sacred wood.
He looked in the mirror. The reflection was of a being ancient and powerful. It was the perfect image of Ame-no-Minakanushi, the Primordial Father of Japanese myth—one of the first gods, ancient and respected, yet not as mainstream as Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. Perfect.
"The Gion Festival is in three days," Leo whispered to his divine reflection. "Let the show begin."
The Gion Festival was a river of humanity flowing through the streets of Kyoto. Dozens of boys in traditional dress beat taiko drums, leading a procession of hundreds dressed in the courtly attire of the Heian period. They pulled massive, three-story-high yamaboko floats, upon which musicians played ancient hymns of praise.
At the center of it all was the Phoenix Palanquin. On it knelt two Shinto priests, their faces impassive. Seated between them was a young girl in an emperor's costume, her face hidden behind a porcelain mask. She was the chigo, the sacred child, a living effigy of a god surveying his people.
Leo, dressed as an ordinary tourist, moved with the crowd of over two hundred thousand people. The sheer scale was perfect. He smiled, his eyes locking onto the small, masked figure in the palanquin. You'll do nicely.
His will, an invisible tendril of power, reached out and slipped into the mind of the girl, whose name was Reiko.
Suddenly, the chigo stood up. A murmur of confusion rippled through the crowd. In her hand, where there had been nothing before, was a gnarled, blackened piece of wood.
The two priests on the palanquin, startled, tried to press her back down. "Reiko, sit down! This is a sacred rite!"
The instant their hands touched her, an invisible force flung them from the palanquin, sending them tumbling into the shocked crowd below.
The confusion turned to astonishment. Reiko, the masked child, stepped off the edge of the float and walked down, her small feet treading on empty air as if on a solid staircase.
She planted the dark wood into the hard asphalt, which yielded like soft earth. In an instant, the impossible happened. The stick erupted upwards, growing at an incredible speed. Within seconds, it became a magnificent, seven-meter-tall sacred tree, its trunk thick and its branches adorned with fluttering shide paper streamers and shimenawa ropes.
The crowd fell into a stunned, breathless silence. Stepping on air could be a trick, a wire act. But this… this was a miracle.
Reiko placed a small hand on the tree's bark and spoke, her voice echoing with an ancient, melodic power that was not her own.
"Sacred wood, useless without its master's gaze;
Jeweled branch, a mortal thing that blooms in hell's haze;
Great mirror, a pale reflection of the heavenly plain;
This mortal god, is its legend told in vain?"
One of the fallen priests, a man named Ise, scrambled to his feet, his face a mask of disbelief. "That poem… it's from the Annals of Empress Jingū! It's the ritual to summon the great goddess Amaterasu!"
As he spoke, the air around the tree began to shimmer. A transparent ripple expanded, pushing the crowd back. Within the ripple, a new world appeared: a vast, green plain under a crystal-blue sky, where celestial palaces stood tall and proud.
"It's Takamagahara," the people whispered in awe. "The High Heavenly Plain."
The priest Ise trembled, his heart pounding. Amaterasu is coming! His shrine, the Ise Grand Shrine, was her primary place of worship. This was the moment that would elevate them above all others.
But as a figure emerged from the divine palaces, riding a sacred palanquin, a collective gasp swept the crowd. It was not the Sun Goddess. It was a male deity, regal and ancient, with snow-white hair and a crown upon his head, holding a wooden staff, a disc of dark glyphs floating behind him.
Across the city, thousands watching on screens or from afar recognized the image from ancient texts.
"It's Ame-no-Minakanushi!" they cried. "The Primordial Father!"
The god stood, and his silver-white eyes swept across Kyoto. The gaze was utterly indifferent, the look of a creator upon his fleeting creation. Every person felt it, a pressure that buckled their knees and bowed their spines. Divine grace and divine terror, all in one.
Then, just as quickly, the god turned, sat back in his palanquin, and receded into his palace. The vision of Takamagahara faded, and the great tree grew translucent, becoming a shimmering projection that seemed to exist in another time.
As the city erupted into chaos and wonder, Leo, hidden in the crowd, closed his eyes. He felt it—a colossal wave of belief, a flood of power from over two hundred thousand souls, pouring into him. It was wide, but shallow, the faith of shocked onlookers rather than true devotees.
But it was a start. A very, very good start.
He let his control over Reiko go. The girl swayed and collapsed in a faint. As the priests rushed to her, a cunning old man—the head priest of the Fushimi Inari shrine, Asakura—was already scheming. The age of myth was real. The divine hierarchy was no longer theoretical. He would have his sons build new shrines, not just for Ame-no-Minakanushi, but for the other two primordial gods as well.
After all, one should never put all their eggs in one divine basket.