Chapter 32: The Hands of the God
Krosis-Krif observed the slow trickle of belief from his new temples. It was a novel sensation, a clean, pure energy, completely different from the chaotic, messy burst of life force he consumed in death. Fear was a spike, sharp and momentary. Grief was a wave, powerful but receding. This… this was a current. It was weak, for now, but it was constant. It was the difference between a lightning strike and a river. One was a spectacle; the other could carve canyons.
His vast, composite mind, holding the memories of millennia of human history from his past life, analyzed the phenomenon. Religions were not built on fear alone. Fear was a foundation of cracked stone, prone to rebellion. True, lasting power, the kind that created civilizations and sustained gods, was built on something more. It was built on hope. On reciprocity. A god who only takes is a tyrant. A god who also gives… is a god who can rule forever.
The voluntary nature of the worship was the key. He did not want the tainted energy of coerced prayer. He wanted the pure, willing devotion of those who chose to believe. And to make them choose, he had to offer a better product than the competition. The Seven were silent, their promises abstract. He was present, and his power was very, very real. It was time, he decided, to move beyond passive acceptance and begin an active campaign of recruitment. He needed prophets. He needed saints. He needed hands to dispense his power and demonstrate its value.
He scanned the minds of the handful of worshippers who frequented his temples. He bypassed the opportunistic and the merely curious. He was looking for purity of belief, for those whose faith was born of genuine, desperate gratitude. He found her easily. Ellyn, the weaver. Her thoughts were not of supplication for herself, but of quiet, constant thanks for the peace that had saved her remaining child. Her belief was a steady, unwavering flame. She would be his first.
Ellyn knelt on the cold, black stone floor of the temple in King's Landing. The star-dusted ceiling swirled high above her, a silent, beautiful, terrifying cosmos. She did not pray for anything. She was simply… present. Offering her quiet thankfulness for the fact that the screams of war had been replaced by the silence of this new, strange peace.
"YOUR GRATITUDE IS A PURE LIGHT IN THE QUIET DARK," a voice bloomed in her mind, so vast and yet so personal it felt like a mountain was whispering only to her. "YOUR BELIEF IS… PLEASING."
Ellyn gasped, pressing her forehead to the floor, her body trembling. "Great One," she thought, not daring to speak aloud. "I… I am nothing. A humble weaver."
"HUMILITY IS AN ORDERLY VIRTUE," the voice replied. "BUT THE WORLD REMAINS FULL OF DISORDER. THERE ARE MANY WHO STILL SUFFER. MANY WHO ARE SICK. MANY WHO ARE HUNGRY. THIS IS INEFFICIENT. A PASTURE CANNOT THRIVE IF HALF THE FLOCK IS INFIRM."
"I am just one woman," Ellyn projected, her heart hammering. "I have nothing left to give."
"YOU HAVE YOUR HANDS," Krosis-Krif stated. "YOU HAVE YOUR DEVOTION. AND I WILL GIVE YOU MORE."
A strange warmth spread through Ellyn's body, originating from her chest and flowing down her arms to her fingertips. It was a feeling of immense, benevolent power, a feeling like holding a star in each hand.
"I WILL PLACE A FRAGMENT OF MY POWER WITHIN YOU," the god explained. "THE POWER TO MEND WHAT IS BROKEN. NOT JUST THREAD, BUT FLESH AND BONE. THE POWER TO SOOTHE A FEVER, TO EASE A PAIN, TO ENCOURAGE A CROP TO GROW. WILL YOU BE MY HANDS IN THIS WORLD, ELLYΝ THE WEAVER? WILL YOU SHOW THE PEOPLE THE PEACE THAT COMES FROM TRUE, PROVIDENT ORDER?"
It was not a command. It was an offer. A divine job interview. To be the vessel for a power beyond all imagining. To be able to heal, to help, after a life of helplessness. Tears streamed down her face. "Yes," she whispered, her thought a pure, unadulterated wave of acceptance. "Yes."
In a similar fashion, Krosis-Krif chose others. An old, crippled soldier named Matthos, who had lost a leg at the Battle of the Honeywine and now begged for scraps, was offered the power to walk again, and to ease the old wounds of his fellow veterans. A farmer from the drought-plagued fields near Duskendale, a woman named Serra whose faith was as solid and earthy as the soil she tilled, was offered the ability to bless the land, to encourage water to well up and seeds to sprout. They were simple people, broken by the old world, now being remade as agents of the new one.
When Ellyn left the temple, the world looked different. The air seemed brighter, the colors sharper. She felt the warmth still humming in her hands. She returned to her cramped tenement in a daze. As she climbed the stairs, she heard a woman weeping. It was her neighbor, Jeyne, a fishwife whose youngest son was consumed by a fever. The local septa had offered prayers, but the boy was fading.
Jeyne looked up as Ellyn entered, her face a mask of grief. "He is almost gone, Ellyn. The Seven have turned their faces from us."
Ellyn looked at the small boy, his body shivering, his breath shallow. Driven by an instinct she did not understand, a command from the power now residing within her, she knelt beside the pallet. She reached out and placed her trembling hands on the child's forehead.
"What are you doing?" Jeyne sobbed.
"I… I don't know," Ellyn confessed. She closed her eyes and thought of the god on the hill, of the power it had given her. A soft, shimmering light, the color of a star-dusted night sky, flowed from her palms. It was cool to the touch. The boy's shivering ceased. The feverish flush on his cheeks faded. His breathing deepened, becoming slow and regular. A moment later, his eyes fluttered open. They were clear.
"Mother?" the boy whispered. "I'm hungry."
Jeyne stared, her mouth agape, her sobs catching in her throat. She looked from her son, now sitting up, to Ellyn, whose hands still faintly glowed. "What… what did you do?" she stammered. "The gods…"
"It was not the Seven," Ellyn said, her voice filled with a newfound, terrifying awe as she looked at her own hands. "It was the god on the hill. He… he gave me a gift. He said I was to share it."
The news of the Weaver's Miracle spread through Flea Bottom like wildfire, a story of hope in a place that had known only despair.
In the Starry Sept of Oldtown, the High Septon listened to the reports with a heavy heart. They were coming from all over the Seven Kingdoms. A crippled man in Lannisport touching the lame and making them walk. A farmer near Duskendale making withered apple trees bear fruit in a single day. And a weaver in King's Landing who could banish illness with a touch.
"It is a devil's trick!" Septon Eustace raged, his face puce. "He performs these false miracles to lure the faithful away from the light of the Seven! He heals one child with the hand that slaughtered thousands! We must denounce him! We must declare these so-called 'saints' to be witches and warlocks!"
"And who will listen?" countered Septon Lorent, his voice quiet and defeated. "To the mother of that healed child, it is not a devil's trick. It is the only answered prayer she has ever known." He looked at the High Septon, his eyes pleading. "Your Holiness, how do we preach against a god who feeds the poor when our own septs demand tithes? How do we condemn a power that heals the sick when all we can offer is a final blessing before the grave? He is not fighting us with swords or fire. He is fighting us with kindness. It is a war our Faith is not equipped to win."
The High Septon felt the truth of the words like a physical blow. Their new rival was not just a god of terror; it was a god of tangible results. He had offered the people a choice not between good and evil, but between a silent heaven and a very real, very helpful god on earth. It was no choice at all.
The court of Queen Rhaenyra was likewise in turmoil over the news. The emergence of the god's chosen disciples was a political development of staggering implications.
"Saints," Jacaerys spat, pacing the Small Council chamber. "He is not content to be their god; now he is making saints. He is building his own Faith from the ground up, with our people as his first, most fervent converts."
"It is a most efficient method of winning hearts and minds," Larys Strong observed from his chair, his tone one of pure academic admiration. "Far more permanent than conquest. A conquered people will always dream of rebellion. A converted people will police themselves. They will see the Queen's authority and the god's will as one and the same."
"He is making himself essential," Rhaenyra said, seeing the long, terrible game with perfect clarity. "He is making himself loved. The people will not just fear him; they will rely on him. They will see his order not as a cage, but as a benevolent protection." She looked at her council, at the great lords of the realm. "He is not just our king anymore. He is becoming their god in truth. He is replacing the Seven in their hearts. And a people who worship him will never question his rule… or the legitimacy of the queen who rules at his pleasure."
Her words hung in the air, a chilling acknowledgment of their new reality. They were not just subjugated; they were being made irrelevant. Their authority was merely a function of their proximity to the true source of all power.
The first disciples, the Hands of the God, met at the foot of the great temple in King's Landing. There were a dozen of them, brought from across the kingdom by a compulsion they could not explain. Ellyn the weaver, Matthos the healed soldier, Serra the farmer, and others like them—simple, broken people, now filled with a quiet, unshakeable purpose.
They stood together, a strange and unlikely fellowship, staring up at the empty, dark doorway of the temple. They did not know what to do next. They had been given a gift, but no instruction.
As the sun began to set, the familiar voice of their god filled their minds, a shared, private command.
"YOU ARE MY TESTAMENT. YOU ARE THE PROOF OF MY ORDER. BUT PROOF MUST BE WITNESSED."
A vision bloomed in their minds: the western Riverlands, a place still scarred by Aemond's fiery passage. Fields lay fallow. Villages were filled with the hungry and the sick. It was a place of lingering disorder.
"THERE IS A FAMINE IN THE WEST," the voice commanded. "AN UNTIDINESS LEFT OVER FROM THE OLD WAYS. GO THERE. YOUR HANDS WILL PROVIDE. YOUR PRESENCE WILL BE MY GOSPEL. HEAL THE SICK. FEED THE HUNGRY. BLESS THE FIELDS. EXPECT NOTHING IN RETURN. SHOW THEM THE PEACE OF MY ORDER. SHOW THEM THE GENEROSITY OF A GOD WHO PROVIDES."
The command was clear. Their mission was laid out before them.
"LET THE FLOCK GROW."
Ellyn looked at the others, at the old soldier who now stood straight and tall, at the farmer whose hands seemed to hum with the energy of the earth. She saw the same look of awe and purpose in their eyes that she felt in her own heart. They were not just weavers or soldiers or farmers anymore. They were the first saints of a new and terrible, kind and generous god.
The small band of disciples turned their backs on the capital, on the Queen in her castle and the god on his hill, and set out on the road. They carried no swords, no banners, no gold. They carried only the power of a god in their hands and a mission in their hearts: to conquer the world not with fire and blood, but with full granaries, mended bodies, and the irresistible, weaponized hope of a better, more orderly world.