Reincarnated as the favorite of an obsessive goddess: gave me a system-Chapter 32: Qaxy.

Andri, the one who had managed to escape the clutches of death in Athelgard, crossed the threshold of the throne room, his body trembling from exhaustion. His clothes were in tatters. Ignoring protocol, he collapsed before the dais where King Conad of Zenit awaited him with ill concealed impatience.

"Speak!" Conad roared, his voice echoing through the stone vaults. "Where is the signal? Why isn’t Athelgard’s capital burning under the chaos of succession?"

Andri looked up, his eyelids fluttering and his eyes reflecting a terror the king could not comprehend.

"It’s over, Your Majesty... They’re all dead. The elite unit, the captain... no one is left."

Conad leaped to his feet, his face flushing crimson with rage.

"Impossible! We had the best assassins infiltrated. Athelgard’s royal guard is nothing more than a group of parade knights. How could they fail?"

"It wasn’t the guard," Andri whispered, his voice broken and shaky. "We were about to strike, but then... they appeared. Three people who didn’t wear the palace uniform. A man who moved at a speed the eye couldn’t follow, and two women whose very presence made the mana in the air turn heavy almost unbreathable. I don’t know who they were or where they came from, but they weren’t ordinary soldiers. They wiped out our men as if they were simple children playing at war. I didn’t see exactly how they did it, I only saw the bodies fall... and I knew that if I didn’t run that very instant, I would be next."

Conad struck the arm of his stone throne.

"Damn it! Athelgard is the hub of southern trade! If they close themselves off to us because of this failed attempt, the rest of the kingdoms will see us as a major threat. That fool Gabell now has the perfect excuse to form a coalition!"

The atmosphere grew thick with tension.

"I did it for the god Malk," Conad muttered, trying to convince himself. "If I took Athelgard, his faith would expand without resistance..."

"Is that what you tell yourself to try and justify it, little king?"

The voice came from nowhere and, at the same time, seemed to emanate from everywhere. The air in the center of the room began to vibrate and distort. Suddenly, an imposing figure appeared out of thin air.

It was Qaxy, one of the many subordinates of the god Malk. His appearance was unsettling, a man of aristocratic and extremely pale features, dressed in shifting silks of colors that strained the eyes if stared at for too long. His eyes had no pupils, they were like mirrors reflecting a distorted version of whoever looked into them.

Andri cowered on the floor. Conad, despite his rank, felt the air turn stale.

"Lord Qaxy..." the king stammered with absolute dread. "I did not expect your presence."

"Evidently," Qaxy hissed, walking toward the throne. "You have committed a stupidity of proportions your tiny brain is incapable of grasping, Conad. An assassination operation in Athelgard? Without the authorization of the god Malk?"

"I only wanted to please the great Malk," the king stuttered.

Qaxy didn’t let him finish. With a simple gesture of his hand, the reality around Conad changed. The king suddenly found himself surrounded by thousands of daggers pointed at his throat, each reflecting his own terrified face. It was an illusion, but the coldness of the steel felt real against his skin.

"Stay there, worm," Qaxy ordered. "I will go inform Lord Malk. Pray that his punishment is swift."

In a blink, Qaxy’s figure dissolved into a thousand crystal fragments that vanished before hitting the ground.

The Divine Plane of Malk was a desert of black sand under a violet sky that never knew rest. Malk sat upon his throne. Qaxy appeared at his feet, kneeling with an elegance perfected over millennia.

"My Lord," Qaxy said. "King Conad has committed a folly. He attacked Athelgard without permission, surely causing a total rupture of diplomatic relations."

The god stood up, and his presence made the desert tremble.

"Athelgard?" Malk’s voice was an earthquake of fury. "Does that stupid mortal not know why that kingdom has remained intact for millennia?"

Malk began to walk, each step firmer and stronger than the last.

"Athelgard is not just a kingdom, Qaxy. It is the heart of world trade. It is the knot that ties the economies of all religions together. Do you think the other nine gods haven’t wanted to raid it before? Of course they have! But they are smart enough not to bite the hand that feeds their coffers."

The god stopped, looking out into the void of the cosmos.

"If Athelgard falls to a single faith, the balance is broken. The rest of the religions would see their livelihood threatened. And do you know what would happen then, Qaxy? They would unite. All of them. As much as we gods compete among ourselves, there is something that joins us all, the desire to preserve our flow of power. If I destroy global trade, the rest of the gods will give the immediate order to their armies. Millions of men, thousands of high ranking mages... all marching under a single banner to erase Zenit, the other kingdoms I possess, and my faith from the face of the earth."

Malk turned toward his subordinate.

"Even I, Qaxy... even one of the ten gods cannot survive that. No matter how powerful I am, no matter if my peers cannot attack me directly due to things we still don’t fully understand, an army of all religions united has the power to annihilate the essence of any of us. Faith is our blood, our oxygen. If they exterminate everyone who believes in me, I cease to exist. Conad has put my neck on the guillotine."

"It is an unforgivable negligence," Qaxy replied, though his mirror eyes glinted with a spark of doubt.

"Kill him," Malk ordered. "Execute Conad. Put someone docile on the throne. Have the new king send apologies, pay reparations, and humble himself before Gabell. We must calm the other gods before they decide I am a threat to their stability."

"As you wish, my Lord."

Qaxy returned to the throne room of Zenit. King Conad was still there, paralyzed by fear. Seeing the divine subordinate appear, he let out a sigh of hope.

"What... what did Lord Malk say? Has he forgiven me?"

Qaxy smiled, but his smile was a grotesque distortion on his pale face.

"Lord Malk has decided that you are no longer necessary on this stage, Conad."

Qaxy raised a hand, and suddenly, the throne room vanished for the king. Conad found himself in the middle of a battlefield surrounded by the corpses of his own sons and soldiers. Anguish gripped his heart. Suddenly, the corpses began to rise, pointing at him with accusing fingers.

"No! It’s an illusion!" Conad screamed, clutching his head.

"Is it?" Qaxy’s voice whispered in his ear.

One of the corpses, an exact replica of his eldest son, plunged a sword into his belly. Conad felt the cold steel, the tearing of his organs, and the heat of the gushing blood. The pain was absolute, real, and devastating. In the physical world, Conad’s body convulsed as his internal organs failed from the physical manifestation of psychological trauma. The king fell dead to the floor, his eyes wide in a rictus of infinite agony.

Qaxy dispelled the illusion with a snap of his fingers. He looked at the corpse with contempt and then turned his attention to Andri, who was still curled in a ball in the corner, sobbing and trembling.

"You," Qaxy said, approaching the spy. "You said you didn’t see anything. That you only saw the bodies fall."

"Yes, milord! It was too fast!" he replied. "I don’t know who they were!"

Qaxy leaned over him.

"If you saw nothing, then you are of no use to me."

He reached out and touched him, then with a simple snap, formed an illusion of his worst fears and nightmares. Seconds later, he lay completely dead beside the king.

Qaxy straightened up and adjusted his robes. Malk’s words were still echoing in his head like a discordant note: "Even I cannot survive that."

To Qaxy, a god who feared the union of mere mortals was a god who had already accepted his own mortality. His faith in Malk hadn’t broken, but his respect for him had slipped slightly. Malk wanted calm, he wanted to apologize and retreat into the shadows. Qaxy, however, felt a burning curiosity.

"Conad was an idiot for ordering such an operation. But who are those three who thwarted a plan involving Zenit’s best assassins?" he wondered aloud. "If Athelgard has always been neutral in all conflicts, where has this new power come from? New subordinates of the goddess Lyla? Did she intervene herself?"

His mind filled with questions impossible to answer without any information.

"I want the truth."

He closed his eyes, and his body began to tremble violently. His pale skin turned a bit more tanned, his mirror eyes took on a common brown color, and his clothes transformed into the worn out garb of an average traveling merchant.

"Athelgard..." he whispered. "Let’s see what kind of people are hiding behind your walls."

Qaxy left the throne room, passing by guards who didn’t even notice his presence, as if he were a speck of dust in the air. He headed toward the border.

Meanwhile, Malk sat back on his throne. He believed his order would be carried out. He believed Conad’s sacrifice would appease the other gods. He did not know that one of his subordinates had just set in motion a chain of events that would lead to the very confrontation he so desperately wanted to avoid.