Zeth froze still. This made no sense; he refused to accept it. Even if gods could lie, Death had no reason to lie to him. Sensing the silence, the skeleton explained again.
"Zeth, did you really think it was that easy? You cannot buy faith with money, force, lust, or fear. If faith were so easy to buy, the world would be a different place, don't you think?"
Pressing both hands to his forehead, Zeth looked up at the sky. All this time. After all that money and weeks of hard work promoting the God of Death—it had been for nothing. Zeth was back to square one, a dead soul talking to the God of Death with no followers, begging for revival.
"...I..." He tried to say something but couldn't.
After a few moments of thinking, he spoke again. "You said earlier that I never revived; I simply possessed my repaired body and acted like I was living. If that's the case, can't I do the same again?"
The skeleton didn't show any reaction; his voice remained plain and cold.
"Possessing a body makes you an invader. You may feel nothing different overall, but there are drawbacks to being an invader. You will begin losing your senses, your sense of taste, then smell, subtle sound, and as your connection weakens, you will begin losing control of that body."
The skeleton raised his hand. "In this cosmos, everything comes at a cost. The cost of possession is losing a fragment of your soul that can never be repaired."
A faint rustle of wind pushed the grass beneath them. Zeth didn't know what the god meant by "losing part of his soul," but the seriousness of the warning told him it was no good.
"Isn't there anything you can do?" he pleaded. "There has to be a way; there has always been a way."
"Perhaps," the skeleton said after a pause, "but not with me. I am the God of Death, not the God of Life."
The ground beneath Zeth's legs felt like it was slipping. He shook his head with his eyes closed. "So you won't let me revive again?"
Death paused, then turned to the dead body. With a swing of his hand, white light engulfed Zeth's body. Slowly, the wounds on his skin disappeared, the spilled organs fell back into place, and the body repaired itself as if there had never been a single scratch on it.
"Zeth, I will not object to your ways. We have already moved past that point." The skeleton glanced back at Zeth as the shadows beneath his feet slowly rose and covered his body. "You can take whatever action you like, but know that there will be consequences. And when the time comes, I will be coming to take your soul."
The shadows covered the god and vanished as if nothing had ever happened. Zeth stood silent, looking at his healed body, then at the dominion stretching to the height of the skies. Perhaps the skeleton already knew what he was about to do.
After all, Zeth was too egotistical to let his murderer roam around freely.
In the gleaming veil of the golden sunlight, Zeth stepped inside his body. For a second, his senses blanked out, then slowly a ringing sound echoed in his ears, followed by a blinding white light. In another second, his senses cleared, though he lay still looking at the sky.
Everything in this cosmos comes at a cost. By reviving in his body right now, Zeth had paid for an opportunity: to complain against Milo in Heaven's court. He couldn't claim that the employee of Themis had killed him if he was still alive.
The only way to take this case to Heaven was by exposing Death's secret, which he would never do in a thousand years.
"How do I make him pay?" Zeth's eyes burned red with anger. He sat up and, thumping his foot against the ground, walked around the dominion. When he had entered the dominion, it was noon, and when he came out, it was day again.
'Did a whole day pass while I was there?'
But Zeth felt as if only an hour had passed inside the dominion. That could only mean one thing: time worked differently inside and outside it. Perhaps time outside the dominion was faster than inside.
While contemplating, he had barely walked a little farther when he noticed a similar structure in the distance. Multiple tent houses with smoke rising into the air, government officials standing behind a large barricade, and sticky mud from countless footprints.
Yet among the crowd, Zeth's eyes lingered on a white van and a priest standing before it, preaching into a microphone. Volcanic anger burst inside him, and barely a word escaped his lips.
"Themis..."
The priest continued preaching to the hollow-eyed survivors, and as Zeth walked closer, he noticed something else. Straw dolls shaped like humans, at least a hundred of them, were placed on the ground while the priest continued his speech.
"...and it is only through Lady Themis's boundless mercy that any of us stand here breathing at all!" the priest bellowed, arms spread wide. "Her light reaches even into the darkest folklore, even into dominions such as this!"
"YOU BASTARD!"
Zeth yelled, and before the priest could understand what was happening, he grabbed him by the neck and slammed him against the van.
"Tell me where that golden-haired sick son of a bitch is," Zeth gritted out, his eyes burning with anger. The goblin tooth necklace on his bare chest gleamed in the light, while his mud-covered body and torn white pants were stained with blood.
"Aaagghhggg..."
The priest struggled to speak, but Zeth's grip only tightened. He asked again, "Tell me where that golden-haired brat is."
"What are you doing? Someone stop him!"
A man from the crowd yelled, though no one dared to approach Zeth. The shout was enough to attract everyone's attention. Zeth turned around, noticing the gazes of the people surrounding him. Then he turned back to the priest, who was struggling to breathe.
The grip on the priest's neck loosened, and he fell to the ground, coughing and gasping for breath. Letting him catch his breath, Zeth asked, "I won't repeat my question."
The priest looked at him, bewildered. "You... you are... didn't you get killed by a monster?"
'I wouldn't honor that psycho by calling him a monster.'
Tilting his head, Zeth asked again, "Is that supposed to answer my question?"
With a frown, the priest nervously responded, "Lord Milo departed from this place last night. He went ahead to find allies who could help him clear the dominion."
"I see."
Zeth turned to look around. All eyes were fixed on him.
Sorrow.
Pain.
Disgust.
These were the emotions he saw in their hollow eyes, as if they were cursing him for their misery. Zeth took a deep breath and approached one of the straw dolls. It was nothing more than a simple bundle of straw with sticks for arms and legs, and where the doll's face should have been was a picture and a name.
"And what the hell is this?" He kicked the straw doll aside, and a man from the crowd immediately rose in anger.
"That's enough! How dare you attack a man of God, and now you dare to kick a dead man!"
"Dead man?" Looking at the straw doll again, he raised his brow. "That's a fucking straw doll, you dumbasses."
"That's not a doll. That's my father, and he is a straw doll because the monsters inside the dominion ate my father."
Kneeling to hug the doll, the man broke down in tears. Zeth had a hard time understanding what was happening…then he did.
All the straw dolls here represented people trapped inside the dominion, and the villagers were ready to cremate them as a final ritual.
"Have you all gone insane?" Zeth's voice rose. "Your father is probably alive inside that thing. Though not kicking, he is definitely alive in the dominion."
Silence fell for a moment.
Did Zeth say something wrong?
Finally, the second priest dared to break the silence.
"What are you talking about, sir? Those poor villagers... they are already dead."
'What?'