"I'm traveling for an important meeting," the boy said, voice light and warm. "I won't be around for some time."
Eva nodded once.
Little Mouse looked up at her with those patient, ancient eyes. "Keep Khaladore alive until I'm back. He wouldn't be very useful if he was dead by the time I'm back."
A small, terrible smile curved his lips.
"Do not let anyone else touch him. Not the old gods. Not the modern ones. Not even the Reliquaries."
Eva's silver pin caught the firelight as she inclined her head again.
"Understood."
Little Mouse stood, straightened his dark jacket with both gloved hands, and walked toward the door. For a moment he looked exactly like the child he appeared to be.
---
Khaladore closed the apartment door behind him with more force than necessary, the lock clicking like a period at the end of an absurd sentence. Rain still clung to his coat as he dropped his bag on the cluttered desk and stared at the blank laptop screen.
A mouse god. Offering power because it would be funny. What next, Santa Claus demanding royalties?
He laughed once, short and bitter, but the sound died quickly in the empty room. The encounter in the manor felt like a fever dream now, yet the details refused to blur. The boy's ancient eyes. Eva's calm certainty. The casual way they had spoken of Gottfaktor as if it were obvious.
Khaladore poured himself a glass of water he didn't want and sat down. He opened the laptop, pulled up the unpublished paper he had been nursing for thirteen months, Collective Attentional Events and Anomalous Spacetime Variance, and stared at the quadratic curves that had refused to make sense for over a year.
He ran the numbers again, the way he always did when something itched at the back of his mind. Same dataset. Seventeen major global events. Gravitational sensor readings from four facilities on three continents. The anomalies were still there, tiny but consistent spikes that physics had no explanation for.
Except now one variable kept echoing in his head.
Belief density.
He typed it in experimentally, a crude proxy for focused emotional attention, and re-ran the model.
The curves snapped into alignment so cleanly it felt like a slap.
Khaladore stared at the screen for a long moment, then laughed again, this time with genuine disbelief.
"No," he said aloud, voice flat. "Absolutely not."
He stood, paced the small apartment once, then sat back down and deleted the new variable. The curves immediately fractured again. He restored the line of code. Alignment returned. He deleted it once more.
The data didn't care what he believed.
He rubbed his eyes. The Asmara memory flickered unbidden, the street, the smoke, Dawit's small body, his mother's prayers rising uselessly into the sky. That was why he had become Khaladore. That was why belief was not an option. It wasn't intellectual. It was survival.
And yet here was his own research, quietly betraying him.
His phone buzzed on the desk. A notification from the award committee. The nomination ceremony for Mirror for the Gods had been moved forward by two weeks. An anonymous donor had also increased the prize pool significantly.
Khaladore stared at the message until the screen dimmed.
He closed the laptop, poured the untouched water down the sink, and stood in the dark apartment listening to the rain against the window.
---
Night rain fell steadily over the quiet residential street. Quinn stood in the shadows across from Khaladore's apartment building, white coat with its golden designs faintly glowing under the streetlights. His ash-blonde hair was damp, the black bandana patch over his right eye dark with moisture. Only his visible left hazel eye gleamed with predatory interest as he looked up at the third-floor window where a single light still burned.
"Come out," he murmured under his breath, voice carrying through the downpour. "I can sense your presence… mon cœur."
A figure detached itself from the darkness beside the building entrance, Eva, white hair slicked flat by the rain, silver pin still perfectly in place on her lapel.
Quinn's theatrical smile widened the moment he spotted her.
"Promethea," he called softly, hazel eye sparkling. "You've caught me, but I won't just back down. Afterall, it's been long since I've seen you use your flames… putain."
Eva's expression remained unreadable, but she stepped forward into the cone of light.
"Prometheus' Flames," he said evenly. "It's a fire that can never be quenched until its target is in ashes."
Quinn chuckled, low and playful, flipping a single glowing golden card between his fingers. "Ah, I hope you still remember my old tricks. Bordel, Promethea, you always did have a dramatic streak. Don't worry, I'm not here to burn the building down tonight. Just delivering a little message from the old gods. They're getting nervous about your stubborn atheist friend."
Eva's gaze flicked briefly to the lit window above, then back to him.
"Little Mouse said not to interfere," she replied.
Quinn's smile turned sharper, dangerous.
"Little Mouse isn't here right now… mon cœur."