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Archons need followers as much as worshippers require their gods.
It was a rule of balance in the universe; the revered must have those who revere them, the honored must have people whose desires they fulfill.
The Wanderer did not have either.
He was on the brink of death—that much he had been assured. Immortality was granted by those mortals he had used to despise; an irony he could not help but laugh at whenever he stared down upon his fading limbs.
His shrine had been long abandoned decades ago, the wooden foundations left to rot away each season that passed by. No one came to these mountains anymore: the path had long been buried, the hills too steep to climb.
"You must find followers, Wanderer."
Every year the god would echo her concerns, gently setting a misplaced strand of hair behind his ear. He would never move away, however, and simply huffed out a breath of annoyance.
"I do not need followers." He would always respond, eyes furrowed in an unconvinced manner. His eyes swimmed with doubt despite his words, tension between joints that were no longer existent.
The god of wisdom looked down upon the minor god with a sigh, her clover pupils threatening to glisten with tears. "But you are dy—"
"I am not."
Nahida winced upon his interruption. She held her head in her hands, voice stern as she accussed, unprecedented: "Were you not the one who desired to become a god?"
Wanderer flinched; her words were cold, sharp edges plunging through his skin to make him bleed the truth. Perhaps his fading immortality had begun taking effect to his will to exist.
"Maybe I no longer wish to be revered."
Maybe I no longer wish to exist.
+++++++++++++++
On a cold winter night, when dead trees sing and shrine bells ring every wish made—
—Wanderer heard a prayer.
It was a dying whisper of hope, akin to a final breath of a fish on shore. But the action itself was no mistake; an offering had been made, the ritual completed with precision no joke could replicate.
An odd feeling coursed through him. Wanderer flexed his fingers in astonishment—was this the power of a single prayer? He felt rejuvenated despite it being decades since his last follower had made him an offering.
He quickly made his way towards the lone shrine in the mountains, morphing into his feline form as he entered the mortal world.
The snow crunched under his paws, the wind died in his presence, and the serenity of nothingness filled the atmosphere. It was as if the whole forest had held its breath in anticipation.
