In fact, he himself knew it too.
The fact that he was going mad. That everything was being dragged toward the god who was only a name.
Just recalling that existence made joy flow. The problem was that the ecstasy sometimes felt like it wasn’t his own. A sensation of receiving grace deflected through something else’s.
Raha called it a blessing, but he couldn’t bear the fact that he couldn’t fully receive that miracle.
At some point, Raha’s sleep decreased.
The beginning was simple. He woke up a bit earlier and entered a very narrow prayer room. He lit a lamp and spread out paper. When he wrote the name down letter by letter, the empty rooms in Raha’s chest filled one by one. What could he call that fullness?
The priests offered reverence at Raha’s devotion. When Raha finished his secret praise and came out to the corridor, the priests refreshed the ink and tidied the space. And they looked up at Raha, treating him sacredly. Looking sacredly at the ink spread on the back of Raha’s hand.
As time passed like that, the ecstasy began to demand more.
Raha became increasingly obsessive. He burned the paper with ‘Levia Rishian’s’ name written on it and swallowed the ashes as they were. With a mouth blackened with filth, he moved his parched tongue to pray and fell into rapture alone.
“You know? He’s barely eaten for days.”
“…Barely sleeps either. From some time ago, no one’s even seen him go to bed.”
The priests’ gazes began to shift from reverence to wariness. Every time they passed through the corridor, whispers followed. They prepared delicacies for Raha as always, but as time passed, the amount he ate decreased. Now he didn’t eat at all.
Raha no longer felt hunger. Only a burning thirst remained.
Raha even forgot that this was wrong. Ecstasy was fleeting, and the fullness that had been satisfied was faint. He just immersed himself in the act. Now even sleeping time felt wasteful. So he didn’t sleep. He just endlessly wrote its name and continued incomprehensible prayers.
Even when his whole body turned ashen, even when others whispered with strange eyes, it didn’t matter. Raha didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. Reaching that point, now that terrible obsession reached into reality.
He felt unknowable relief in the shadows of flickering flames, and the rustling sound of green leaves seemed like something speaking. Some days were burdensome like walking through a swamp, other days were light like walking on clouds.
An elder priest watching such a Raha muttered:
“When grace is excessive, isn’t it burns rather than radiance?”
“…Don’t interfere. It’s sacred work.”
The priest beside him whispered low, afraid someone might hear.
Those around him continued to recommend sleep and meals, worried about Raha showing such eccentric behavior, but Raha didn’t even pretend to listen. He’d even crossed the boundary of wariness. No human could live without eating and drinking. Yet Raha was alive. How absurd.
The priests worried about such a Raha and called a physician, but again there were only words that he was fine. The physician stepped back. Reverence and fear arose simultaneously.
Humans felt an incomprehensible madness seeping in as they watched such a Raha. They themselves were being contaminated by it. But no one became wary of it anymore.
Because that was the miracle.
Separate from Raha’s eccentric behavior, the daily routine was unchanged.
The act of praying and worshiping from early morning to night remained the same. He just no longer engaged in eating, drinking, or sleeping. In that time, merely acts of writing Levia’s name, burning that paper and drinking it, endlessly praying and chasing visions of ecstasy alone were added.
At noon prayer, Raha placed his hands on the shoulders of the sick and poor and read the prayer text. Sometimes there was a feeling of his fingertips disappearing. A sensation of something other than hands touching. Raha lowered his voice.
“I wish you peace.”
At evening worship, Raha finished long readings without disturbing a single breath. An attending priest offered a water cup, but Raha lightly dotted a point of ash on the cup’s rim and placed it on the tip of his tongue.
His clothing didn’t become loose, and shadows of clinging fatigue couldn’t settle on Raha’s face. Raha walked slower, more clearly. The congregation thought that pace was courtesy, and some whispered it was god’s gait.
People now began to treat Raha not as ‘god’s incarnation’ but like a real god.
“How long has it been since you ate?”
“Three months. But your voice is clearer.”
“That’s a miracle.”
People bowed to Raha from farther away, more deeply. Without approaching close, they bowed their heads deeper.
Raha didn’t lose his voice, and his knees didn’t buckle even standing long. His pulse was steady, and his complexion was rather bright.
***
One day when evening deepened and the wind grew cold, Raha went to the well.
Raha saw a thin film of incense smoke settled on the water.
How strange. No one would have burned incense here, and there’s no way that incense smoke would still remain. Is this also a hallucination? Maybe so.
Raha quietly looked down at it. The film swayed and became a shoulder line, and that shoulder line fit precisely over Raha’s facial outline. Just one breath. Very briefly.
Raha said in a barely audible voice:
“Yes, surely a little.”
Though he didn’t even know what he was saying, faint anger flashed in Raha’s eyes. He was glad yet felt wronged. Raha didn’t know the origin of that sense of injustice. Just that hunger stabbed deeper inside. He didn’t know what this was either.
***
At some point, people stopped seeking Levia Rishian.
The calamity god who was only a name was too distant and remote an existence. They were already forgetting that the terrible ancient being had driven humans to the brink of extinction. Well, they were comfortable for now.
The fact that such a tremendous being protected them and provided miracles and blessings close to mercy without reserve had become familiar and nothing special.
But the radiance of Raha before their eyes was real.
He flaunted overwhelming beauty incomparable to anything in the world before them. His resonant voice was so clear it seemed listening alone would be a sin, yet such an existence granted their wishes. Humans were bewitched by Raha, contaminated together in madness, and venerated him as god.
Ridiculously, Raha couldn’t bear that.
While thinking he wanted to monopolize everything about it, he couldn’t stand that others were forgetting it and praising himself who was before their eyes.
Why don’t you recognize this? Why don’t you love it? It gave you infinite love. Shouldn’t you at least be grateful for what you received? Do you dare receive such precious things and then wipe your mouth and pretend not to know?
I’ve gone mad from being this desperate, how can you do that?
“It’s serious. Everything.”
Yet in front of others he pretended to be fine. Still imitating noble behavior. Raha called a very few high priests separately. Then he put his hands together, looked at the sky, and said:
“I wish to prepare worship to serve directly. The current faith is wrong.”
At Raha’s words, the high priests stirred. The god they served was ancient. Calamity itself. As could be known from nicknames like the headless dog, the cursed white serpent, the Progenitor of all rooted things—though they called it god, it wasn’t actually a god.
Literally a nightmare itself. Something very primitive and primordial, like the will of something vast. Summon such a thing? Though quite some time had passed, humans still remembered. The terror of that overwhelming existence that had driven the human world to the brink of destruction.
One of the priests carefully spoke:
“But, Raha-nim. Whether that, no… whether ‘Levia Rishian’-nim manifesting here is even possible aside, if we recklessly summon such a thing….”
“…Such, a thing?”
At the priest’s words, Raha shot a vicious look as if he’d never been in rapture. Something incomprehensible pressed down on the air. Those in that space, without exception, couldn’t even breathe properly.
God’s incarnation, god’s child was no longer human. This had inherited that terrible thing’s power and authority, greedily devoured human faith, and grown. This had now drawn close to godhood.
No, it had already become god.
Humans didn’t know it yet, but they could instinctively feel it.
“…Yes, ah, I under, stand.”
One barely answered. The others competed to nod their heads. Only then did breathing open. Raha responded with a benevolent smile as if nothing had happened.
“That’s right. It’s an opportunity to serve our glory directly.”
The priests didn’t look at each other’s eyes. They just trembled, relieved their necks were still attached. How strange. Raha never said he’d cut anyone’s neck.
“Let’s start preparations right away.”
“B-but… how should we, serve, them?”
“Call and they’ll respond. They will answer.”
“…Sum, moning… you mean to do it directly?”
Raha smiled with a face holding all the light in the world and placed his hand on that priest’s head. And whispered in an affectionate voice:
“There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll take all responsibility. So hurry out and prepare. I too, and our god. Don’t like waiting.”
It was strange. Raha’s behavior was more merciful and sacred than anything, yet what was felt was something vicious and primal. The priests hurriedly left the room, and Raha was alone again.
Raha knelt right there, put his hands together, and spoke toward the sky.
—Are you pleased? I did well, right?
The boundary between reality and delusion had completely collapsed.
Now Raha couldn’t properly distinguish anything. No matter how much he wrote and swallowed its name, prayed and praised and cried out, it was useless. Ecstasy and fullness became increasingly insufficient, and no matter how much he added, he couldn’t shake off the thirst.
—Just loving you isn’t enough to satisfy me.
I want to have you. No, I should jump in there and become ash. I must devote everything to it. He’d long since surpassed the level that could be called obsession. This was madness. It might be even more than that, but there were no means to express it.
Raha’s wound spring screamed. The more his madness grew, the more the faith of people looking at such a Raha was contaminated by madness, the worse it became. Though he himself didn’t even know that spring existed.
Without anyone knowing, Raha who had wrongfully become god didn’t know he was bearing it. No, he didn’t even know he’d gained divine status. Because his god was only ‘Levia Rishian.’
