CHAPTER-5: SAKPTA, THE FORTRESS OF DELUSIONS
As I walked from Thira, lost in my madness. I wandered until I reached the outskirts of Sakpta, the City of Faith. “Huh, interesting. What madness lies here?” I wondered. My recent deeds in Thira had made the people wary, so I had to change my appearance.
My shadow took on the guise of an old mortal merchant. With this disguise, I joined the long line at Sakpta’s gates and slipped inside.
The town reeked of incense. Merchants hawked symbols of gods, and inns swelled with pilgrims. “Disgusting,” I whispered. Long ago, after mortals had started civilizations, some deluded mortals started worshipping random objects as their desires were fulfilled. Fate granted them their desires, and soon they revered these trinkets. More and more desperate mortals joined in, listening to a deluded speaker who spun false and deluded tales. They built a religion around a fake god—a faith ruled by men so blinded by belief that it was almost absurd. They clung to their fabricated fate, convinced that their false gods could be pleased with mortal sacrifices and meaningless offerings, but in the end, fate did what it had to, not due to their offering or due to their scarifies which mean nothing to the hands of fate, but it was bound to its duty to the world.
In Sakpta, two such orders reigned: the Order of the Sun who follow the Temple of Radiance, and the Order of the Moon who follow the Temple of Crescent. “This is a city drowned in delusion. Should I engulf it in my madness or let it perish by its foolishness?” I thought to myself.
Once I was inside the fortress of Sakpta, I sat on a bench near the city center when a messenger cried out:
“Citizens of Sakptha, this is a message from the lord of Sakptha. Heed my words! The city of Thira has fallen under the curse of the wretched Lord of Malevolence. He has swallowed Thira in pgue to please his deranged god. Citizens, visit the Temple of Radiance by day and the Temple of Crescent at night to be blessed and stay safe from the hands of the evil god that the Lord of Malevolence follows. The Orders of the Sun and Moon will hunt him down and bring salvation to Thira. Report any individual you suspect is the evil lord, for they shall face execution by our knights.”
I was baffled. This town, so lost in its fake religions, dared to condemn me—the Lord of Malevolence, whose wrath should never be called upon? Their delusions amused me.
I sat there, staring at the sky, lost in thought from dusk till dawn. I wondered how to drown this city in its own false beliefs, to see it crumble beneath its delusions. I sighed. I could start another pgue, but that would not be enough. I wanted Sakpta to fall because it believed in their deluded faith, and I will watch it fall.
In the mortal realm, I can travel with a shadow that carries a piece of my essence. To bring Sakpta down, I split my shadow to find its weaknesses, drive wedges into its heart, and become its doom.
I had to start somewhere. I needed to learn how Sakpta worked. It had been a while since I plotted a betrayal from blind faith that I despise. The fall of Sakpta would be slow, but in the end, it would colpse under the weight of its own blind belief in false gods.
As the night deepened, I stared at the heavens and pnned the slow, inevitable colpse of Sakpta. Its delusions would be its undoing. A simple pgue was too crude; I wanted the city to crumble from within—devoured by the corrosion of its false religion. I was not limited to one body. I could move as a mere shadow—a fragment of my dark self—slipping into every corner of mortal society.
So, I split my shadow into five agents. Each would work to corrode Sakpta from the inside out.
Harper was an unremarkable merchant selling symbols of the Temple of Radiance. His wares whispered of hollow divinity. Ascher is a clever woman with eyes alight with mischief, hawking trinkets of the Temple of Crescent. Francis was a devoted acolyte of Radiance, whose faith was as fragile as the false idols he worshipped. Megan had been a fervent believer in the Crescent, her soul already stained by the lies of her order and at st Hastings was a spectral informant, created solely to plunder the secrets of Sakpta.
Before I split my shadows to embark on their journey, I needed mortal wealth to plummet the deluded religion under the weight of its greed. As fate would ugh, I had found a copper coin by the roadside, a small, glinting promise amid the dull pavement.
I wandered Sakpta’s crowded streets until I discovered a gambling den tucked away in a narrow, forgotten alley.
Inside, the air was thick with smoke and tension. Men and women huddled around scarred tables—their eyes a mix of hope and resignation. I watched quietly, my gaze drawn to a roll of dice in a crystal bowl. It was clear, the game was rigged. The dealer’s sly smile and twitching fingers betrayed a scheme to cheat the degenerates. So, I did what I do best—deceive the den.
I stepped forward and pced my only copper coin on the table, its surface catching a stray beam of light. “Here is a copper. Set it to 6,” I said, my voice calm but edged with mischief. The dealer had accepted the coin and slid it onto his table. The dice tumbled inside a wooden gss, cttering against one another before nding on a 5.
In that split second, I slid a whisper of my shadow, unseen along the edge of the table, deftly nudging the dice until the number changed to 6. “Ah, you win,” the dealer grumbled, with a sense of defeat in his tone. Around the table, murmurs shifted along curiosity tangled with unease.
I pyed again and again. Each roll was a brief performance: coin pced, dice shaken, my shadow at work—and each time, the number I chose, turned up. With every win, my pile of wealth grew. The dealer’s frustration mounted; his rigged system was crumbling before his eyes. Finally, after one too many wins, the den had enough.
“No more,” the dealer snapped, smming his hand onto the scarred table. The room fell silent. My single copper coin had grown into a modest fortune of 25 silver coins. I pocketed my winnings with a quiet smile tugging at my lips. This small victory was not just a game won—it was the first step in a much grander design.
Now rich with mortal wealth, I gave each of my shadows 5 silver coins. With that, my pn to bring down Sakpta began. The 5 silver each to sow the fall of Sakpta.