Leon learned to listen before he learned to speak.
It wasn't intentional.
It was survival.
As an infant, his body was small and useless, but his mind remained intact—too intact. He understood every whispered worry, every argument by the fire, every muttered prayer offered toward the shrine in the center of the village.
And in those whispers, a pattern began to form.
This tribe had not grown naturally.
It had been arranged.
Even as a toddler stumbling through dirt streets, Leon could see it. The layout was too deliberate. The shrine stood at the exact center of the settlement, slightly elevated on a wooden platform reinforced more times than any other structure. The houses formed a rough circle around it, not because that was practical, but because it kept every home within sight of the sacred flame.
The farmland was placed near the river's narrowest bend, despite the soil being rockier there than further downstream.
The training grounds were positioned toward the forest edge, dangerously close to where monsters often prowled.
Everything was dramatic.
Everything was symbolic.
Very little of it was efficient.
At three years old, Leon could not articulate that thought—but he felt it.
By five, he understood it.
The god who controlled this valley valued spectacle.
And that god had a name.
He learned it during a dawn prayer ceremony.
The villagers gathered before the shrine. The Elders stood closest to the flame, their carved staffs lifted high.
"Praise be to Tharion Veyris!" they chanted.
The name echoed across the valley.
Tharion Veyris.
So that was the player above.
Leon resisted the urge to laugh.
It sounded like the kind of name someone would choose for themselves in a competitive online game.
The Elders spoke often of Tharion's wisdom, his boldness, his grand vision.
But Leon observed something else entirely.
Tharion had chosen this land.
No one else would have.
The cliffs were impressive, yes—but they trapped cold air in winter. The river was beautiful—but it flooded unpredictably in early spring. The surrounding forest provided timber—but also served as perfect cover for predators.
It was a cinematic start.
A risky start.
A "main character energy" start.
Leon would know. He had chosen almost the exact same type of territory before everything went wrong.
The chain of command was even more telling.
No one claimed to hear Tharion directly. Instead, signs appeared—brief flashes of golden light above the shrine, faint symbols appearing in smoke, dreams reported by the Elders.
The moment a sign occurred, everything stopped.
The Elders interpreted.
The War Leader executed.
The soldiers enforced.
The citizens obeyed.
There was no deviation.
No questioning.
Tharion had designed it that way.
Leon pieced it together slowly.
The Elders were chosen early on, likely when the tribe first formed. The oldest among them told stories of "the first day," when the valley had been empty and then suddenly wasn't. Supplies had appeared near the river. A shrine foundation had already been marked.
Tharion had structured them from the beginning.
He had given them hierarchy before they even knew what hierarchy meant.
At first, Leon admired that.
It was clean.
Efficient.
Strategic.
Then he began noticing the cracks.
One summer morning, when Leon was six, the sky flickered gold.
It was subtle.
A shimmer above the shrine.
The Elders dropped to their knees instantly.
"The god speaks!"
Villagers gathered.
The head Elder closed her eyes dramatically and waited.
Leon watched carefully.
He wasn't looking at the sky.
He was watching her.
Her breathing changed slightly, as if bracing herself.
Then she lifted her staff.
"Tharion Veyris demands greater devotion! The shrine must be expanded!"
A collective murmur rose.
Expand the shrine?
Again?
The current structure had been rebuilt twice already.
Wood was not abundant.
The War Leader stepped forward immediately. "We obey."
No discussion.
No resource check.
No planning.
Just obedience.
Over the next week, farmers were reassigned to construction. Timber was harvested deeper into the forest. Hunting patrols stretched thinner.
Leon stood near the river one evening, watching workers haul logs.
He remembered building a shrine first in his own failed session.
Faith over food.
Symbol over survival.
The expanded shrine was magnificent.
It was also built at the cost of a failed harvest.
When autumn arrived, food stores were lower than projected.
The Elders called it a test of faith.
The War Leader increased training intensity to "strengthen resolve."
Three soldiers injured themselves during drills.
Leon felt the weight of inevitability pressing down on him.
This wasn't cruelty.
It was poor timing.
Tharion sent bold commands without calculating downstream effects.
And the system beneath him amplified those mistakes.
That was when Leon truly understood the chain of command.
The god did not need to micromanage.
He only needed to nudge.
One vague instruction.
The Elders dramatized it.
The War Leader intensified it.
The soldiers executed it excessively.
The citizens bore the cost.
It was like issuing a short abstract sign in-game and watching the AI overcommit.
Only now the AI had faces.
Names.
Families.
Winter came hard that year.
The river froze unevenly.
Food thinned.
Leon's neighbor lost her youngest child to fever.
The Elders declared it "a sacred trial."
Leon clenched his small fists until his nails bit into skin.
Sacred trial.
No.
It was a bad resource cycle.
It was overexpansion.
It was mismanaged labor.
Tharion was not evil.
Leon was certain of that.
The signs were never malicious.
They were ambitious.
Impulsive.
Sometimes almost childish.
One spring, when Leon was eight, the sky shimmered again.
The head Elder gasped.
"The god desires expansion!"
Leon felt dread immediately.
Expansion meant pushing deeper into monster territory.
The War Leader assembled soldiers within the hour.
No debate.
No recon.
Just faith.
They marched into the forest with torches and loud chants.
It was absurd.
Leon followed at a distance until the edge of the clearing.
He could hear the clash of steel.
The roar of something larger than a wolf.
The soldiers returned at dusk.
One carried.
Three wounded.
The Elders proclaimed it glorious.
The War Leader called it proof of divine favor.
Leon watched the widow of the fallen soldier collapse silently against a wall.
Glorious.
Yes.
For someone watching from above.
Not for those bleeding in the dirt.
That night, Leon climbed halfway up the cliff overlooking the valley and stared at the shrine.
He imagined a player somewhere outside this world—confident, excited, issuing commands because they seemed bold.
Because they seemed cinematic.
Because they felt like the right move.
Tharion Veyris.
The god who built this valley.
Ruthless in result.
Careless in detail.
Naive in long-term thinking.
And oddly comedic in execution.
Leon almost smiled thinking about it.
Some signs were so vague they bordered on absurd.
One had manifested as a symbol that looked like a flame twisting upward.
The Elders interpreted it as "burn away weakness."
The War Leader had doubled combat drills.
The Craft Head had interpreted it as refining metal more aggressively.
Two separate policies from one ambiguous sign.
It was chaos disguised as divine will.
Leon saw the pattern clearly now.
Sign.
Interpretation.
Escalation.
Consequence.
Justification.
Repeat.
He did not hate Tharion.
Not yet.
In a strange way, he understood him.
He had once been that kind of player.
Quick to act.
Slow to calculate.
Attracted to boldness.
Blind to ripple effects.
The difference was simple.
When Leon made mistakes before, numbers dropped.
Faith decreased.
Units were lost.
He could reload.
Here—
Mistakes meant graves.
And no one could reload.
As he lay in his small bed that night, staring at the wooden ceiling beams, Leon felt something shift inside him.
If this continued, the valley would survive.
But it would suffer constantly.
Short-term glory.
Long-term strain.
The god above would keep issuing grand visions.
The people below would keep paying the price.
And they would never question it.
Because they believed.
That belief was powerful.
Dangerous.
And completely unprotected.
Leon closed his eyes slowly.
If Tharion was going to continue ruling like a reckless strategist chasing spectacle—
Then someone grounded in consequence would have to balance it.
For now, Leon was just a child.
Small.
Unremarkable.
At the very bottom of the chain.
But he was watching.
Learning.
Mapping patterns.
Understanding how divine authority flowed downward.
And one day—
He would stand somewhere within that chain.
Not to rebel blindly.
Not to destroy.
But to correct.
Because someone in this valley needed to understand what it truly meant to live inside the consequences of a god.
And Leon Valeris had already begun to understand exactly how this one operated.