There was a moment, just before sunrise, where the trench fell silent.
No mortar shrieks. No Swine horns. Just the soft wind rolling over no-man's-land, brushing past shattered sandbags and the rusted remains of saints no one remembered. Aaron stood on the firestep, wrapped in his wax-threaded robes, staring out at the horizon. The sky bled pale orange across the ash.
He didn't sleep anymore. Not really. The Wound had taken something from him—whatever part of the brain made dreaming safe. Now when he closed his eyes, he saw forum posts burning like scripture, watched minis crawl off shelves, chanting from mouths of melted resin.
Behind him, the Redemption Corps stirred. The soldiers moved with machine-precise solemnity, armored in cloth, scripture, and fatigue. They never laughed. They barely spoke. They prayed into the muzzles of their rifles and kissed cartridges before loading them.
Aaron felt like a cosplayer who'd wandered into a war documentary.
He sat on a box of sealed "hallowed rations" that tasted like salted prayer and hardtack, and tried to think.
That was the mistake.
Thinking.
"Your Holiness?"
The voice came from behind. Young. Uncertain.
Aaron turned and saw a boy—no older than sixteen, wrapped in patchwork fatigues and a chestplate shaped like a broken chalice. He held a helmet in one hand and a parchment roll in the other.
"Uh… it's just Aaron," he said.
The boy blinked. "Your Eminence?"
Aaron sighed. "Sure. That's fine."
The boy stepped forward and unrolled the parchment.
"I've been assigned to interpret your sayings for the 33rd's spiritual briefings," he said, nervous. "I, uh, wasn't trained in prophecy. I studied tactical dogma and siege ethics, mostly."
Aaron raised an eyebrow. "Siege ethics?"
The boy nodded. "When is it permissible to bless incendiaries? Are we allowed to pray while in cover? That kind of thing."
"Oh."
Aaron stood slowly and gestured toward the firestep. "Come on. Let's start small."
They walked the trenchline together, Aaron trying not to look like he had no idea what he was doing.
The boy's name was Cadet Aleric, but everyone called him Red-Ink, on account of his constant note-taking and how he stained his fingers with wax-seal pigment. He wore a belt overloaded with scroll cases, many of which contained badly-transcribed versions of Aaron's earlier Wound recitation.
"So," Aleric began, "when you said 'lorelets will tremble in the shadow of canon,' did you mean lesser saints? Or did you mean heretics who reject codified martyr cycles?"
Aaron almost choked.
"I meant… people who think they know everything, but don't. It was sarcasm."
Aleric nodded solemnly and began writing.
"Sarcasm: a form of righteous contradiction used by divine voices. Often indicates layered truth."
Aaron rubbed his temples. "That's not what I said."
"No," Aleric said cheerfully, "but that's what it means."
They passed three prayer bunkers, a disarmed flame-tank, and a line of trench mortars covered in wax-seals and dried blood. Everything was crumbling. The Redemption Corps were stretched thin. Fatigue clung to their movements like mold.
"Why are they so quiet?" Aaron asked.
Aleric gave him a confused look. "They've been at the front for nineteen months. We lost two chaplains and our war-singer last week. Morale is blessed, but brittle."
Aaron frowned. "What happened to the singer?"
"She began screaming during a relic reading and couldn't stop. The strain tore her throat. The others assumed it was a divine sign. We turned her vocal cords into flensing wire."
Aaron stopped walking.
"You what?"
Aleric looked up innocently. "She was useful, even in silence."
Aaron stared.
Aleric smiled.
Aaron resumed walking—slightly faster.
They reached the outer trench wall, where a squad of Redemption soldiers were building a statue. Not of a saint. Not of the God-Head.
Of him.
The likeness was rough, clay, bone, rusted parts of broken weaponry, but the shape was unmistakable. Robes. Hood. A small brush tied to the belt like a blade.
"Is that me?" Aaron asked quietly.
Aleric beamed. "Yes. It's an honor effigy. It'll be buried in the trench to keep the Swine from tunneling too close."
Aaron looked at the statue's face. It was blank. Eyeless.
"Why no face?"
"Oh," Aleric said, "your expressions are considered too sacred to capture."
Aaron let out a noise between a laugh and a sob.
Later that evening, the front was struck by a relentless bombardment. Shells rained down like the wrath of a forgotten god. Fire rippled through the trench. Two men died clutching a relic cannon they hadn't even fired. A communications servitor was pulped by a falling shrine-plate.
Aaron and Aleric huddled in a side passage as the sky screamed.
"They think I'm a prophet," Aaron muttered, "but I was just a guy in an apartment with a cheap desk and paint-stained jeans. I argued with strangers online about fake lore while eating microwave noodles."
Aleric blinked.
"I… don't know what most of those words mean."
"Good. You shouldn't."
The shelling stopped.
Silence returned. But it was the kind of silence that waited.
The next day, they found the first relic-glitch.
A scribe came running to the forward command dugout, waving a torn parchment that wouldn't stop changing. Words shifted every time it was read aloud. It quoted Aaron. Verbatim.
But not things he'd said in this world.
Lines from his forum posts.
"Actually, it makes more sense if the Black Grail's blood rituals are chemically induced mass hallucinations instead of true visions. Just my two cents."
The priest reading it began foaming at the mouth.
"Burn it," Aaron said.
"We tried," said Trenaxa, who had arrived mid-chaos. "It bled."
They buried the parchment inside a saint's ribcage. The ribcage whispered for two hours afterward.
Aaron sat with Trenaxa in a chapel dug into the trench wall. A cracked stained-glass piece showed a saint impaling a beast shaped like a heretic's doubt.
"They're starting to treat my opinions as holy doctrine," Aaron said.
"That is because they are," Trenaxa replied.
"They're not. I was making things up. I was riffing. I said something about Swine hating bells because I thought it sounded cool."
"And it saved lives."
"That doesn't mean it was true."
"Then why did it work?"
Aaron stared into the guttering candlelight.
Trenaxa continued, quietly: "We don't care where prophecy comes from. We only care that it burns when spoken."
That night, the wind changed.
It came from the enemy side.
Warm. Wet. It carried a smell Aaron had once known from a kitchen trash bag left out in summer. Something spoiled. Something curious.
The Swine were close.
The Redemption soldiers lined the trench in silence. Their helmets glowed faintly from relic etching. Rifles were cleaned and kissed. A new hymn was whispered—his words, twisted and misheard.
"And lo, the godless shall cope. And the canon shall come like fire. And the paint shall dry on the bones of the unworthy."
Aaron buried his face in his hands.
He didn't correct them.
He couldn't anymore.
In the dark before the first attack, Aleric found him again.
"I've begun compiling your scriptures," he said, wide-eyed and eager. "I've titled the first volume 'The Codex Cope.'"
Aaron looked at him in horror.
"No. Change it."
"To what?"
"Anything. Just—something less ridiculous."
Aleric paused, then pulled out a scroll and scribbled a note.
"Codex Ridiculus: disapproved by the prophet. Contains dangerous wisdom unfit for print."
Aaron just walked away.
The horns sounded.
The Swine came in waves, not screaming this time, but singing. Their song sounded almost human, but the words were wrong. Bent. Stretched. Like language was trying to wear a mask too big for its skull.
The Redemption Corps opened fire. Trenaxa led the charge, her voice rising in a burning hymn, pistol blazing. The trenches became flame and ash and mud.
Aaron fired blindly, his relic-rifle cracking in his hands.
He saw one of the Swine holding a torn scroll, reading from it.
His words.
Words he had written, years ago, in a thread he no longer remembered.
The Swine read them aloud—and exploded in a burst of internal hemorrhage.
Aaron dropped his rifle.
Silence.
After the assault, only a dozen Redemption troops still stood.
Bodies twitched in the mud. Relics glowed faintly. Trenaxa limped toward Aaron, one arm hanging uselessly, her mask cracked.
"They used your words," she said.
"I never said them out loud."
"Then they heard them anyway."
She handed him a burnt scroll.
Aaron unrolled it slowly.
"The God-Head is just a metaphor for canon itself. The faith is fandom. The relics are headcanon turned real. The war is the wiki page no one can edit anymore."
He stared.
"Where did this come from?"
"It was found in a Swine commander's satchel."
Aaron stared across no-man's-land.
The line was quiet again.