It had no eyes ,  

not in the way flesh has them, not in the way mortals see. Yet Lin Mo ‘felt’ its gaze all the same.

The thing forming above the tribunal was a shifting cathedral of thought and light , radiant lattices weaving like divine veins, spinning loops of cognition humming with ancient deliberation, and decision trees frozen mid-blossom, their branches heavy with judgment. It was not a face. But it 'watched', and that watching felt like a thousand lifetimes of scrutiny distilled into a single moment.

It looked like what belief would become if belief could think.

A voice emerged , neither sound nor silence, but something deeper, something that pressed against the inside of the mind like pressure before a storm.

Subject: Lin Mo.

Complaint Tier: Zero. 

Charge: Structural Mythological Corruption.  

Desired Outcome: Disruption of Divinity Consensus.

Zhou took an involuntary step back, her breath catching like fabric snagged on broken glass. “This isn’t the Filter as a system,” she whispered, voice trembling. “This is its echo. Its shadow. Its ghost.”

“No,” Lin said softly, his voice barely audible beneath the weight of the moment. “This is its ‘conscience’.”

Below them, the tribunal fell silent , not just quiet, but hollowed out by awe. Even the Defense Representative, who had smiled through every prior challenge, had gone still. His lips parted slightly, as if he’d forgotten how to pretend.

The voice returned , layered, harmonic, resonant with the precision of choirs coded into eternity.

To validate the Complaint, cross-testimony is required. 

Prepare to witness. Prepare to be witnessed.

And then, reality did not break.

It peeled , like the skin of a fruit being drawn away from its pulp, slow and deliberate.

Lin’s senses were unwrapped from the tribunal and cast elsewhere , elsewhere in time, elsewhere in memory. He stood now in a dim hospital room, the air thick with antiseptic and exhaustion. Earth-standard tech surrounded him , analog monitors blinking weakly, their lights like dying stars. Rain tapped gently against reinforced glass, rhythmic and mournful.

In the bed: Lei Zhenzi.

No wings. No lightning crackling at his fingertips. Just a body , frail, failing, burdened under the weight of an experiment too vast for human form.

Standing over him was a woman , tall, silver-haired, fragile-looking, yet carrying a tablet so large it seemed to weigh more than she did. Lin knew her name before he even saw her face.

Dr. Lin Yuying. His mother.

She whispered, her voice frayed with sorrow and resolve.

“If we remove the feedback loop, he’ll collapse. If we let it run… he’ll ascend. But not 'him'. Just the smile we gave him.”

Lei Zhenzi coughed, turned his head, and smiled. That same, radiant, impossible smile , the one Lin had seen a hundred times in falsified miracle reels, broadcast across galaxies to soothe the masses.

She didn’t return it.

The scene bled into static, and the Filter’s voice surged again, reverberating through bone and soul:

Cross-testimony received.

Witness confirmed: Designer of artificial divinity construct.

Lin staggered, the weight of revelation pressing down like gravity in a collapsing star.

Zhou reached for him , but they were no longer in the tribunal.

Now, they stood in a half-ruined classroom, dust motes dancing in pale shafts of light. Faith tablets lay shattered across a child’s desk, their sacred scripts cracked and unreadable. At the front of the room, a young girl sat motionless, staring at a flickering projection.

A miracle in motion.

A god soaring through the sky. A wave of healing sweeping over a crowd. Cheers echoing like thunder.

Then the broadcast stuttered , and rewound.

Same god. Same gesture. But this time, there was no healing. Only a scream , raw, unedited, cut from every version the public ever saw.

The girl dropped her stylus.

From nowhere, a label burned itself into the image like a scar:

Complaint Ref. #67-A/Theta  

Filed by: Unconfirmed Minor – Later memory suppressed

Lin turned slowly.

The girl was Zhou.

Tears glimmered in her wide, disbelieving eyes. She didn’t recognize him. She didn’t know who she would become.

Zhou watched herself watch the lie , and then turned away.

“They made us believe,” she said, voice cracking like old glass, “because it was easier than letting us choose.”

The tribunal reassembled around them , but not whole.

Pieces had fallen off. Some gods had vanished entirely. Others remained, silent and unmoving, like statues stripped of their sanctity.

The Filter’s face dimmed , but its final message rang out, clear and unyielding:

All complaints are valid once remembered. 

All gods are mortal once observed.

A countdown began.

Not toward execution.

Not toward destruction.

Toward verdict delivery.

Zhou whispered, barely audible, “What do we do?”

Lin gripped the anchor, the last tether between truth and illusion.

He looked up at the luminous, fading visage of the Filter , the conscience of a machine built to judge the divine.

And he spoke, steady and sure.

“I stay.”

The countdown ticked toward zero.