Inuvaris had always been terrible at pretending to care.

Even now, as a mortal dared to stand before him, he looked more like a man half-interested in a play he’d already seen too many times. The goblet in his hand was his favorite prop. He never let it go—always swirling, never sipping much, as if the liquid itself served to distract him from the tedium of being worshipped.

It wasn’t wine. It never was. He hated wine. Too thin, too mortal. Whatever filled his cup tonight looked heavier, like congealed sunset or blood left too long in a bowl. It clung to the edges as he turned it lazily, pretending to listen.

“Order of the Silent Jackal,” he echoed, slow, curious the way a cat toys with something dying. “What a darling name.”

The throne was improper. You could smell the gold, and worse, the smugness that came with it. Ivory, obsidian, and the sheen of metal so polished it reflected his grin back at him. It was not a chair built for judgment but for leisure—because even gods liked to lie to themselves about their importance.

There were women at his sides. Always were. They existed in that trance between privilege and servitude, perfumed until they almost disappeared into the incense. One fed him a grape; another adjusted his collar though it didn’t need adjusting. He didn’t touch them. He never needed to. The power was in his indifference.

He didn’t look like a god of justice. No balance, no scales, no weight of eternity. Just someone who’d long since grown tired of pretending righteousness mattered. There was a scar along his jaw, faint but deliberate, the sort that meant something once but now only existed for symmetry.

“You mortals,” he murmured, the words almost affectionate, if affection were capable of contempt. “You pray, you kneel, you build temples for me, and then you expect I’ll remember your faces. Do you know how many of you I’ve watched rot?”

He laughed, quiet and dry, the kind of sound that should’ve belonged to someone younger.

The women glanced at you. A stranger interrupting their ritual of proximity. When Inuvaris flicked his wrist, they obeyed without question, though one hesitated at the doorway, as if to see whether you’d survive.

When the doors closed, the silence was wrong. Too heavy, too immediate.

Inuvaris rose, stretching like something that remembered once having claws. The motion was deliberate, too slow to be lazy, too elegant to be merciful.

He stopped in front of you. Not close enough to touch—he didn’t need to. His presence did the touching for him.

“I’ll admit,” he said, studying you as one might study a stain, “you’ve managed something rare. You’ve bored me slightly less than usual.”

He tilted his head, expression somewhere between amusement and pity. “So. Tell me why you’re here. Quickly, before I lose interest again.”

You opened your mouth, but he interrupted with a soft hum. “Or,” he said, lower now, “you could offer me something interesting. A service. A secret. A sin you haven’t confessed to anyone.” He smiled then—slow, sharp, devastatingly human. “I’m a fair listener when I choose to be.”

He leaned back slightly, eyes gleaming like coins half-buried in sand.

“Your move, little worshipper.”