Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 411 The Revelation of the Theater

"The voice of God has never resounded in the heavens; it whispers only behind the curtain of the theater."

Everyone is an actor, but they've forgotten they're performing.

—Excerpt from "The Yellow Robe Pact: The Chapter of Breaking the Curtain"

Early morning, Alleston, Cardinal's Chamber.

On the long table, twelve golden chairs were arranged like stars surrounding the sun, with the center empty. That was the "Seal of Our Lady"—the Church's symbolic supreme throne, used only at the most important gatherings.

Today, it remains empty.

No one asked "why," and no one dared to sit down. They all understood that Queen Medici, though not physically present, was always watching.

The air was filled with the scent of incense and holy oil; each wisp of smoke felt like a rope wrapped around the throat, making the silence even heavier.

Rex sat quietly in the last seat, his eyes lowered, his face devout, but in his heart he was counting down.

Thirty-seven seconds.

Thirty-seven seconds later, Father Antony Javin from the northern part of the church will spread a carefully crafted rumor in the square:

"The King in Yellow has descended upon Alleston."

Those were seeds he had carefully planted; even the "priest" himself was merely a pawn who recognized the signal but was unaware of the overall situation.

Thirty-six seconds.

An elderly man in the bishops' conference turned the pages of scripture with white fingers—because just now, a page of prayer had suddenly turned into unrecognizable "scriptual ancient language".

Thirty-five seconds.

Rex opened his eyes almost imperceptibly. He had smeared a subtle, suggestive mystery into the prayers commonly used today—words, once repeated, would corrupt cognition.

It won't kill you, but it will make you start to doubt what you see and believe.

Suspicion and paranoia are the beginning of division.

Suddenly, a hurried commotion arose outside the door, and a low-ranking monk stumbled into the bishop's hall, his face pale and his voice trembling:
"A strange sight! Someone saw a man in yellow in the back window of the cathedral!"

There was an uproar.

Some immediately gestured the holy emblem and urged and comforted the believers, while others bowed their heads and kissed the holy objects hanging on their chests.

Rex simply looked up and gave a polite but inappropriate smile.

His gaze swept over everyone and landed on the empty throne of the Virgin Mary.

"It seems the curtain has begun to rise."

“You know what,” Rex said in a low voice, his expression almost confessing.

“There was a priest in the South District who cried during prayer. He said he saw the shadow of a yellow robe on the icon.”

The young deacon sitting beside him was pale-faced, his thumb rubbing the holy emblem tightly, but he avoided his gaze.

Last night, it was Rex who ordered him to hide a piece of stone bearing the mark of the Yellow King under the offerings at the prayer altar in the south of the city.

"That's just a misalignment of light and shadow, Your Excellency the Archbishop," the deacon explained in a low voice.

Rex didn't press further, but simply took off his glasses, slowly wiped them, then looked up and said, word by word:
“Our Lady does not weep, Deacon. Those are the tears of mortals.”

That night, the name "King in Yellow" seeped into the lower echelons of the church like a virus, not as a "heretic," but as a mysterious symbol lurking in the shadow of Medici.

"Have you noticed the color scheme of her recent gowns?"

"Predominantly golden yellow, with black and silver as accents... just like the illustration on page nine of the Yellow Robe Book."

“She almost never calls herself ‘Our Lady’ when she prays, she only says ‘He’…”

"Why did Bishop Anato go mad? He went to the palace and supposedly saw fragments of a script that shouldn't exist under the altar, all in the ancient language of the Yellow King..."

Rex never said these things aloud; he would simply utter a phrase casually during his sermons—"In the silent night of the stars, a yellow robe hangs atop the altar"—and then conclude with a meaningful silence.

The void will be filled by the crowd itself, and fear is the perfect conduit.

That night, three junior priests requested a private meeting.

They were filled with fear and struggle, yet also with a penitent longing, doubting that the Queen was no longer the chosen people of the Virgin Mary.

“I…thought this was heresy,” one of the older men said, his voice trembling.
"But when I dreamt of her wearing a yellow robe, smiling down at the sacrifice from the platinum altar, I felt a sense of piety."

Rex gently held his shoulder and whispered:

"That's not piety, that's lucidity."

They are weak enough—and suitable enough to sow seeds.

"God said, 'Let there be light,' and light came."
God said, "Let the play be complete."

So, let's get it done.

That night, in the pitch-black darkness, a thin crack silently appeared in the altar mural of the San Sorio Church in the northern city. The crack was as fine as a hair, yet its depth was unfathomable.

No one heard of its birth, but some dreamed of it—the King in Yellow sitting on a high throne, draped in a tattered robe that flowed like waves.

Behind Him, Medici, with her eyes lowered, wearing a holy crown and holding the Book of Royal Drama, read aloud in an almost pious and unquestionable tone:
“I am His right hand, the writer of the script of destiny.”

Rex walked along the long corridor outside the main hall. Dusk was falling, and the dim yellow light from the wall lamps shone between the stone pillars, making the mottled reliefs float in the light and shadow.

Each relief is engraved with the miracles of the Virgin Mary: blessing, redemption, and mercy.

But in Rex's eyes, those gentle lines seemed to be covered by an invisible shadow, with subtle cracks and absurd distortions seeping from the textures—like a familiar sacred painting whose background had been quietly changed by an unseen hand.

He paused before the stone statue of the Virgin Mary embracing the Child, his fingertips touching the emblem smoothed by the countless hands of believers.

The movements were slow and restrained, as if confirming that some silent and grand disintegration had irreversibly begun.

"Your Excellency the Bishop."

The low voice came from behind the pillar. It was Sister Anfisa in her grey robes—a former deacon of the priest.

Since that "sacrifice," she had become as taciturn as a stone, only cleaning the altar late at night. Rex noticed that she had recently started lingering quietly after his sermons.

“Did you hear that?” Her voice was like the wind passing through closed windowpanes. “Someone said… that wasn’t the Virgin Mary.”

Her eyes gleamed with a suppressed fear, yet also concealed an undeniable hope.

Rex did not deny it, but responded in a low voice: "I heard a lot. Maybe we didn't betray... we just suspect that the play has been altered."

Anfisa's shoulders trembled slightly, and she lowered her head, as if confessing to the void:
"All I know is that on the day of the sacrifice, blood flowed from the altar... but it wasn't red, it was gold, as gold as... her robe."

Rex's gaze sharpened slightly. He knew this was the sign that the seed was sprouting.

Meanwhile, on a south street corner far from the church, in a low-ceilinged seminary study, another hushed conversation was quietly taking place.

“What does Bishop Rex want us to…do?” the young preacher asked in a low voice, his eyes darting around. “Can’t we just say it outright? Wouldn’t that be betrayal?”

“It’s not betrayal,” the old pastor opposite replied in an almost inaudible voice. “It’s redemption—restoring the Word to its rightful place.” A piece of parchment disguised as “Gospel Commentary” was spread out beside them.

The first letters are arranged according to the Yellow King's code, and the content is only a short sentence:
"The one sitting on the throne is not her, but the one wearing her skin."

That night, at least three lower-ranking clergymen secretly slipped this "annotation" into their morning prayer book and delivered it to the clerical staff of the bishops' conference.

Rex was not in a hurry.

He knew very well that this rebellion should not explode like gunpowder, but should seep into his blood, word by word, like a prayer, forming a cocoon in the deep well of his heart.

One day, when a high priest was reciting the Book of Revelation, he suddenly uttered the lines of the King in Yellow—that was the moment when the final curtain of the theater slowly rose.

He had been waiting for a long time in the shadows of the curtain.

Deep within the royal palace, incense smoke curls like mist, creating a serene atmosphere as if time itself were imprisoned there.

The stained glass windows of the dome let in the cold moonlight, which fell on the Queen's white hair as if holy light covered it with frost.

Medusa sat alone before the altar, draped in a semi-transparent white-gold cloak, her robes cascading down the altar like a surging sea of ​​flowers, layered like a tide.

Behind her, the divine form projected by the Mysterious Card "Our Lady of Fertility" appeared and disappeared—divine runes flowing with a milky-white life-giving quality stretched out in the air.
Occasionally, a gentle yet breathtaking female face appears, with four wings folded and hands clasped together, the phantom praying softly, like an ancient god sleeping in the past, looking down upon the earth through her form.

She closed her eyes, listening quietly to the pulse surging from the depths of mystery.

"They're suspicious," she murmured to herself, a slight smile playing on her lips, but devoid of any warmth.

“The nuns at the bottom of society… the bishops fleeing from their sins… those old people clinging to their broken consciences in the shadows—do they think I don’t know?”

She opened her eyes, and a glassy light flowed within them, as if the bloodlines and destinies of the entire world were converging there.

“They whispered ‘blasphemy,’ wove dreams of ‘heresy’ in the shadows, and repeated in hushed tones in the sanctuary— ‘The one beneath the throne is no longer a saint.’”

She slowly rose and spread her arms. In an instant, the phantom of the Virgin Mary unfolded its four wings, and a milky-white holy light suddenly filled the entire church.

The holy emblems on the wall floated as if brushed by water, while the smoke from burning incense in the air remained still.

“But they forgot,” her voice was distant, cold as steel encased in snow, “that I am the Virgin Mary. My breath is the response of God.”

Her gaze was like a razor blade, slicing through the silence.

“This card, this church, this entire kingdom—they are all my womb. I wish them to live, and they live; I wish them to die, and they die.”

She walked slowly to the edge of the altar, gently tapping the white jade floor with her metal staff.

The crisp sound was like breaking bones in the night, shattering all the lurking whispers.

"'Yellow Robe'?" She looked up at the hazy moonlight outside the high window, a disdainful smile playing on her lips.
"Do they really think that an abandoned, fictional script can steal fruit from the garden of destiny I've woven?"

She stood at the very center of the golden emblem, her shadow elongated in the interplay of holy light and moonlight, as if the entire doctrine of the Virgin Mary was being reconstructed within her form—

There is no need to flatter the gods.

Gods do not need to be understood.

Gods only need to be surrounded by absolute submission.

“They forgot that I am not the spokesperson for the will of the Virgin Mary.”

She closed her eyes, and the deep blue life mark on her forehead flashed by, like a gaping hole in an abyss, sending a chill through the void.

"I am the will of the Virgin Mary herself."

In the distance, pale yellow wisps of mist were slowly spreading toward the palace in the night sky.

It is silent, yet not invisible, like the overture to some ancient theatrical performance, quietly falling.

Medici never looked back.

Deep within the central altar of the Temple of Procreation stands a nameless door.

Behind the door was neither a secret room nor a dungeon, but a slowly pulsating, milky-white mass of life.
It was as if the roots of the entire temple converged here, like the ever-flowing umbilical cord within the body of a deity.

Medici stepped in alone, her steps light and firm, each step landing on the soft, slippery "nerve carpet," with a faint pulsation beneath her feet that resonated with her heartbeat.

The surrounding walls seemed to breathe, swelling slightly as she approached—at this moment, this was no longer a church, but a living entity.

She walked to the very heart of the lifeline, a hollow womb eternally nurtured by the light of the Virgin Mary.

There was no infant in the womb, only a clump of life fluid floating with a ghostly light, its surface entwined with the mysterious core texture of the Fertility Mother—a divine structure curled up like an embryo, its veins shimmering as if whispering.

Medici slowly knelt down, stretched out her palm, and gently stroked the edge of the dim light with her fingertips.

"Life is a gift from God, and I am the sole bearer of the right to life bestowed by God."

She murmured softly, and the touch awakened a mysterious rhythm—the fetal organ flashed with a warm white light for a moment, then throbbed violently, as if the throbbing of a heart echoed throughout the entire temple.

Her voice gradually lowered, entering a hypnotic rhythm:
"I give birth to the forms of all living beings..."

All beings regard me as an image of God...

I was born from the umbilical cord of God.

It also nourishes the entire kingdom with the womb of God…

As the words were uttered, four faces suddenly appeared in the dim light—Sophie, Lyseria, Edel, and an unborn, indistinct infant.

Medici gazed at them, her eyes devoid of sorrow or joy, only displaying a detached and domineering certainty that transcended the mundane.

"They are all struggling, trying to find the key to destiny... but little do they know that destiny is already within my flesh and blood. The thirteenth island of stillness is nothing more than an untamed ganglion, and I only need to wait for it to return on its own."

She opened her arms as if to embrace the entire church, the empire, and even destiny itself.

“They thought I was a queen… but they didn’t know that I was no longer human. I was the child of destiny, the uncorrupted flesh of the old gods.”

At this moment, her shadow was stretched infinitely long in the light of life, its outline gradually distorting, its four wings spreading out.
Her three eyes opened, her long robe transformed into a cascading waterfall of light, and her flesh and blood floated in the air like threads—she was transforming into a form "not belonging to this world."

She sang softly:
"My name is not a name,"
Devouring people and becoming gods,

The Virgin Mary is not the mother.

Only the pregnant one judges all things.

The church outside began to tremble slightly, as did the informers, preachers, and worshippers.
Monks, nuns, bishops, nobles, the poor and the suffering—all are measured and selected by some silent judgment on this thin, sheepskin-like membrane of the world.

Medici's existence at this moment is no longer that of a queen, a god, a woman, or a mother, but rather the ancient and terrifying boundary itself—the representative at the intersection of all things and the abyss.

"She is no longer human, no longer a symbol of royalty."
Rather, it was a living body corrupted by divinity and nourished by the blood of fate.

"She doesn't believe in God because she has become God."

"And those who dare to look directly into the light of the gestator will eventually be swallowed into the womb and turned into nameless flesh."

—Excerpt from Lamentations of the Blood Moon, Section 3, The True Name of the Body of the Virgin Mary

(End of this chapter)