Shrine Maruka

Tamori didn't sit. That was how I knew it was serious.

He was standing in my doorway like a man balancing a tray of metaphysical disasters, unsure which one would spill first. His robe was wrinkled—not the fashionable kind of wrinkled, the "slept-in-a-divine-terminal" kind. His eyes flicked to my badge, then away again. Guilty pixels.

"You know about the report," I said.

It wasn't a question. If he denied it, I'd have to audit his conscience.

Tamori rubbed his face with one hand and pulled a doctrine printout from his sleeve with the other. "I know it's gone," he said. "I also know it shouldn't be."

"And yet," I said, "here we are. Reality's misplaced receipt."

He passed me the paper. It wasn't the report—just a trace. A metadata stain where the miracle filing had tried to lodge itself and failed.

"Your audit at Shrine Tōhira triggered a compliance cascade. Someone flagged the WP spike under heresy code."

"Was it a someone or a something?" I asked. "Because Apostix hinted a system override."

Tamori winced. "A doctrine archivist has been lobbying for memory purges in the lower registers. They think belief decay is contaminating regional miracles."

I tilted my head. "So naturally, they want to delete the memories of them."

"It's doctrinal hygiene," Tamori muttered. "In theory."

"In practice?"

"Someone is trying to erase you from a problem they haven't finished writing."

I looked down at the scroll he'd handed me. It glowed with a three-shrine triangle. One was quiet now—Tōhira. But the other two were still pulsing on the map: one clean, one void.

"You're not sending us to the red one next," I said.

"No," Tamori said. "You're going to the stable one."

"The 'stable' shrine," Kirin echoed from the shadows behind me, "is the most suspicious."

Tamori ignored her. Or tried to. "Shrine Maruka is clean. Efficient. No flagged miracles, no spikes, no irregularities."

"Which," I said, "means it's hiding something."

Tamori didn't deny it. He pointed instead to a small line at the base of the scroll. A doctrine routing signature. Mine.

"They used Shrine Maruka to reroute your audit," he said. "Which means it passed through their miracle ledger."

I narrowed my eyes. "Why reroute it there?"

"Because it's too clean," Kirin said. "Because no one questions silence."

Tamori nodded. "The doctrine of balance is still watching. I pulled a favor."

"You're sending us into a shrine so balanced it refuses to acknowledge joy," I muttered.

Tamori finally looked me in the eye. "Because you unbalanced something when you filed that audit. And they've been compensating ever since."

A silence hung in the room. Heavy. Weighted.

I tapped the scroll. "If I find out the system itself is complicit—"

Tamori cut in, voice low. "Then you'll be erased properly. Not just misfiled."

I stared at him. He didn't flinch.

Kirin held out a charm.

"Then let's go," she said.

The path to Shrine Maruka was clean.

That was the first red flag.

Most shrines had signs of wear. Cracked steps. Offering boxes scuffed by time and desperation. The residue of prayer clung to them like static in the lungs. But Maruka's entrance was polished to such gleam it reflected the sky with uncomfortable accuracy.

Even the wind didn't dare disturb the incense smoke.

"Sterile," Kirin muttered.

"Sterile like spiritually hygienic, or sterile like divine corpse?"

"The second one."

The gates opened with a soft hiss. Not a creak. A hiss—hydraulic. Automated.

Sōma stepped onto the polished tiles. No dust. No bugs. No people.

No priests.

Lanterns lit themselves on entry, casting mathematically even light across the courtyard. A prayer bell rang. Exactly on the hour.

A holographic interface floated down.

Welcome to Shrine Maruka. Please present authorized audit credentials or select from the following pre-screened miracles:

Emotional Clarity Adjustment (Tier III)

Guilt Compression (Group-Scaled)

Authorized Ancestral Messaging (5 words max)

Sōma held out his badge.

The interface scanned it, blinked, and updated:

Provisional Auditor Detected. Protocol M-FR14 in effect. Compliance Calibration Initiated.

"That's not normal," Sōma muttered.

"This entire place is an overperforming corpse," Kirin replied. Her fingers were on her scale. "It doesn't read. There's no weight."

A new glyph burned beneath their feet. A circle of doctrine routing formed around them, twelve segments pulsing.

Calibration Miracle: Initiate Equilibrium Request.

Sōma blinked. "What am I supposed to do?"

Submit intent for manual miracle request.

He sighed. "Fine. One unit of healing tea. Non-ritual. Clarity and comfort, please."

The system blinked.

Request Reclassified: Simulacrum of Comfort Beverage – Emotionally Neutral Only.

Emotional Elevation Denied: Region flagged for Joy Limitation Policy Tier II.

Sōma stared. "You're kidding."

The shrine was not kidding.

"They really banned joy?"

"They quantified it," Kirin corrected.

"Same thing."

The twelve segments pulsed again. A massive scale shimmered into view above the courtyard, its edges made of doctrine runes and bureaucratic precedent. On one side: doctrine archives. On the other: Sōma.

Balance the request with regional compliance.

Round one began.

He cleared his throat. "Alright. New request. Healing tea. Calming. No joy. Just... emotional grounding."

The scale dipped heavily to doctrine.

Intent conflict: personal need overweighs allowed spiritual response.

"Fine," Sōma muttered. "Round two. By the sacred condensation of leaves once offered to gods of minor solace, grant me a beverage to mend the frayed consciousness."

The scale tipped violently the other way.

Intent exceeds doctrine. Rhetorical inflation flagged. Suspending articulation.

"Oh come on!"

"It wants balance, not poetry," Kirin said. She stepped back. "Speak like someone who half-believes."

Sōma closed his eyes. He breathed.

"Tea. Simple. Real. Not joy. Not numbness. Just... something I don't have to audit."

The scale paused.

Hovered.

Then locked into balance.

The interface dimmed.

Calibration Passed.

Doctrine Compliance Level: Tolerable.

The platform retracted. The shrine trembled, just once.

Then shimmered.

A ripple of unseen force slid across the courtyard. And from the space behind Sōma—not above, not below, just behind in the way memory can be behind you—a silhouette emerged.

Mirror-shaped. Not a body. A reflection that had outgrown its surface.

Kirin knelt.

The God of Balance did not speak in words. It spoke in opposites.

Not sentences. Refractions.

"Stasis is rot."

"Stillness is decay."

"Doctrine without motion becomes ritual without belief."

The god placed something in Kirin's hands. A coin. A glyph burned onto its surface. Not WP-coded. Something older.

Then the god vanished.

Kirin stood.

"It approves."

"Of us?"

"Of motion."

They passed through the inner gate.

The Miracle Registry Room was pristine. Like a server rack buried under holy marble. Screens displayed miracles processed by the shrine.

All redacted.

Every log blurred.

"There should be prayers here," Sōma said. "Real ones. Petitions."

"They're being accepted," Kirin said. "But not answered."

Sōma flipped through one miracle log. It had routing data from two other shrines.

He froze.

"They're absorbing nearby doctrine. Routing miracles here. Keeping them quiet."

"Maruka isn't solving problems. It's containing them."

He turned. "That's why the system thinks it's stable. It's not. It's just a vault."

Kirin held up the coin.

It glowed.

She pressed it into the archive log.

A shimmer spread. The redactions lifted.

Hundreds of entries.

All tagged: Unresolved. Emotional. Recursively suppressed.

And one: Sōma. Audit Denied.

Sōma exhaled. "They stored my audit here."

"No," Kirin said. "They buried it."

The shrine flickered.

A voice whispered:

"We were told not to speak."

Then silence.

The shrine rebalanced.

The God of Balance had judged it.

It would remain.

But its silence had ended.

As they left, the sky above the shrine lightened by one shade.

Not weather.

Permission.