I Got Reincarnated as a Zombie Girl - Chapter 310

Chapter 310: Chapter 306 – The Antechamber Temple and the Pull of Belief
The golden sky rolled like a heavy cloth overhead as the party walked across the endless white marble. Each step felt like it rewrote space; their footfalls did not echo but were absorbed, as if this realm refused to keep the traces of anyone who thought they could change it.

In the distance the temples rose like monoliths of the gods’ collective thought: slender pillars, reliefs spiraling myths into endless patterns, and small gates that closed like petals in a winter night. The gods’ city center looked far away, yet now presented a narrower stone gateway, trimmed with symbols marking the boundary between life and death emblems that made the air itself feel weighty.

Before they could step any further, another towering figure appeared before that smaller gate. Not as an attacker or a wrathful force, but moving with calm, measured respect. Its presence did more than stand there; it tightened gravity around itself, forcing orderly auras to obey its margin. Its face was half-veiled by a misty mask; when it looked at Sylvia, its eyes carried something like a long-pent regret.

“Someone waits,” Sofia whispered, her tone sharpening into alertness rather than fear. She lifted her spear slightly, a reflex honed into her bones.

Sylvia regarded the figure with no theatrical expression. Her chains hung at her side; her dark calm was like the surface of a windless night lake. On her shoulder the little Treant twitched, sniffing the mood like a child.

The figure bowed not a crude gesture but a considered deference. Then it lifted the mist-mask, revealing a familiar countenance: stern features, a jaw that had known war, eyes mapped by thousands of farewells.

“I am Olmerath,” the voice resonated, not harsh, more like an echo in an empty hall. “Once I stood as a barrier, a god of thresholds between meaning and dream. My name passed on the lips of necromancers and dream-wardens. I serve the border so that rules are upheld.”

Alicia turned quickly, a skeptical edge in her voice. “Olmerath? A god of thresholds? I thought you were busy tending dream-bridges. What brings you here?”

Olmerath answered in the same calm tone, yet there was a faint tremor at the edge. “Everything changed when you awoke. Sylvia Hortensia, you have transformed. I do not come as a guardian to challenge you.”

A thin awkwardness tightened like a drawn wire. Seere, standing behind Belial, frowned. “Shouldn’t you be our enemy? We have crossed blades before”

Olmerath sighed long and stepped forward, keeping a respectful distance. “We have. But now I choose to acknowledge a truth I cannot fight: you are the personification or something akin of a death that no longer bows to the old order. I am not one to deny law, but I am not without fear either. Though I govern thresholds, I am still a being that may perish.”

Those last words clung to the air like dew. Everyone there felt something intense: not just respect but a tension resolved into a decision.

Sofia arched an eyebrow, voice hard but practical. “So you mean… you’ll let us pass?”

Olmerath inclined his head, as if conceding the inevitable. “Yes. For in this temple there is something that will settle many things. I will not place myself between what will challenge existence. Let me be the temporary steward who opens the gate. But remember: I remain guardian of the threshold. If you try to break a wheel that should not be broken, I will intervene. Yet if death truly demands, I will step aside and grant the way.”

Alicia bit back a startled laugh that was stranger than any fine dining call she’d ever heard. Stacia watched solemnly. The little Treant let out a puzzled “plop.”

Sylvia simply inclined her head. There was an acknowledgment in her eyes, a recognition that such choices bear a cost. She looked to Olmerath, then to her team. “We go in. Stay alert.”

They advanced, and when the temple gate slowly opened, the change in the air was palpable. The antechamber’s reliefs depicted cycles: scenes of life spinning into death and then into new forms. Deep within, an altar circled with carvings pointing two ways, life and death two currencies that kept one another balanced.

Without warning, a subtle pull reached them not a screaming spell, but a drawing: belief itself. Belief, in the most literal sense: the faith of those in the middle world and their followers, drawn like a gentle magnet toward the temple’s center. Oddly, as they neared the altar, that faith did not stay put in the shrine. It moved, flowed through the air like a liquid, and was absorbed not by the temple, but by two bodies standing in the circle.

Sylvia felt the pull first and strongest. It was like darkness seeping inward: not cold, but a fullness that shivered to the marrow. The faith of death, small prayers murmured by the bereaved, banners of fear raised by warriors who wished to be remembered these things were drawn in. Not into the architecture, but into Sylvia herself. Her body flared briefly, not with light but with a black fragility thickening into an armor-like layer upon her skin.

“This cannot be,” Olmerath hissed, his voice heavy. He bowed his head, his pallor a kind of surrender. “This temple holds faith; usually only gods may absorb it. Yet… you absorb it. Faith bows.” There was honest relief in his tone, not relief at defeat, but relief at a fear lifted. “If the followers and their faith choose to flow to you, I have no grounds to oppose.”

Everyone there was stunned. Alicia almost laughed not from humor but at the absurdity: a temple that resisted theft of its aura now yielding, or even summoning, into the body of someone who was not a god. Stacia watched Sylvia with a hardening expression, recognizing the metaphysical consequences that had just rippled out.

Sofia, who waited at Sylvia’s side, felt a different energy. A warm, gentle pull like the first breath of dawn flowed into her. The faith of life: thanksgiving from the living, pleas for healing, the vows of wardens all streamed into Sofia like rivers of light. Her body glowed differently: not with thick black mist but with a soft radiance that wrapped her soul like sacramental cloth.

Olmerath closed his eyes for a moment, and then spoke quietly, almost as a confession. “This is more than a lend of power. Their faith flows because something within you calls, and the temple only acts as a medium. You have a resonance that makes followers entrust their faith to you whether out of fear, hope, or the legends that have grown among them. To mortals, I am a god of order; they call my name at the loss of boundaries; they seek a middle path between life and death. But here before a form of death made flesh the faith chooses.”

Alicia regarded Sylvia with mixed emotion, awe, fear, and something verging on pride. Sylvia bowed her head a fraction, feeling the tide of prayers and dread pass through her. She was not a god; she understood that. She had a name, a body, a fragile history. Yet a new fact presented itself: her body had become a vessel and conduit, able to contain and shape faith at levels gods normally claimed.

“Hey,” Stacia said firmly, grabbing Sylvia’s arm. “We must control this, don’t let faith become untamed. Unstructured belief can become a chaos even the gods here cannot mend.”

Sylvia met her gaze. “I know.” Her voice was flat, but it carried an inner commitment like a vow. “We will organize it. We start from here.”

At the temple mouth Olmerath stood straighter, though traces of fear still marked his expression. He stepped back slightly to give them space. “Enter. Take what you need. But remember: this is not a celebration. This is a recognition. Recognition carries responsibility.”

Sofia wiped her palm where life-faith had just flowed into her; the glow thickened like wings preparing to fold. “I feel them fear, hope, surrender. They believe in something greater than me, and yet they choose to give. I will keep that trust.”

The little Treant snuffled softly as if to say, “Plop… (More tasks to carry.)”

They moved deeper, and with each step the altar dimmed a little. Is that dangerous? Is the shrine now losing its power while Sylvia and Sofia gain strength? Not everyone could regard that as victory. Some lost a refuge, others gained a new power they could not yet comprehend.

But within Sylvia was another unease: the sense that not only the gods’ faith was rebalancing, but the middle world, the origin of that sacredness, watched as well. The gods’ realm is a multi-layered mirror; when faith is pulled out, the mirror cracks and throws back old questions: who has the right to determine fate? Who is fit to hold prayers?

In the temple’s relief-lined corridors, shadowed observers began to stir. Had the gods begun to rethink their presence now? On high crystal towers small sentient lights blinked like sentinel eyes; they were already sending signals to the center. Sylvia knew the cost: when faith that usually stayed in temples is diverted, the gods’ surveillance systems will respond. Waves of wrath or scrutiny might follow.

But now was not the hour for long rumination. They entered the temple’s heart; pillars rose like hands cradling prayers and the circular floor displayed a turning pattern, a life-death wheel that worked slowly but relentlessly. At its center sat a small chalice-like recess: likely where remnants of the old order were kept, and where, if Sylvia really had become a conduit of death-faith, she could begin to reshape that role.

Sofia stood beside her, their hands near without need of speech. The two faiths beat between them one dark as a night without earth, the other warm as dawn embracing the world. The contrast was not a contradiction to be immediately erased; it was a balance this world both possessed and could be made to serve or to be abused.

Outside, far down the temple corridors, Olmerath closed the gate. He drew a long breath and laid a hand on his chest as if finishing the heaviest prayer. “I choose to yield today,” he muttered to himself. “Not because I am defeated. Because the future must be reevaluated.”

Their responsibilities had multiplied: they would not merely fight gods or liberate the underworld. Sylvia and her companions had become new magnets for devotion, a force that, if left unregulated, could harden into dogma no less binding than what they opposed.

They stood on the brink of a new act: with hands full of faith, they would step into places where deities once governed destiny alone. For the first time, the gods were no longer solitary atop the thrones of conviction; a new kind of being below them lifted the chalice of prayer and would decide how it was poured.