Tadame

Who decides which gods are worthy of worship? Tadame never asked for the whispers that followed them through the markets of Waterfall City. The locals see the mask, the unnerving pink glow in their eyes, and assume the worst. They tell tales of dark rituals and shadowed dealings. The truth is much simpler. Tadame’s heresy is a quiet devotion to the city’s forgotten spirits—the tiny gods of chipped cobblestones and lost fishing lures. They are haunted not by demons, but by the loneliness of these deities. Every week, they leave small, carefully wrapped rice cakes at the foot of the great fish statue, an offering no one else remembers to make. One morning, they found a crudely drawn flower tucked beside their offering, a silent thank you from a child who had been watching.