The air over São Paulo was thick with smoke the day the church collapsed. Riots, firebombs, thunderous chants echoing off glass towers—the city was tearing itself apart. Not from war. Not from plague. But from belief.
Matthias stood at the center of it all.
He had no last name. No birth certificate. He was born to a nameless woman in the back pews of a burnt-out cathedral, delivered into firelight by a dying priest whose final act was to whisper Latin verses into the newborn's ear. That priest died minutes later—stabbed by looters raiding the church for copper pipes. Matthias didn't cry once.
He was raised by silence and sermons.
The nuns called him a miracle child. He never got sick, never bruised, never bled for long. One day, a Sister caught him suspended midair, eyes glowing with gold as he whispered to something she couldn't see. She fell to her knees in awe. Another Sister tried to lock him away, call in the state—she vanished that night, her rosary fused into the wall of her room.
By age nine, Matthias could make stones hover, bend fire into crosses, and draw secrets from the bones of the dead.
By age eleven, he stopped pretending he couldn't.
He had powers, yes. But it was more than that. Matthias heard whispers when others prayed. Saw truths buried beneath skin. Understood that his mind—his presence—could alter belief itself.
He didn't have followers.
He had disciples.
The riots began shortly after he left the orphanage. Not as chaos—but as conversion. A movement that started with one sermon on the street, broadcast by a cracked phone camera, whispered into the dark web. His message wasn't fire and brimstone. It was simple:
"The gods are dead. But I remain. Follow me, and you shall become more than mortal."
To some, he was a prophet. To most, a heretic. To those who knew better, he was something far worse: a living metaphysical anomaly. A metahuman whose power didn't just manipulate energy, but belief. Faith. Collective consciousness.
The governments of the world feared him. Cults worshipped him. Sentinel Solutions marked him with a Black Sigma designation: Existential Hazard.
They sent agents. Drones. Psy-op illusions. Entire strike teams are built to disrupt psychic waves. They all fell. Not because Matthias fought them—but because they turned.
One by one, they knelt.
Some say it was hypnosis. Others say it was a psionic infection. Matthias said nothing. He simply raised his hands and told them: "You've already been mine. I only awakened you."
At 18, he stood atop the ruins of three fractured nations. Not with bombs. Not with armies. But with will.
Then came Lucas Vance.
They met in the ruins of a forgotten city in East Africa, surrounded by prototype Nullwave devices and ancient tech too advanced for any known country. Lucas was intrigued by Matthias—not afraid. He called him "the priest of the inevitable."
Matthias simply replied, "You carry judgment in your hands. But I carry it in my voice."
They did not fight.
They aligned.
And Matthias? He became their soul.
He doesn't scream. He doesn't rage.
He whispers.
And the world listens.
They call him the Voice of the End, the Saint of Collapse, the Crownless Messiah.
But to those who have stood before him and survived, he is only one thing:
Faith incarnate.
And faith, once weaponized, does not die.
It converts.