※ “Authority collapses when observed without belief.”

  Halden did not approach the stall so much as force a path through the crowd.

  Shoulders bumped aside. Baskets tilted. A woman stumbled back with a startled yelp.

  Halden did not look at any of them.

  His vestments flared behind him like a banner of entitlement.

  He stopped directly in front of Lisa, chest lifted, ready to deliver judgment.

  “Child,” he declared, loud enough for half the market to hear, “you stand before a priest of the Sanctified Flame. You will stop this chaos and answer my—”

  “Queue is there,” Lisa said, pointing without looking up.

  Halden froze mid-sentence.

  “…What did you say?”

  Lisa raised her eyes. “Queue. End of line. You are obstructing the stall.”

  The crowd sucked in a breath.

  Halden’s face darkened instantly. “I am not a customer. I am the voice of the faithful. The conduit of their devotion. I carry the Flame’s mandate—”

  “Parasite,” Lisa said flatly.

  The entire market went silent.

  Halden’s mouth fell open. “…what?”

  “You claim to speak for others,” Lisa said, tone clinical. “To extract authority from their belief. To absorb power not generated by you. Parasite.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Halden sputtered. “I— I do not take! I guide! Their faith flows through me toward the Archpriest—”

  “Correct,” Lisa interrupted.

  Halden blinked, disoriented. “Correct…?”

  “Not parasite.”

  He exhaled, shoulders easing slightly—

  “A pyramidal scheme designed to extract maximum advantage from participants.”

  The crowd erupted in choked laughter and horrified delight.

  Even the guards stared.

  Halden’s face flamed red. “How dare— you have no understanding of sacred hierarchy! The Archpriest receives the devotion of the faithful, yes, but he passes it upward to the—”

  “Higher node,” Lisa said. “More efficient extraction point.”

  “That is not extraction!” Halden barked. “It is devotion! Structure! Divine order!”

  Lisa tilted her head a few millimeters. “You benefit. Your superior benefits. Your god benefits. The believers lose time, coin, autonomy. Triangle structure. Pyramidal.”

  Halden’s voice rose to shrill indignation. “It is NOT a pyramid!”

  “Describe the shape,” Lisa said calmly.

  He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

  Behind him, someone whispered, “It is kind of a pyramid…”

  The younger guard swallowed. The older guard sighed and murmured, “I’m getting the captain…”

  He slipped away discreetly, leaving the young one frozen between religious authority and Lisa’s absolute logical pull.

  Halden, trembling with outrage, leaned forward until he was nearly nose-to-nose with Lisa.

  “You insolent girl,” he hissed. “You do not understand the sacred. You do not understand the Flame. You do not understand me. I am the vessel. The chosen conduit. The faithful give freely—”

  “You take freely,” Lisa corrected.

  “I— what— I do not—”

  “You claim necessity,” she said. “Demonstrate it. Otherwise: parasitic structure.”

  Halden grasped for words, for dignity, for a rhetorical weapon that did not exist in the face of analytical indifference.

  “You— you cannot speak to me this way! I am—”

  “You are out of sequence,” Lisa said. “Queue. Now.”