Jack "Qin" Chen was thirty-five years old and had forgotten more about his own life than most people knew about anyone else's.

He had forgotten his mother's face. He had forgotten the sound of his father's voice. He had forgotten the name of the girl he had loved in high school and the reason they had broken up and whether she had been happy after him. He had forgotten his own name, for that matter. Jack was the name he had been given at the military hospital in 1951, a name for a boy who had arrived with no identification and no memory and a scar on his palm that looked like it had been made by the edge of a blade.

Jack had learned to live without memory. It was not difficult. Memory was overrated. It was the people who carried too much memory who suffered, Jack had learned. He carried very little and was fine with it. Fine, maybe. Not happy. There was a difference.

The shrine sat in the back of a building on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles, behind a laundromat that smelled permanently of damp cotton and bleach and the grease that had soaked into the brick walls over twenty years of spinning. Jack had inherited it from a man he had met in a bar near Grand Central Market three years ago, a man who had called himself Mei and who had told Jack he was the last descendant of an imperial Chinese bloodline.

Mei had sat across from Jack in the dim light of the bar, the whiskey in his glass catching the neon from the sign outside, and he had told Jack about the five artifacts. The Iron Pagoda, which held the spirit of a general who had commanded armies of light. The Golden Bell, which contained the voice of a deity who had sung the world into existence. The Gourd of Devouring, which was hungry. The Chaos Axe, which remembered the first cut that separated heaven from earth. The Stone of Creation, which held the memory of the first living thing.

Jack had not believed him. Not at first. He had believed in a lot of things once, but believing was something he had stopped doing around the time he woke up in that hospital with no name and no memory and a scar on his palm that he still couldn't explain.

But then he had seen the artifacts, sitting on a shelf in the back room of the shrine, and they had hummed, and they had warmed in his hands, and they had whispered in a language he did not understand but somehow knew. The humming was the thing that got him. It was a sound that sat in his chest, right behind his sternum, like a second heartbeat. He had felt it the first time he touched the Iron Pagoda, and he had felt it again when he touched the Golden Bell, and again when he touched the Gourd, and again when he touched the Axe, and again when he touched the Stone. Five heartbeats. Five artifacts. Five prisons for things that had once been gods.

Jack had accepted the shrine and the artifacts and the war that raged between the pantheons. He had accepted it because he had nothing else. He had no memory. He had no family. He had no home. He had a shrine on Spring Street and five artifacts on a shelf and a war he did not believe in but could not escape.

The artifacts demanded sacrifice. Each use erased a memory. Jack had already forgotten his mother's face. He had already forgotten the sound of his father's voice. He had already forgotten the name of the girl he had loved in high school. He had already forgotten his own name.

He was running out of memories.

A woman came to the shrine one night and told him the Thunder God's army was coming. She did not call herself Mei this time. She called herself Sarah, and she worked for the Strategic Prediction Initiative, a government program that Jack had worked for briefly, predicting stellar destruction for people who paid him not to ask questions. Sarah said the Thunder God's army was coming through the streets of Los Angeles, and they were coming through the streets of Chinatown, and they were coming through the streets of Echo Park and Grand Central and the LA River, and they were coming for the artifacts.

Jack listened. He nodded. He asked what he should do. Sarah said: Fight.

Jack had fought in Korea. He knew how to fight. He did not know how to fight celestial warriors, but he knew how to fight. He picked up the artifacts and he went to war.

The Thunder God arrived on a rain-soaked night in Los Angeles. Jack stood in the street outside the shrine on Spring Street and watched the sky tear open. Lightning struck the ground in a circle around downtown LA, a perfect ring of white fire that consumed the streets and the buildings and the air itself. Through the fire walked figures made of solidified storm, their armor crackling, their weapons humming with the energy of a thousand thunderstorms. At their head walked a man who was not a man, tall and broad-shouldered, with eyes like lightning and a voice like a collapsing star.

The Thunder God spoke. His words were in a language Jack did not know but understood anyway. He said: The artifacts belong to the old pantheon. The new order demands their surrender. You will be erased.

Jack picked up the Iron Pagoda. The general's spirit emerged, tall and terrible, armor gleaming, sword raised. Jack picked up the Golden Bell. The deity's voice filled the street, a frequency so high it made the Thunder God's soldiers stagger. Jack held up the Gourd of Devouring. The scream tore through the air, and three of the soldiers dropped to their knees, clutching their heads.

The Thunder God laughed. It was a sound like a mountain splitting. He raised his weapon and the lightning circle expanded.

Jack picked up the Chaos Axe. He did not awaken it. He simply held it, and the axe responded by opening a gate in the space around Jack, a gate that showed him his own three-headed six-armed divine form, a form that existed in a dimension beyond the physical, a form that was both him and not him, a form that could cut through the fabric of reality itself.

Jack stepped through the gate.

The transformation was agony. Three heads grew from his neck. Six arms erupted from his shoulders. His eyes multiplied. His skin became armor. His blood became lightning. He stood in the street as a god, and the Thunder God's army faltered.

But the cost was immediate and total. Each head burned with a fire that consumed a different part of Jack's identity. The first head burned his memories of childhood. The second head burned his capacity for love. The third head burned his name.

The six arms moved with a speed that blurred the eye. The Chaos Axe cut through the Thunder God's armor like a hot knife through butter. The Iron Pagoda slammed into the Thunder God's chest with the force of a collapsing building. The Golden Bell rang, and the sound shattered the lightning armor of every soldier in the circle. The Gourd of Devouring opened, and the scream it unleashed consumed three of the soldiers whole.

The Thunder God fell.

Jack fell with him.

The divine form dissolved. The artifacts went dark, their power spent, their celestial prisoners sleeping once more in their prisons. Jack lay in the rain on Spring Street, thirty-five years old and three hundred and fifty years old at the same time, his body broken, his mind empty.

The rain stopped. The neon lights reflected in the puddles. Los Angeles went on as if nothing had happened. The cars drove past on Spring Street. The laundromat next door kept spinning. The city did not stop for fallen gods.

Jack sat on a bench in a small park near Grand Central Market with no memory of who he was. A little Chinese girl asked him if he was the shrine keeper. Jack smiled and said he did not know, but he would keep the shrine anyway. The Thunder God's voice echoed in his head. He could still hear the celestial war, but he could not remember why it mattered.

天高任鸟飞，海阔凭鱼跃。The Thunder God's voice echoed in Jack's head. He could still hear the celestial war, but he could not remember why it mattered. The neon lights reflected in the puddles. The cars drove past on Spring Street. The laundromat kept spinning. The city did not stop for fallen gods.

Copyright GEMMA-SEED Project. OTMES-v2: O-M5-T1947-LA-N1-T8-S3-K1-V082-I08-C05-S03-R01-T5-M5-M1-M4-E14.2