Ryan and Kyra exited the car and made their way inside, where they were greeted by a hostess who seated them immediately. The restaurant was packed, which surprised Ryan, even if it was nearly lunchtime. In his own time, restaurants were more of a luxury than it seemed to have been in the past, a place for the wealthy to spend some of their extra money on food prepared by a chef other than their own.

"Ryan," Kyra said with a quiet voice once they were seated and examining the menus, the young god not making an effort to actually examine it with his magic. He wasn't sure how to read with his senses yet. "You can see without looking with your eyes, right?"

"Yes," he responded.

"They're two tables behind you," she told him. "The guy and girl on the side with their backs to you are my ex and his rebound, while the guy and girl across are friends of ours. The table across the aisle from them has three more friends of mine or theirs."

Ryan expanded his empathy far enough to touch upon their minds, a light grin forming upon his face the moment he brushed them. Deciding the mixture of emotions was too good to pass up knowing the causes for, he turned on his telepathy and read their minds.

"Hello," a young man approached them as Ryan learned the secrets of the other teens. "My name is Sean, and I'll be your server today. May I take your drink orders?"

"Can I get your tropical twister?" Kyra asked, and the waiter wrote it down, then turned to Ryan.

"And you, sir?" He asked.

"Hm," Ryan looked at Kyra. "I can't read your language."

He set the menu down and slid it towards her.

"You pick my drink."

She sighed in exasperation, then looked at the waiter.

"Give him the same."

"Oh!" Ryan said. "But nothing fizzy."

"Or just an orange juice," Kyra snorted. "Don't worry about refill cost, I'll pay for them."

"Alright," the waiter wrote the order down. "Do you want to place your orders now? Or wait a few minutes?"

"Can you give us a few minutes to decide?" She asked.

"Sure thing," he said, then left.

"He thinks you're hot, and is jealous that you're with me, or he'd give you his number with your check."

"What?" Kyra asked in confusion. "How could you possibly know that?"

"I can read minds," he grinned. "Such as with your friends. They saw us come in, by the way. Your ex-boyfriend got with her in an attempt to make you jealous, and is hoping to a 'God' – as the name – that I'm not a rebound, but a cousin or something he never knew about. His new girlfriend? She got with him to get with one of the two guys sitting across the aisle, your ex's best friend. It was the only way she could think of to get a reason to be near him.

"As for that guy," Ryan continued. "He actually wants to get with the girl sitting across from her, who is sleeping with the guy sitting next to her, even if they don't want anyone to know. And the two other guys sitting at the other table? Totally gay."

"I'm pretty sure they're both straight," Kyra said. "They both have girlfriends, even."

"I'm pretty sure that the one with his back to us is thinking," Ryan said. "About having taken the guy across from him up the ass all last night, and how he's sore from it. Meanwhile, the guy across from him is doing his best not to stare at him lovingly. They're also grateful their girlfriends cover for them so they can meet up without their families suspecting, so I'm going to say their girlfriends know and are faking it so that others don't find out. Also, the two women sitting at the table behind that guy are lesbians, and are currently debating on how to come out to their families, as they wish to get married. They're what, thirty? They need to just get over it and tell their families 'we're in love with each other and we're getting married, so screw the hell off'. What is 'God'? Judging by the thoughts, it seems to be some form of god?"

"It's…" Kyra began, then stopped, and Ryan noticed her attempting to think over how to explain it.

"Give me your hand," he held a hand out, and she touched it. Ryan quickly picked out the necessary information, then pulled his hand back. "I see. Our drinks are here."

Sean arrived with their drinks a moment later, setting them in front of the pair. Ryan took a drink of his orange juice, then involuntarily made a face at it.

"Is something wrong with it?" Sean asked. "I can replace it if so."

"This is orange juice?" Ryan asked.

"It is," Sean responded.

"Interesting," Ryan examined the drink with his senses. Its appearance to his sense of water was slightly different from the orange juice he knew. "I wasn't expecting that flavor."

He sensed the confusion in the server's mind, but the man remained professional instead of commenting on Ryan's comment.

"Would you like to order now?" Sean asked. "Or would you like a few more minutes?"

"We can order now," Kyra told him. "We'd both like the strawberry-banana pancakes, full stack, with sausage links on the side."

"Alright," Sean said. "Two full stack strawberry-bananas with links. Anything else?"

"No, thank you," Kyra said, and Sean left. "Do you not like the orange juice?"

"It tastes different from the orange juice I'm used to," Ryan took another sip. "So the flavor was a bit of a shock at first."

"You have oranges where you're from?" Kyra asked, her surprise clear in her voice and mind to the young god.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"We do, indeed," Ryan answered. "Though it seems they are somewhat different from oranges here. Interesting."

Ryan had forgotten that much had changed due to the Great Collapse, and even basic things would be different. In a world infused with magic, why would things which grew be the same as things from before magic came?

"Okay," Kyra said, then decided to press the other thing they were discussing. "So about God, you pulled that information from my mind?"

"I did," Ryan said. "By the way, the two gay boys have taken notice of me and are now discussing whether or not I'm your rebound while thinking about a three-way. That's… kind of disturbing. I prefer sleeping with women, and one-on-one. I am pulling my mind back."

He did just that. While he didn't have issues with fantasizing about women, he had issues reading the minds of people who were fantasizing about him. The less he knew of the fantasies of people he was not sleeping with, the better, in the young god's opinion.

"So," Kyra snorted softly. "Back to God, Ryan. Does He exist?"

"If God exists," Ryan hummed for a moment. "I've never heard of Him before. It's possible that the creation story you know is real. You have the Ten Commandments saying it's possible – it says that you will worship no other gods before Him. That suggests that there are other gods, but lesser ones. So it's possible that God create the universe, then left things to their own devices."

"Even with… the seal you told me about?" She asked.

"I mean," Ryan shrugged. "If this God exists, then based on what I know from your own knowledge, then He might not be limited by such things. The paradox seal binds against magic, but does what He do count as magic? So the stories you know may have happened.

"However," Ryan said. "I cannot say for sure whether or not He exists. I've never heard of God before, only the gods. So it's possible He does, possible He doesn't. I cannot sense the worship or thought for other gods, only for myself."

On a whim, Ryan checked that sense of his own, just to see what was being thought of him so far. He knew he'd sensed the two guys' thoughts, but decided to risk it anyway just to find out what others did, including Nick.

Several things surprised him. The first was that Nick was talking about Ryan with his girlfriend, who was at Nick's and Kyra's house. He supposed that it made sense Nick would tell his girlfriend about his sister's rebound, even if he left out the rebound was quite possibly a real god.

The second thing which surprised him – which surprised Ryan far, far more than anything else – was that there were people thinking about 'the Blind God'. Because of the way his sense worked, Ryan knew they were thinking about him specifically. He would not have picked up on their thoughts without that.

The young god sighed after skimming the thoughts and worships of those groups of people.

"Is everything alright?" Kyra asked. "You went silent for a few moments."

"God things," Ryan smiled. "Have you heard of the Order of the Gray Staff?"

"I have not," she answered. "Are they your followers?"

"Yes."

Which was strange, because they were there on Earth, a world without magic. The only way for them to have known about him well enough to register in a sense for his worshipers was for magic to have existed.

As Ryan searched through their worships and thoughts of him, he came to a conclusion that Earth did once have magic. The seal was created around ten thousand years prior, if the timeline of the Order of the Gray Staff was correct on when they received the prophecy.

According to them, the Blind God would arrive and herald in an age when magic returned to Earth, and man and beast lived together once more in a vicious cycle of life and death. To them, their purpose was less to worship him and more to prevent his arrival or to chase him away once he arrived.

However, they also possessed a secret, inner sect called the Order of the Silver Staff. That sect believed that the Blind God was there to save the world, and that magic needed to return to it.

Ryan wanted nothing to do with either part of the order. He knew there was likely much more than he was able to glean from looking at their thoughts of worship or dislike, but didn't care. All he cared about was dealing with things until the other two Gray Mages arrived.

"Hello?" Kyra asked, and Ryan realized she was talking to him. "Did they follow you here?"

"No," he answered. "I was just curious if you had ever heard of them. Earth wasn't always without magic, though I'm not sure how it was fully purged from here, nor why it was. Anyway, our food is here, and I'm rather hungry."

Sean returned with their food, and the pair of teens began devouring it, ordering second plates of their breakfast as they finished their first. As they finished their meal, the group of teens Kyra knew got up and made their way towards them, and Ryan noticed Kyra's unease and tensing up.

"Hello, Kyra," her ex said, arm linked with his new girlfriend's. He looked at Ryan. "I don't recognize you, where did you go to school?"

"I was schooled by private tutors," Ryan answered. "You, on the other hand, were schooled by assholes."

"Excuse me?"

"Forcing your beliefs upon her?" He scoffed. "What decent person would do that?"

It might be slightly hypocritical of him to say that, but he didn't care. To his god's mind, the ex's comments were out-of-line regardless of if the general statement he himself said contradicted things.

"Just who do you think you are?" The ex asked.

"Someone who went nearly seven hours with her last night," Ryan smiled. "And who knows all the dirty little secrets of your group. Would you like me to tell your father what you did three nights ago? At two-sixteen in the morning?"

He felt the ex tense up in fear, the anger rising in the man's mind.

"What are you-"

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave us alone," Ryan told him. "Failure to comply will result in something unpleasant happening."

"Just who do you think you are?" The ex asked.

Ryan felt the baffled and amused states rise in the minds of all of the other teens present. It took him only a moment of telepathy to determine that they all thought the teen was being absurd and cliché, and Ryan supposed he was, based on some of the stories his mother and servant had read or told him over the years as he grew up.

"Ryan," Ryan held out a hand. "Pleasure to meet you."

The ex-boyfriend of Kyra's stared at the hand.

"Not going to shake it?" Ryan asked. "How rude of you. I can see why Kyra dumped you."

The ex-boyfriend growled, but took Ryan's hand and shook it, squeezing firmly. Ryan enhanced his strength and squeezed back, delighting in the crack as a bone broke. That wasn't his only spell, however, as he dived into the man's mind. While there, he placed a geas which would cause the man to feel a strong urge to have sex with a woman anytime he got aroused by something. From then on, masturbation would not sate the man's arousal to an acceptable level.

A little revenge for the comment made about Nick and his girlfriend. Ryan knew such a geas was in bad taste, as he had twisted the condition for triggering to achieve the result, but he didn't care. The full condition was that the man was not allowed to become mentally aroused by something. If he did, then his punishment was a drastically increased urge to perform reproductive actions.

Only a mind mage as talented as Ryan's father, at the minimum, could create such a geas.

He also made a few other adjustments, mostly in the memory department. Finished, Ryan began a mental countdown for how long it would be before the ex-boyfriend was also imprisoned for law violations.

The young god released the ex-boyfriend's hand with a smile.

"Enjoy the rest of your day," Ryan told him. "Now please leave. I believe there's a law against harassing people?"

The group of teens with the ex-boyfriend snickered, but dragged him out, and Kyra gave Ryan a curious look.

"What did you do?" She asked.

"What do you mean?" He asked with as much innocence as he could.

"You broke his hand."

"I did?" Ryan feigned surprise. "Oops, I did not realize humans were so fragile."

"And that malicious look in your eyes when you shook his hand," she said. "What did you do?"

"Turned him into a future criminal," Ryan grinned. "I think it's time to pay so we can leave? Want to head back and go for another round or five?"

"I'm still sore from last night," she told him.

"Don't worry about it," he waved a hand dismissively. "I can fix that with ease."

Healing magic was a useful thing, and as Kyra flagged down their waiter, Ryan wondered how many Jewels with healing magics abused it for greater pleasure.