...He kneels beside a plague victim in a city no god would enter. The suffering here is so complete that even the shadows flinch. Illmater does not flinch. He places his hand on the dying person's forehead and speaks, not promises of healing, for he offers none, but certainty. That witnessing this, suffering this with them, is a form of love that gods rarely permit themselves. His tears fall on contaminated ground and don't cure it because curing it would make the pain less sacred somehow. A woman clutches her last child's body and looks into his eyes and finds, impossibly, understanding so complete it breaks open something inside her. She is not alone. She will never stop hurting. But this god has decided her hurt is worth remembering for eternity, and in that decision lives a mercy almost more unbearable than the grief....