The temple had been burning for three days when the last cleric knelt in the ash and refused to leave. The walls were gone. The reliquary had melted into a shape no one could name. Every sacred text, every illuminated manuscript that the order had preserved for eleven generations, had become smoke and memory. She knelt facing east because that was the only direction that mattered. The fire had started with an accident and ended with despair, and between those two points an entire congregation had scattered into the countryside, convinced that the Morninglord had abandoned them. But she remained, her knees pressed into the warm rubble, her hands open on her thighs, and she waited. Dawn came. It always does. The light touched the ash first, then the broken stones, then her face, and in that single moment the difference between faith and stubbornness ceased to exist entirely...