The supplicant knelt in the chamber where the only sound was her own breathing and the sound of the chains. They were not heavy. Loviatar did not require heaviness, only certainty of purpose. The priestess moved through the ritual with the absolute economy of a surgeon, and each motion was performed with the same grave attention. No words were spoken. That was part of the covenant. The pain, when it came, was clean and precise, and the supplicant understood with perfect clarity that every sensation carried a message. There was no room in this moment for self-deception, no way to hide from what she could endure. The priestess paused at one moment and simply waited. This too was part of it, the space between breaths where the mind went very quiet and the body spoke its own truth. The supplicant, suspended in that moment between impulse and reaction, felt something break open inside her, some sealed place that had been locked since childhood. When the ritual ended, she lay on the stone floor for a long time in the darkness, and there were no tears. There was only the clearest mind she had felt in years, and the terrible gift of Loviatar. She knew now exactly what she could survive, and that knowledge would change everything...