...She had repeated the dogma so many times it had become as natural as breathing, but one day the words turned strange in her mouth, like a prayer spoken backwards. The hierarchy was eternal. The Queen was absolute. There was no question, no deviation, no thought beyond obedience. And yet. And yet she had seen things beyond the enclave, had met people who laughed and chose and believed in things not dictated from above. The contradiction would not leave her. She carried it like a wound that kept opening. To accept new truth meant rejecting every certainty that had held her up. To cling to the lie meant denying the evidence in her own eyes. She stood in this unbearable space, neither fully believing and not yet able to disbelieve, a warrior caught between allegiances, strong but fracturing...