The communion wafer tasted like flour and salt.
Essra held it on her tongue and let it dissolve — the way the temple instructor had taught her when she was seven, standing in a line of children in the southern village chapel, wearing a Cog-and-Flame pendant her mother had bought from a market stall. Let it rest, the instructor had said. Don't chew. Let the Ordinator's blessing enter through acceptance, not force.
She didn't chew. She accepted.
The Grand Cathedral was full. Five hundred seats on the ground floor, two hundred in the gallery, every one occupied for Ordinsday service. The Cog-and-Flame hung above the altar in wrought iron, twelve meters of divine iconography catching the morning light through the east-facing windows, and the choir sang the Foundational Hymn in four-part harmony — a sound that filled the cathedral's vaulted ceiling and settled into the stone like warmth into bone.
