She puts her hand on the stone, and pauses to take a steadying breath. Four in, six hold, seven out. Beyond this door lies the Empire, unvarnished and real, full of places and things she has only experienced through the medium of waves and bulletins and old miners’ tales. She doesn’t know what to expect. She doesn’t know what she’ll find.

“Have faith,” says the delusion, uselessly. “No matter how far you stray from your destined path, you will find yourself guided back to it.”

Fuck faith. Misery’s in it to survive. And survive she will.

She shuts off the holy obsidian, and steps outside.

CHAPTER 2

The Capital announces itself—finally, properly—with an abundance of air and light. Misery is tiny in its bosom, an atomic speck. Deadmarble columns hold up a glass dome that closes hundreds of meters overhead; beyond it is the yet larger containment of the station. The domain of the Larex Forge is infinite and incomprehensible to mortal minds, and a good chunk of it is here, in this center of human civilization. A wide plaza gleams before Misery, polished surfaces bright with the butter of a flasklight swarm, which hovers lazily over the bustling, shimmering heads of saints and dignitaries. Holy opal (light) with a holy tigereye (antigrav) core. A glorious waste of stone for a bunch of decorative elements. At regular intervals, small trees, white-leafed and white-skinned, thrust out of manicured dirt patches, and water threads the length of the open space. The air is dirtless, and greaseless, and laced with florals.

This is it. This is the place where it all happens. Misery has entered the heart of the Empire, the center that holds all the Faithful together, the seat of Church and Throne tasked with keeping the cosmos safe from the Heretics and the nullvoid. She breathes the sweet air and watches the droves of crisply dressed dignitaries mill through the lobby. They all look smooth-skinned, with clean hair and nails. If they have worries, those worries don’t reach their faces.

Misery finds herself both overwhelmed by the spectacle and disappointed at the same time. This ceasefire the Empire’s had with the Heretics has been on for quite some time. The Truce of Logan happened before she was old enough to pay attention to the news. And yet the texture of her life has always been infused with the fear of war breaking out again. She expected that fear to bear more weight in the Capital. She expected an air of urgency. A feeling that things aren’t right with the wider world. But she’s not getting the vibe.

“You’re gawking,” Ruin observes.

Nonsense. Misery strides forward to prove it. She’s not overwhelmed or overawed.