It takes time to cross the breadth of the lake, and through the slog of those seconds the submerged nubs of melon-green stare dolefully up at them. Misery imagines the surface of the lake breathing like a thin, blue amniotic skin. Eventually the horizon turns blank and silver, a single door cut into its flank. An exit, marked red and angry in the system HUD. “We’re nearly there,” Dr. Sower says.

Through the door, down two flights of steps that ring with angry footsteps, and then along a narrow corridor with flat walls on each side. Drones circulate in the silent, watchful air, bristling with glass and stone. This is the prison segment of Angelsteeth, which would have been her home here, if not for the intervention of the Forge. It’s cold here, cold enough to purple the tits. By the Grace of the Demiurge she was spared.

Sixty measures from their destination they’re stopped by a ring of plate-faced guards. Ahead of them, at the limit of Misery’s vision, a doubly armored door waits for them, drenched in blue light. At Dr. Sower’s insistence, they part for the contingent. And then step by step, moment by moment, they draw closer to the thick holy jade holding the prisoner, and Misery can no longer pretend the pressure building in her chest is not fear. If the door opens to reveal a waiting maw of tooth-studded void she would welcome it. Anything better than facing the creature that has humiliated her so.

Dr. Sower pauses in front of the door, face harshened by the flickering light of its aegis. “Here we are.”

The room beyond the holystone door is smaller than Misery expected. Not a cell—an interrogation room. Clean and hard-walled and lined with helmeted guards. The deep guts of Angelsteeth hold so many surprises for Misery, like this endless parade of security goons. The air: even colder, and poorly illuminated. The brightest thing in the room is an aegis, a blinding yellow ring spanning floor to ceiling.

Within the narrow, hot circle of the aegis, hands locked and head bowed, kneels Jericho.

Misery’s flesh burns with dull anger. It hurts to breathe. Jericho looks exactly like his self-conception in her dreams. It’s surreal, like a holo stepping from wave drama into reality. But no. Look closer—the man kneeling before her is thinner, the shadows carved by the harsh lightning starker. His signature glasses gone. When he looks up, blinking and confused, his eyes are wide and enormous, startlingly so. Like a prey animal’s. Hair sandy brown and dull, so not a saint—but what does that mean for Heretics? Scripture teaches that they fell from grace daring to harness the void for stonebending.