The stone leaps at the chance. She’s never run into holystone this eager, bounding in like a toddler too young and stupid to know the sting of rejection. A moment of panic: What if it’s a trap? But there’s more of her than there is stone, and she’s the one in charge. She wakes the stone—makes it happen, allows it to blossom like a lily in her palm. In her blood. Somewhere, far away, outside, there’s a pressure felt in the body that belongs to Misery Nomaki, but in the stone-space there’s only euphoria, star-light and star-bright. The stone is awake, and singing with the same frequency as her blood. She doesn’t know what this means, or what this does, but it feels beautiful. The rhythm of the stone guides her, drawing her into a climax, then easing off, drawing away from her. Misery lets the stone’s flare fade naturally into satisfied afterglow.

She opens her eyes. The faux nebula spins around her, placid and unbothered. Her heart strains in her chest as she takes in her surroundings, hardly touched. On the table the Tear of Assan spins in place, looking unchanged. The holy jade of the table, however, has been pulled so taut its surface is glossy. Polished to the molecular level. That’s strange. She didn’t touch the holy jade at all.

“You woke it,” says Pyrex Imogen.

The Archbishop’s pale complexion has blanched further with awe. Wonder, fear-laced, breaks through a calm that sits like a chemical lake in the dead of night.

“I don’t know what I did,” says Misery, which is true.

“You woke it,” Pyrex Imogen repeats, voice roughened by emotion. Real emotion. More emotion than Misery’s ever seen them show, and ever imagined them showing. Their long fingers grip the edge of the holy jade. “It cannot be denied … it is as the signs said. It is you.” They’re looking at her now, with all the intensity of a too-close sun. Misery doesn’t understand what she did, doesn’t know what miracle she performed that’s shaken the steel foundations of the Archbishop of Remus. What did the Tear of Assan do, when woken? Did it flatten the holy jade? Or was the sign simply the awakening of the stone?

“No one’s been able to touch the stone,” they say. “Not saints. Not prophets. Only you. I believe it now, Misery Nomaki. You are the one who was spoken of by the prophet of Calister, many years ago. You are the Last Savior of the Faithful, sent to us to end this war with the Heretics, once and for all.”