That mortal was more dangerous than the one who died, not because he was powerful, nor marked, nor prepared, but precisely because he wasn't any of those things and yet still managed to touch something ancient and walk away breathing.
The god wanted to see him.
He wanted to understand how someone outside the fold, untouched by doctrine or ritual, had survived a brief contact with something meant to burn the soul clean.
Not immediately.
Not recklessly.
But soon.
The throne beneath him shifted without instruction, tilting gently to hold his form as though the cathedral itself remembered his shape better than time did.
It was not alive, not in the way mortals would define it, but it responded with the reverence of a thing that had only ever known how to serve.
