“But Grace wanted power, wanted to shape the world into the beauty that it once was. She wanted to stand alongside Oak, fearing that she’d be forgotten otherwise. After all, what’s a scholar to a God?

So she read, committing an act of heresy greater than the murder of a priest. And as she spoke, the words burned in her throat. They rejected her, but she persevered. She persevered as the words incinerated the air in her lungs and tore apart the deepest memories of her mind. The words unmade her, utterly destroyed the person she had been, until she was nothing more than a husk, too far gone to stop herself.”