Dogma -

“What if,” Aldric said slowly, “I don’t do the laps?”

Aldric froze. The other monks froze. The candles guttered.

“Rule 47,” Aldric muttered, almost to himself, “makes no exception for darkness.”

The chapel went colder. Aldric felt the old god’s attention—or perhaps just the weight of forty years—press down on his shoulders. “The rules are not wrong. The rules are . Without them, the beast wakes.” “What if,” Aldric said slowly, “I don’t do the laps

The beast did not wake.

“You will perform the laps,” Aldric said, his voice a dry leaf. “At once.”

Matthias didn’t move. Instead, he did something extraordinary. He laughed. Not a mocking laugh, but a small, weary, human laugh. “What if the rule is wrong?” he asked. “Rule 47,” Aldric muttered, almost to himself, “makes

The silence was a held breath. Aldric’s hand drifted to his own Compendium , still crisp in his pocket after four decades. Rule 112 . The sun was gone. The sneeze had occurred after sunset. A counter-sneeze was required. But who could sneeze on command? And what if the counter-sneeze was performed with the wrong inflection? What if the soul was already unbalanced?

It was twilight. The Order’s chapel smelled of dust and burnt beeswax. Brother Matthias, a novice with hair like straw and a face full of doubt, sneezed. It was a wet, violent, unapologetic sneeze. And it happened exactly as the sun’s last sliver bled below the horizon.

Matthias wiped his nose on his sleeve—the wrong sleeve, Aldric noted with a spike of panic—and looked around. “Sorry,” he whispered. The rules are

Aldric opened his mouth to cite the Appendix on Unseen Mercies —which argued that disasters averted by rule-following are, by their nature, invisible—but the words turned to ash. Because Matthias was right. He’d skipped Rule 19. Dozens of times. And the only thing that had ever collapsed was his own certainty.

The sun rose anyway.