The first thing the Church will teach you is how to recognize a lie; the second is how to pretend you have not.
Megaira learned both lessons young.
The forbidden library did not announce itself to you. There were no warnings carved into the stone surrounding it, no warding prayers etched into the doorway. The Church preferred its most dangerous things to look incidental -corridors that narrowed a little too much, doors without any names, shelves that were made to collect dust because no one would admit to noticing them.
Megaira noticed.
The key was warm when she took it from beneath the lectern in the eastern archive, its metal smoothed by generations of hands that had sworn that they were only borrowing it for inventory. For cataloging. For correction.
It fits the lock without any resistance. It always did. The Church liked for its sins to cooperate.
Inside, the air was different. Not stale -muted. As if sound itself had learned how to behave. The lamps along the walls were already lit, their flames a low, steady blue-white instead of gold. Someone had been here recently. Or often. Megaira did not ask which possibility unsettled her more.
She closed the door behind me and did not bar it shut.
She was not hiding.
That had to matter.
The shelves rose higher here, pressed closer together, their spines arranged with meticulousness that bordered on anxiety. Titles had been scraped away, rewritten, and scraped again. Some of the texts bore the marks of correction - entire paragraphs inked over in heavy black strokes, margins crowded with doctrinal rebuttals in both careful and angry script.
Others had simply been left unfinished, as if whoever had been tasked with censoring them had decided silence was safer than an argument.
Those were the ones she always looked for.
She told herself that she was only reading for its context. Understanding the Church's errors was a form of loyalty. You could not defend the doctrine if you did not know what it opposed.
This was true.
It was also insufficient.
The book she had wanted was not hard to find. That, too, felt intentional. It had rested on the third shelf from the floor, bound in a pale leather that had never seen a drop of dye or ornament. No sigils. No seal. Not even a title on the spine.
It was a kindness, or a warning.
When she pulled it free, dust ghosted into the air, slow and deliberate, as though the room were watching to see what I would do next.
Megaira sat at the long table in the center of the library, the wood scarred by centuries of use, and she opened the book to the first page.
There was no invocation.
No prayer.
No author's name.
Only a list of dates, written in different hands, each one followed by a single word: redacted.
The Church had always loved chronology. It is believed that history could be disciplined if you broke it into manageable pieces. Seeing so many years reduced to absence made something tighten in my chest.
She turned the page.
A name appeared halfway down, unadorned, unitalicized, as if it did not require any emphasis.
Asteria Kyrane.
Megaira expected something when I read it. Fear, maybe. Perhaps thrill. The sick, guilty exhilaration that came with such trespass.
What she felt instead was recognition.
Not memory. Not familiarity.
Alignment.
She paused, fingers resting softly against the page. The lights did not flicker. The air did not stir. Nothing in the room changed - except me. The quiet deepened, not oppressive but attentive, like the moment before a question is answered.
She did not look over my shoulder.
That would have implied that she believed something was behind her.
The text itself was fragmented. Sentences interrupted by heavy black ink. Footnotes arguing with one another. Marginalia written in at least four different hands, some careful and reverent, while others are sharp enough to tear the page.
–deignation disputed
–not Sovereign, heretical exaggeration
–term removed by the order of the Synod
One passage remained untouched, the ink faded but legible:
She is not worshipped. She is acknowledged.
Megaira read that line at least three times.
Acknowledgment was not devotion. It did not require obedience. It did not even require belief. Only recognition. Only acceptance of what already was.
That, she realized, was why the Church feared it.
The Church survived on instruction. On telling people what to see, how to name it, and when to bow. A thing that did not require ritual, or hierarchy, or permission was not a god in their eyes.
It was a threat.
As I read, a warmth settled low in my chest, subtle enough that I might have missed it if I had not been trained to monitor my own reactions. It was not comfort, nor was it pleasure.
It was steady.
The sense that something had stopped resisting me.
Megaira closed her eyes, just for a moment, and inhaled. The air felt heavier, fuller, as if the space between breaths had thickened. She thought of the Sanctum that lay above, of its open halls and its watchful silences, of the way prayer there had always felt like speaking in a vast, echoing, absence.
This was different.
This felt like being heard without being answered.
She did not kneel.
Megaira had knelt enough in my life to know when it was not necessary.
When she opened her eyes, the page before her had not changed, but she had the distinct impression that the text was no longer the point. That the words were merely a residue, a shedding that was left behind by something far too large to be contained by language.
Exuvia, a marginal note read, written in a cramped, almost reverent hand. What is left after transformation?
She wondered who had written that. Whether they had been punished. Whether they had convinced themselves it was worth it, even if they were.
Megaira told herself she would stop after this chapter.
That was another lie.
Time behaved strangely in the library. The lamps burned low, then steadied, then dimmed again, as if responding to something other than the oil. She read until the margins blurred, and my fingers ached from holding the pages open.
Nowhere did the text instruct.
Nowhere did it command.
It had only described events without any judgment, devotion without ritual, influence without structure. A presence that did not seek converts, only recognition.
That frightened me more than any edict could have.
When she finally closed the book, the quiet rushed back in, not angry, not disappointed. Patient.
Megaira replaced the volume exactly where she had found it, aligning its spine with the others, brushing away the dust she had disturbed. She left no mark. She took nothing with me.
Except, of course, she did.
At the door, my hand paused on the handle. For the first time since Megaira had entered, doubt stirred -not about what she had read, but about whether she could return to ignorance with the conviction she had before.
She told herself she could.
She was always good at pretending.
The corridor beyond the library was empty, its stone walls remained unremarkable, and its lamps were warm and gold and reassuring. The Church resumed around her as if nothing had happened, as if she had not just stood in the presence of something that it had tried, and failed, to erase.
As Megaira walked away, the warmth in her chest remained; it was not heavier, not stronger.
Simply present.
Megaira did not look back.
Megaira did not pray.
And somewhere deep within her, something vast and patient took note.