Dogma (2025-2026)

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

Matthias blinked. “Father, it’s dark. The reliquary is unlit. I’ll break my neck on the marble.”

Matthias shrugged. “Then we go to bed. And in the morning, we decide which rules still matter.”

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. “You will perform the laps,” Aldric said, his

Father Aldric had memorized the list forty years ago, back when his spine still allowed him to bow properly. He could recite every rule without a stumble: Rule 47: The left sleeve must be rolled three times, no more, no less. Rule 48: Nuts are to be eaten with the right hand only, lest the soul be unbalanced. Rule 112: A sneeze after sunset requires a counter-sneeze before sunrise, or a penance of seven laps around the reliquary.

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?

Aldric froze. The other monks froze. The candles guttered. The reliquary is unlit

He believed. He truly did. The world, he’d been taught, was a fractious beast held together by the thinnest of leashes: ritual. One forgotten genuflection, one poorly timed nod, and the whole tapestry of reality might unravel into chaos. The old god, Unwitnessed and Exact, demanded precision the way a starving man demanded bread.

The sun rose anyway.

The beast did not wake.

In the beginning, there was the Word. And the Word was a list.

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