“Inside. Her hands gripped her knees. Not metaphorically, but literally — enduring unbearable physical and spiritual pain to smuggle salvation through her own flesh. Just a kneeling woman, lit by a single beam of light, her hands on her belly, eyes raised in prayer. She did not scream. “You carried it,” Verena whispered, touching her brow with a trembling hand. It is not clean. After endless minutes, the pressure shifted. “This has never been done. They threw her into a cell of rot and rust, where Brother-Sergeant Caelen hung in chains. She lay on the cold stone floor on her side and forced the leather belt back into her mouth. “I am ready to die,” she whispered, the belt falling from her mouth. The alarms began to scream across the compound.
