Dogma | 90% WORKING |

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.

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.

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

The beast did not wake.

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.

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

Aldric stood there for a long moment. The candles guttered again. Somewhere, in the dusty dark of his own mind, the old god Unwitnessed and Exact yawned and turned over, uninterested. No thunder. No earthquake. Just the soft, terrifying sound of a man unfolding a laminated card and tearing it, once, down the middle. Matthias didn’t move

He saw a cage. And he was the only one still inside.

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.

Aldric froze. The other monks froze. The candles guttered. Not a mocking laugh, but a small, weary, human laugh

Then came the day of the sneeze.

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.

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