Canon John left with a face full of complex emotion, though still resolute.
Before he went he asked nothing; Agatha offered no further explanation.
Now the prayer chamber fell silent again with only Agatha remaining — the bright lamp fought in vain against the darkness outside that seemed almost substantial.
A few cold flames flickered atop the candelabrum before the saint’s icon.
Thin wisps of smoke still rose from an extinguished brazier, and in the tall mirror at her side her shattered body was reflected back at her.
Agatha turned and approached the icon of Bartok.
She lifted her head; her eyes were covered with black cloth, yet for a long while they “stared” at the deity cloaked in night.
The statue remained unchanged outwardly, but in her sight that great sculpture was riddled with cracks, as if it were already nothing more than debris that should long since have collapsed, held upright only by some invisible force.
She felt the breath of the cathedral — the breath of more and more dead.
The world’s keystone was cooling and dying.