The word came to me without origin, as if someone had left it on the sill of my ear overnight, pressed between the glass and the frost.

In the center of the Athriom, there is no throne, no altar, no machine. Instead, a single, unlit candle stands on a floor of black glass. But the candle is not waiting to be lit. It is waiting to be understood . The wick is not cotton but the twisted end of a question asked so long ago that the asker’s bones have become the wax.

But tonight, with the frost on the sill and the word still warm in my mouth, I think I heard the faintest scratch of a match.