[ She'd known all along the answer would be something like that, but Narmaya still draws in a soft, quick breath like she's been struck. It's one thing to know something in your heart and to then have it said so plainly to your face. It hadn't mattered. None of it and none of them had ever mattered. ]

They told us the Church was... not what it had appeared to be. It was hard to make out what he was saying because he was so heartbroken. He knew more than he told us, I think, but it hurt so much to speak of it, he could hardly bear to say more than he had.

He told us that what we had called a god had been more of a beast. A living darkness. And the heroes who saved us had been... cultivating our belief, to feed this creature. And that they now had been stopped, by all of you.