Milosz swung his legs off the cot, coarse wool scraping his skin. The night watchman blinked in the doorway, lantern beam swaying across the floorboards. “Inquisitor Korol requests your presence,” the watchman repeated. “Immediately.” “At this hour?” Milosz asked. “The feast day is tomorrow.” “The inquisitor requires preparations. Move.” Milosz stepped into the hall. Korol could not know about the escalated privileges, yet the summons smelled of suspicion. Even so, root privileges turned the entire academy into an attack surface; the basilica was merely the public display terminal. [System Alert: Subroutine ‘Architect’ Initialized. Network Topology Scan: Grand Cathedral Sector, Core Conduits.] The corridor flagstones vibrated under his boots, a low 60-hertz thrum running through the masonry. The monastic halls were no longer sacred architecture; they were floor-mounted chassis housing bus lines and distribution relays. The watchman led him past the scriptorium into the restricted sub-levels beneath the basilica. Copper-banded piping ran along vaulted arches, smelling sharply of ionized air and scorched zinc. Chiseled lines—etched as liturgical glyphs, though functional as trace diagrams—carried blue luminescence into transformer banks. Robed officiants rotated bronze dials, pre-loading registers for the grand spectacle. Radomir Korol stood beside a distribution manifold, jaw set beneath the amber glow. “Voron. Your peculiar aptitude for resonance tuning has been noted. The primate requires absolute signal coherence for tomorrow's conjuration. Any harmonic drift invites catastrophe. You will stabilize the auxiliary lines to prevent backfeed into the primary trunk.” Direct trunk access. Milosz inclined his head. “Signal purity will be maintained, Inquisitor.” Korol surveyed him before stepping aside. “Failure brings its own instruction.” Milosz took his station at a bronze control desk tied directly to the core trunk. While the surrounding priests muttered litanies, he adjusted copper toggles, clearing buffer overflows and slipping diagnostic routines into the firmware. By midday, thousands packed the nave of the Pryvit basilica beneath towering rib vaults. Frankincense smoke hung heavy above velvet cloaks and coarse tunics alike. The annual gathering was the regime's flagship demonstration: a coordinated broadcast where the primate conjured a celestial canopy of saints and cherubim from manipulated particulate. Milosz stood among the acolytes on the northern riser, hands tucked inside his sleeves. He had spent the small hours injecting overrides into the bus routing table. The charge beneath the flagstones hummed against the soles of his shoes. Gavril, the Arch-Patriarch, mounted the central marble dais, mitre glinting under overhead lanterns. Acoustic horns hidden in the pillars amplified his baritone across the nave: “Let the Great Conjuration commence! Let the holy resonator reveal the glory of the celestial spheres!” Gavril raised ringed hands. Luminescence flared along the dais conduits and vaulted toward the stone dome, intended to paint seraphim across the masonry. Kneeling supplicants sobbed along the aisle. [System Override Initiated: Celestial Display Module. Access Level: Administrator. Parameter Modification: Visual Output. Source: Local. Target: Grand Cathedral Dome.] The beam stuttered like a faulty cathode ray tube. With a sharp crack of ozone, the display snapped into monochrome focus. Across the ceiling stretched void-black vacuum. At its center rotated a banded gas giant, orbited by four barren rocks, followed by a pale terrestrial sphere tracing a precise Keplerian ellipse. Volhynia—not the navel of creation, but a secondary rock bound to an ordinary star. The basilica fell dead quiet. No winged heralds appeared. No radiant thrones. Just mechanical orbital tracks governed by gravitational equations. A murmur sparked along the transept, rising into unsettled shouts. Gavril’s arms faltered. He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing another cadence through his breastplate conduit, but the orbital mechanics remained locked overhead. [System Log: ‘Miracle’ – Solar System Projection. Status: Executed. Feedback: None. User Defined: Scientific Accuracy.] To the right of the altar, a senior canon raised an ivory staff for a rite of verdure, targeting an unbloomed lily. Milosz nudged the local routing register. Instead of glowing with celestial mist, the stem ruptured under runaway cellular division, weeping sap and dropping withered petals under simple biological acceleration. An adjacent cleric cast for purifying fire, but the ray collapsed into focused infrared; parchment beneath it scorched and smoked without holy radiance, pure thermal radiation stripped of sacred veneer. Screams erupted from the pews as officiating priests lost control of their focal lines, their liturgical scripts degenerating into useless static. Milosz shifted his gaze to the choir stalls, where the senior student who had orchestrated his earlier demotion stood trembling. The fellow raised his palms to invoke a sanctified ward. [System Override Initiated: Personal Aura Module. Access Level: Administrator. Parameter Modification: Visual Output. Source: Local. Target: Acolyte Voronin. Overlay: Memory Cache Retrieval. User Defined: Public Disclosure.] The boy's hands shook as luminescence pooled around him, sour green and unstable. On the limestone pillar directly behind him, cached imagery flared into view: the boy crouched in the cellarium darkness, prying open a collection strongbox and sliding silver marks into his boots. The footage looped on the stone, crisp and indisputable. A roar went up from the front pews. The thief staggered back into the carved choir stall, his ward collapsing into gray soot as thousands pointed toward the pillar. Benches overturned as the congregation surged toward the exits. Inquisitor Korol stood motionless on the chancel steps while guards struggled against the mob. His head turned slowly across the nave, ignoring the weeping pontiff and the celestial diagram, until his gaze locked onto Milosz among the acolytes. Recognition settled in the older man's rigid posture, hard as iron.

The Unveiling