Theobald Adler sat very still in the high-backed chair of his private study, a place that looked more like a temple than an office. The long wall of windows spilling city light across the marble and the faint hum of energy under the floor. When he drew a breath, the air shivered, a thousand tiny threads whispering at the edge of his perception. That was what divinity felt like when it was new, a network of lives and possibilities curling around him like smoke.
He was still learning to bear it. Still learning which voices to answer and which to ignore.
And yet through the haze of prayer requests and board reports, he could feel his wife like a needle in his palm.
Anna.
