Mid-winter draped Highcourt in quartz-bright snow. Sharath, wrapped in fox-fur cloak far too large for his still-growing frame, faced the Synod's marble steps. Inside waited two hundred clerics whose votes could sanctify progress—or excommunicate it.
King Aldwin had named Sharath "observer," but protocol barred him from floor debate. Thus began a chess match waged in antechambers and cloisters. He lunched with Prior Malvek, gifting braille-embossed prayer sheets printed on SK paper for blind novices. He demonstrated pedal-powered bellows that spared altar boys frozen hands at dawn mass.
Evenings he met guildmasters, promising scholarships for artisans' sons at the Collegiums. Slowly, undecided votes shifted—but Aldric's bloc held firm, bolstered by rural bishops fearing moral collapse.
On the penultimate day, a blizzard trapped several delegates outside gate walls. Couriers on cycles reached them first, towing sled-litters through drifts, guiding them to heated infirmaries. Word of the rescue crackled through Synod halls like fire on pine. Bishops who had known the icy road's peril reconsidered the "heresy of speed."
When votes were cast, the decree shocked many: **Technologia Est Donum Lucis**—Technology is a Gift of Light. Innovation, the Synod proclaimed, was divine stewardship so long as it served the common good. Implicitly, the verdict chastised Aldric's fear-mongering. Snow-soft silence blanketed the nave; outside, bells pealed.
Sharath, tears pricking frozen lashes, whispered to Elina, "Not victory—responsibility." She squeezed his glove. "Then we bear it, together."
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