He opened the third journal.
He was in it for a long time.
Not writing continuously. Writing in the way he wrote in the third journal — a sentence, a pause, a revision, another sentence. The specific work of someone trying to say something accurately that they hadn't had language for until now.
The Church's doctrinal framework for non-human communities is built on the premise that these communities represent corruption of the legitimate order. That their existence is aberrational. That eliminating them is the work of restoring something.
I've implemented this framework for forty years. I've believed it was accurate enough to justify what it asked me to do.
What I saw today: a demon lord who walks to five hundred sixty individual memorial markers every morning. Not a monument. Individual markers. Because they were individual people.
