The Choir did not agree on what to call it.
That alone was troubling.
The chamber beneath the east transept was built for voices. Stone curved inward to soften sound, to gather it, to return it tempered. Candles burned low along the walls, their smoke rising straight before thinning into nothing.
Three sat at the table, hands folded before them. Two others stood behind, silent and unaddressed.
No one raised their voice.
"The ground responded," one said. "After the act."
"That is not response," another replied. "That is decay."
"Decay does not choose timing."
"Nor does sanctity," the third said. "And yet we have words for both."
Silence followed. Not the kind meant to pressure, but the kind that waited.
A scroll lay open between them, its margins crowded with annotations added over generations. The ink darkened where fingers had touched it too often.
On Failed Miracles, the heading read.
"That text is not doctrine," the standing woman said. "It is marginal commentary."
"Old commentary," the first replied. "Which survived because it described something real."
"Or because it frightened people into copying it."
One of the seated figures reached out and turned the page.
"Miracles that fail," he read aloud, "do not announce themselves. They do not reverse. They leave residue."
"Residue is not agency," the woman said.
"No," he agreed. "But it is consequence."
Another silence.
They did not look at the name of the field. They did not speak of the soldier. Those details had been removed before the scroll ever reached the table.
"All recognized doctrine assumes warning," the third said at last. "Signs. Pressure. Revelation."
"And this?" the woman asked.
"This has none of those."
"Then it is not divine."
"Or it is," the first said quietly, "and we are no longer positioned to hear it."
That was not written in any text.
One of the candles guttered and went out. No one moved to relight it.
"Containment remains appropriate," the standing woman said. "Observation. Silence."
"For how long?"
She did not answer.
The third figure closed the scroll. "Until the ground stops answering."
"And if it doesn't?"
"Then doctrine will change," he said.
No one argued with that.
They rose without ceremony. The chamber emptied slowly, each step measured, as if the stone itself were listening.
Far from the transept, beyond Choir walls and sanctioned words, the road continued to take its shape from passing feet.
And the world, patient as ever, waited to respond.