The pressure of twenty-seven million prayers did not arrive as sound. It arrived as architecture.
Zephyr floated in the dead center of the Eternal Forge. Below him, the vast expanse of stonesteel glowed with the dull, radiating heat of trapped faith. Above him, the ceiling vanished into a violent storm of aetheric currents, thick bands of crimson and gold spiraling outward across the continent. To a mortal eye, the Forge was empty. To the Iron Sovereign, it was impossibly crowded.
He did not see individual lives. He perceived the geometry of devotion.
A heavy, jagged line of amber light pulsed from the Ironfields—two million forge-workers striking steel in synchronized rhythm, creating a stable, high-yield conduit of Faith Points. A massive, slow-moving block of deep red pressed inward from the southern farmlands, the agricultural harvest generating a dense, unyielding foundation of belief.
He absorbed the weight. He directed the flow.
