The fourth night arrived with sleet hissing against the stained-glass windows and the smell of sulfur rising from the depths of the monastery. Elias had not slept in two days; he drifted through the hours on bruised knees and a swollen hole, and the constant wet reminder that he was no longer empty. Every monk he passed now looked at him with open hunger. No one pretended otherwise.
At compline, Silas stood at the forge door as the community filed out. He was a mountain in human shape: six-foot-seven, shoulders like bridge cables, beard the color of forge soot spilling over a chest matted thick enough to lose fingers in. His hands were scarred from hammer and fire; the right one ended in a thumb and two fingers, the others taken years ago by a mis-struck anvil. Rumor said he had forged hi
