Time did not pass within the Temple.
It dissolved.
Not gradually, not perceptibly, but completely—reduced from something measurable into something experienced only through repetition, through the cycle of strain and stillness, of questioning and response, until the distinction between one day and the next ceased to exist as anything separate, anything definable, anything that could be held and named.
Silvain no longer counted.
He had attempted it at first—marking intervals through the rhythm of his breathing, through the number of recitations demanded of him, through the sequence of corrections imposed upon his body and mind—but the Temple did not operate on patterns that could be anticipated, and so the effort became meaningless, the structure too fluid to anchor time to anything consistent.
Days became indistinguishable.
Only endurance remained.
