The first Awakening ceremony where the visibility activated happened fourteen hours after the sustained signal began.
A city called Harthen, ninety kilometers northeast of Valdenmoor. Population forty thousand. Church branch established sixty years ago. Senior clergy who had received the five-ability signal and had chosen institutional hardening — the pattern Dael had predicted, the sixty to seventy percent who worked faster before the transparency arrived.
The Awakening ceremony for Harthen's seventeen-year-olds had been scheduled for that morning before the signal went out. The senior clergy hadn't canceled it. They'd decided to process it quickly and assign the multipliers before the transparency mandate reached their city.
Eleven seventeen-year-olds standing before the Awakening altar.
Parents in the ceremony hall.
Junior priests administering.
Senior clergy watching.
