Jion lifted the diagram from the step, keeping its blank center beneath the Goddess's suspended hand.
"Bind us to the duty," he answered, turning the page so the twelve outer marks faced her.
"Let no single guardian open it, and let the others stop whoever tries."
The Goddess withdrew her hand, and the kneeling council's circle fell dark around the page.
"You ask me to divide something that belongs to my life," she said, touching her chest through the robe.
"It will not become an ordinary stone in your keeping, and I cannot gather it back unchanged."
Hajin crouched beside the diagram, hunting again for the return path nobody bothered to draw.
'Hear that part, you idiots, before you make another promise you can't keep.'
Jion brought his hands closer to the page without covering a single mark, "Forty thousand already paid with their lives, and I walked past beds where the rot took men still calling for their mothers."
