Half a day until the rail line crawls back to life—strictly, from ten in the morning to one in the afternoon.

Hedi couldn’t wait that long; walking to the station, she drew sidelong glances like reeds bending in a restless wind.

By the time she reached the platform to ask an attendant, some residents had rushed to the Sacred Cathedral like sparrows startled off a branch.

They wanted to press the Holy Maiden about why her confinement had snapped like a broken lock.

On the platform, Hedi paced a circle like a night guard skimming the edges of a hushed campus.

She finally chose a Luns motorcar, a beast stitched from brass pipes and gears like a clockwork beetle.

The driver guessed they’d reach Northstar City by dusk, the road stretching like cooling embers under a slow sky.

However slow, it was the platform’s reluctant ferry for people desperate to leave Naghtown, bobbing on the day’s current.

"Miss," the driver stepped up in a pressed blue uniform, hands pinned stiff at his sides like boards.

Nerves made his posture wooden, and he asked, plain as a farmhouse door, "Could you pay half up front?"

His smile spread across his face, a mesh of creases and spirals like ripples from a stone tossed in a pond.

When he took Hedi’s bills, that smile brightened into strata like cooled lava clinging to a volcano’s rim.

Hedi had never seen a grin freeze into such a shape and hold, like stone set under an old moon.

"No doubt meant no offense," the driver explained, voice bobbing like a cork, "it’s just, before... some customers didn’t pay..."

Hedi nodded, glanced at the entrance, her expression puckering like a kid facing bitter medicine.

"Waiting for someone?"

"No."

"Then let’s leave early; someone with hair like yours caused a bit of a stir here, like a cat kicked from a porch."

Hedi kept her eyes on the entrance, feeling his gaze skate over her face, body, and thighs like a moth testing glass.

"Quit sizing me up."

"Sorry, sorry; if no one’s coming, let’s go fast, or night will catch us like a falling curtain."

The empty road wound downhill along the mountain, smooth as a river even where it sloped.

Hedi sat in the back seat, forests rushing the window like green surf, then peeling away behind.

Mud swallowed the road, and the tires carved two clear wet ruts like twin streams.

Daylight burnished them with a textured dark brown, like bark glossed by rain.

The car kept its rhythm, shadows stretching over the road like long spears as terrain and light shifted.

At times the canopy swallowed the shadow, leaving crosshatched twigs and dotted leaf-shapes like ink pressed on the rear seat.

"You here in Naghtown for sightseeing?" the driver asked, boredom drifting like smoke from a doused wick.

"More or less."

"A believer?"

"It’s not pilgrimage season," she said, tone flat as a shuttered gate.

"It’s all I can think of; Naghtown’s got little fun, dry as an empty well."

Hedi stayed quiet, gave a shy smile, and let her gaze ride the passing scene like a leaf on current.

Green woods, mottled light, and a winding road became faint echoes in her head, like bells heard through fog.

Each sight tugged at Selina, and her face sank into a ruminating look like a millstone turning slow.

"Does it hold, logically, that someone doesn’t believe yet keeps to doctrine?" she asked, the thought pricking like a thorn.

The driver flicked his eyes to the rearview. "You talking to me?" he said, the mirror glinting like a coin.

"There’s no one else."

"It’s possible," he said, wearing the air of a veteran, like a fisherman telling tides.

Doctrine holds universal morals and norms—honesty, kindness, justice—like pillars in a hall; even unbelievers practice them.

"Those virtues sit too high," Hedi said. "It’s simpler: someone wants to mourn, but doctrine bars the path like a gate."

"Molokov Bay Chapel?"

"More or less," she said, the words sighing like wind down a stairwell.

He gripped the wheel and blew out a breath. "How serious is that violation?!" he said, the exhale fogging like breath on glass.

"Pretty serious," she said, voice flat as a stone.

"Your issue?"

Hedi scratched her cheek, words hesitating like birds at a wire. "A friend faces it," she said, half-swallowed.

"If your friend’s a believer, fine; but you said she isn’t, so if she wants to mourn, she should go like daylight."

"She grew up in the Sacred Cathedral, and the one being mourned is the Priest," Hedi said, the sentence landing like a heavy book.

"Wow," he said, then checked himself, emotions wobbling like a lantern in wind.

"Sorry, that surprised me; grow up in the Sacred Cathedral and still make a grave mistake—serves her right," he said, words hard as pebbles.

Hedi stayed silent, her quiet pooling like rain in a basin.

He kept going, words rolling like wheels.

"Adult means she’s grown; the Sacred Cathedral surely schooled her from small," he said, the claim straight as a plumb line.

"To err in that case is to hurt her teachers," he added, the judgment dropping like a gavel.

"What if the mistake was made in childhood?" Hedi asked, her voice thin as thread.

"Then it’s on the educators, not guiding the child," he said, shrugging like a branch.

He checked the mirror again. "Can you tell me what mistake your friend made?" he asked, curiosity pecking like a bird.

"If I say it, it’ll scare you," Hedi said, the warning coiling like smoke.

"Then don’t," he laughed. "I might get excited and break the gas pedal," he said, humor pattering like light rain.

Hedi didn’t smile at the joke; her expression stayed grave, like a mountain under snow.

"Do you think such a person can mourn the Priest?" she asked, the question heavy as a bell.

"Forbidden from entering the cemetery, or ordered away?" he asked, the options splitting like forked paths.

"The sinful must not approach souls about to step into Heaven," Hedi said, the line falling like scripture.

"Doctrine doesn’t matter to me," he said, tapping the wheel like a drum.

"Since your friend grew up in the Sacred Cathedral, it depends on her heart," he added, the point shining like a pin.

"What kind of thought?" she asked, the words tight as a knot.

"Regret?"

Hedi stalled, eyes narrowing, as if inside a deep tunnel without an exit, wrapped in shadow like damp stone.

Her fists tightened, forearms trembling, then she released them, and tightened again, a mute struggle like tides.

She searched for words, mind combing like fingers through grain; they balked, and she sighed, "Not sure."

"It’s your friend’s business, but I think she regrets," he said, confidence nodding like a bobber.

"You don’t know her. How do you know?"

"She wants to mourn the Priest; that alone is a sign, like a compass pointing," he said. "Also, she hasn’t gone to the cemetery, right?"

"Feels obvious; otherwise you wouldn’t ask me," he added, the logic straight as a spear.

"She hasn’t," Hedi said, the admission landing like a pebble in a still pool.

"This question’s too tangled," the driver said, shaking his head like a horse.

"Your friend doesn’t believe yet grew up in the Sacred Cathedral; does she really not believe?" he asked, puzzlement circling like a hawk.

"If doctrine can stop her, that’s already a kind of faith," he said, the notion settling like dust.

"The Priest belongs to the Sacred Cathedral," Hedi said, the tie taut like a rope.

"Then it’s none of your friend’s business," he said, lines drawn like a map.

"If doctrine exists, it’s for the Priest to keep, not for her," he added, the boundary marked like a fence.

"But she erred," Hedi said, the word a stone.

"If you put it that way, it’s Molokov Bay Chapel’s doctrine that did it," he said, shrugging like water.

"Why?"

He shrugged again, shoulders rising like waves.

"You aren’t a believer, so you might not know," he said, the preface floating like foam.

"Molokov Bay Chapel punishes with delay," he went on, the rule stalking like a slow hound.

They won’t strike hard at once; as time moves, the penalty closes in on the erring, like dusk swallowing fields.

"Picture getting fired for a theft three years back," he said. "Sudden and cruel, like a trap sprung late."

"Something like that hurt your friend and kept her stuck," he said, the sympathy thin as paper.

Hedi went quiet, thoughts drifting back to the Priest’s weary eyes when he learned she would study Dark Magic, his concern heavy as rain.

She recalled him saying that sending her to the Academy was a disguised expulsion, like a ship eased out of harbor.

She saw Sister Bertha hauling her to the train platform without ceremony, like a stern wind towing a sail.

The driver’s explanation fit her past like a key in a worn lock.

Selina had said she only pretended to be carefree, like wearing a mask made of laughter.

There was no escaping the conclusion, settling in her chest like ash:

I’ve long been trapped in a cocoon spun by Molokov Bay Chapel’s chastisement, a husk tight as silk around me.