Two months passed.
Zephyr tracked them the way he'd tracked seasons in Theos Online — not by weather or calendar but by output metrics. FP generation curves. Believer conversion rates. Military readiness indices. The numbers told the story better than any journal.
Thornfield had converted in the first week. The healing of Aldwin's granddaughter had done more than any trade agreement could have — within three days, every household in the village had sent someone to Father Edrik's temporary shrine, and within a week, Edrik had taught the Iron Devotion to a hundred and sixty adults and forty children. The statue of the Grand Ordinator stood in Thornfield's center, stone eyes watching over a village that had spent forty years without a god and was learning what it meant to have one again.
