The Written Wilds

A sermon should burn slow. That’s the first line on the note card. Three words, period after each, the way Brother Alastair taught us—short declaratives like tapping a match against the box, like you mean it. Then a space where I’m supposed to write the part where restraint triumphs, where the flock leaves soot-footed and grateful their appetites did not become their masters. I tuck the note card back into my jacket. The chapel’s basement is a poured-concrete thing with a thrift-store chandelier bolted to the rebar ceiling, its glass teeth catching light from the exit sign. The Order of the Burning Veil doesn’t waste money underground; it wastes people. I have keys because someone keeps mistaking me for responsible, and tonight “responsible” means watching a god breathe through iron. They call it Ashfast . It’s not its name. It’s a warning, a tempo: ash that comes fast, as if the world were kindling and the world knew it. The god doesn’t look like anything. That’s the safest way to...