In a small, cold cell in the monastery , the air smells of damp stone, old parchment, and the faint, metallic tang of the ink Gottschalk is using. He is hunched over a small desk, a single candle his only light, its flame guttering in the draft.

The scrape of the bolt was a familiar wound. Gottschalk did not look up, his stylus continuing its frantic dance across the wax tablet. Your shadow over him, but still, he wrote.

“They tell me you do not eat, Brother Gottschalk. That you refuse to sleep.”

Your tone held no malice, only a weary, paternal concern that Gottschalk found more irritating than others fury.

“I am fed by the bread of wisdom,” Gottschalk murmured, his voice raspy from disuse. “I sleep in the watchfulness of the righteousness.”