If soot stains your tunic, dye it black. This is vengeance.

There’s faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there’s faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they’re not entirely certain they’re in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God’s mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence.

If soot stains your tunic, dye it black. This is vengeance.

Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic.

Where no paths exist, a man strays only when he misses his destination. There is no crime, no transgression, no sin save foolishness or incompetence, and no obscenity save the tyranny of custom.

Achamian tossed his hands skyward in dismay. “Foolish boy! How many faiths are there? How many competing beliefs? And you would murder another on the slender hope that yours is somehow the only one?

To indulge it is to breed it. To punish it is to feed it. Madness knows no bridle but the knife.