The outstretched hands of Vitarus, the god of abundance and famine, one coaxing forth crops and the other distributing plague. Ix, the goddess of sex and fertility, placing a rosebud in the womb of a weeping woman—granting her a child. Each column was a tribute to another god, their importance in the hierarchy of the White Pantheon rising as we traveled higher. I couldn’t help but pause at Acaeja’s column, halfway up the steps—she stood upright, blindfolded, a web of threads tangling from her outstretched hands, faceless silhouettes caught within it like flies in a spider’s net. All of us at
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