Father Is Pleased

After a bloody rite of passage, Felix becomes a True Son, one of Father's chosen inner circle, someone with a special vantage on the secluded society of the Settlement of Passing in the Nothing Lands, where all brothers and sisters revere Father. Father is life, and Father is death, and Father governs rituals that guide his followers on their journeys to meet the void, as death is the greatest good and the only worthy desire. Felix witnesses and participates in many rituals: the violence and death linked to childbirth, the gut-ripping orgies that serve as theatre, the initiation of another young man in the art of sacrificing an outsider in a manner that will please Father, and more. Nothing pleases Felix like pleasing Father, and when Father takes notice, he points Felix toward a special destiny in the coming days when threats to their ways of honoring death will come from within.