There's a candle at St. Irene's feet, and nobody put it there.

Her blank gaze casts across the churchyard. Her eyes carry the weight of centuries, and hold the power to bring it to bear, but not the intent--not yet. Those like her stand watch over places of worship, sometimes alone, sometimes by the batallion--ever vigilant and unblinking, waiting for their day to come.

All Saints are custom jobs.

Centuries have refined the process to an art. First, they are molded, then broken--and then the pieces are picked up and assembled into statues to seal in the last of their humanity. The rituals and tales around them were not born, but created; manmade to the last.

We butchered the human heart and morphed it into an idea.

We made slaves out of martyrs and forced them to stand for our ideals. We imbued the statues with hollow power and let them tower over us in servitude, and we bow before them, and we praise them, and we may even love them, but only ceremonially.

Irene survived what would have killed most of us. She lost, she endured, she feared, and she found solace and eventually death in faith. She was no higher being, she was no grand figure. She was just a girl trying to take hold of her life, exploited and abused by all who surrounded her.

Some things haven't changed. Even in death, she serves us. The sword that pierced her heart must have come as a relief to her; she couldn't have known we were watching. We recovered her body, placed it within the stone, and let the sainthood settle. We drowned some other girl and fished her out of the Tagus. There we had it--our manufactured miracle, a body untouched by parasites and untarnished by decay. Another name for the list. Another statue, another pillar to keep the sky from falling.

Do you really think there's anything left of young Irene in that cold, granite heart? Even what remained is no longer the same as it was. A statue's eyes are not meant to weep.

We will keep going until all eyes are as blank as hers. For as long as our species lives, she will stand on that pedestal and watch over us, serving us, keeping us in line--and in time others will join her, and the candles at their feet will always be lit, and their flame will spread across every heart but theirs. We will paint tears of blood on their cheeks. We will offer prayers in their name, one for each, a sad little litany for someone who ceased to be human long ago. Custom-made.

Canonized.

There's a candle at St. Irene's feet. It was carved from her heart, lit by her soul, and it burns for her memory.