The threshold was a number.
Five hundred million Faith Points per day.
It was the fuel-load specification of the Vigil engine — the minimum continuous generation required to sustain the Ascension Trance for one hundred and twenty days and break the ceiling between Rank 9 and Rank 10.
For four hundred years, it had been a number on the far side of the possible.
Now, as the Spire's morning draw cycle peaked — the synchronized prayer of the surviving fanatic population hitting its apex across every province of the Imperium simultaneously — Zephyr extended his distributed awareness into the FP generation matrix and read the figure.
Four hundred and eighty-seven million. Forty-one thousand. Six hundred.
Not yet. But close enough that the difference was now measurable in hours rather than months.
