I stood in the wind-scoured wastes of my own making, a pilgrim to the hollow altar of my doubt, and I knew then that confidence was not a torch seized from the gods but the quiet extinguishing of their voices. The world had whispered less to me all my days, had carved me down with every step, but here, in the alkali dust and the pitiless sun, I found that the only thing required was to stand, unflinching, in the raw fact of my own being. No grand revelation, no thunder from the heavens—just the slow settling of my bones into the truth that I was, and that was enough. The wind would take what it would. I did not bow.