But Father Candotti, after a long pause, says, “You were out of your mind. You were starving. You were tortured beyond endurance. That is not a sin. That is a wound.”

But the humans did not understand this at first. They saw a garden. Emilio, with his gift for tongues, quickly learned the language of the Runa. He made a friend: a gentle Runa named Supaari. He also met the Jana’ata, particularly a philosopher-poet named Askama. Emilio charmed everyone. He played music for them on his Spanish guitar, and they wept with joy.

A Jana’ata mother, billions of miles away, had been singing her child to sleep. That was the voice that had called humanity to the stars. Not a challenge. Not a threat. Not a message from God. Just a mother, loving her child.

Emilio was systematically broken. He was starved, beaten, and forced to perform. His hands—his beautiful, musician’s hands—were deliberately crushed and reshaped into a permanent claw, so that he could no longer play the guitar that had been his voice to God. And worst of all, he was made a kashat , a sacred male prostitute. The Jana’ata did not see this as abuse. It was a religious ritual, a way to channel divine essence. For Emilio, it was a living hell.

Through all of this, Emilio prayed. He begged God for understanding, for relief, for a sign. No answer came. Only silence. And then, slowly, his faith curdled into something else. Not atheism—that would have been too easy. It was a cold, furious hatred of God. He had loved God with all his heart, and God had let this happen. He decided that God was not good, or loving, or just. God was a monster, and Emilio would no longer kneel.

He was raped. Repeatedly. Publicly. And he was forced to watch as the Runa children he had befriended were butchered and eaten.

Father Candotti, having heard the full horror, looks at Emilio and says, simply, “I believe you.”

And then Emilio confesses the one thing he has never told anyone. At the very end, when he was alone, starving, and dying on Rakhat, a Jana’ata child found him. The child—innocent, curious, not yet hardened into the ways of its people—offered Emilio a piece of fruit. It was a gesture of pure, unthinking kindness.