You turn from the altar of your own making and begin the slow work of preparation. The temple’s corridors offer no mercy, only answers hidden in soot-stained niches, cracked cabinets, and old surgical charms nailed beside shrines to forgotten saints. You gather what medicine you can identify, along with sharp implements, linen, alcohol, and any binding materials that might survive contact with blood and stone. Then you search for texts, diagrams, and whispered relic-knowledge, letting the dead teach you how flesh may be opened without surrendering it.

Days seem to fold strangely in the ruin as you study by lantern and candle stub, copying anatomical sketches from damp pages and testing your understanding against your own pulse. The temple’s silence becomes a tutor, broken only by the bell below and the occasional scrape of something moving beyond the walls. Your plans grow precise and terrible: where to cut, where to reinforce, what to preserve, and what must be sacrificed for the transformation to hold. By the time you finish, the operation feels less like a wound you will suffer than a doorway you have deliberately built into yourself.