abby shapiro

The second error is taking silence for an answer. When you pray to God and get only silence, that is neither a yes nor a no. It is simply the absence of a response. Whether or not God has heard your prayers is impossible to know, so however you interpret the silence, it is due to your own feelings. If you do something wrong and God doesn’t punish you, does that mean your actions are condoned or forgiven? How could you possibly know if God doesn’t explicitly tell you? God hasn’t deemed you unworthy; you deemed yourself unworthy. Do not try to find meaning in silence. All you hear is your own conscience.”

The rest of the fourth round continued without issue. Foley held his own in a fight against a woman armed with two quarter staffs, relying on his tried-and-true method of putting up his defenses and waiting for his enemy to tire. For several minutes, she beat on his shields like she was playing the drums, but when she realized she couldn’t break through, she surrendered, able to walk out of the arena with some of her dignity intact. Not long after, Saimallah claimed victory in another one-sided beatdown against a church agent, never even touching his opponent. The round ended with Seraph narrowly defeating an axe wielder, due much in part to luck. The man was mighty and skilled with his weapon, but the fact remained that if Seraph still had his magic, he wouldn’t have even been a challenge. All of the prince’s victories were won by the skin of his teeth.

Spheres of water formed around him, gathered from the moisture in the air, and he launched them towards Seraph. Sprinting as fast as he could, Seraph narrowly dodged the incoming bombs, each bursting like a water balloon when it hit the ground. The drenched ground would immediately begin to smoke as the sand was dissolved. Watching from the edge of the ring in his invisible state, Noah decided to investigate one such puddle nearby to test a theory.