"“In those peaceful days, some came to believe that the Unseeable Gods had returned at last and merely awaited our notice. The hopeful built temples like this one all over the Costa Drago, tall spare structures that shaped the light. They filled them with artworks that rejected the forms of common life in favor of the ethereal and sublime.” I pointed up to the astonishing dome, its soaring windows bereft of glass. Peeling frescoes revealed only bits of once-brilliant color. “They added fountains and channels to carry Father Atladu’s waters, and orchards and gardens to honor Mother Gione and her bounteous earth. They designed labyrinths to prevent demons from infesting the space. But just as the temples were completed, the plague struck. Wave after wave of disease scoured the world over a span of seventy years. By the time the last body was burnt, the Costa Drago had lost half of our people, and no one believed in benevolent gods anymore, seeable or unseeable.” Indeed, in the recovering world, merchants and bankers like Sandro’s family had found more profitable concerns than myths and superstitions and gods who could not bother to make themselves known. The temples of the Unseeable Gods fell to ruin."