Kira finds her resolve tested by a cult led by Dukat.
Kira's childhood teacher, the Bajoran cleric Fala, gives her a gift that is really a transporter device, and she is beamed to Empok Nor. The station is home to fifty Bajorans who worship the Pah-wraiths, led by Dukat, whose followers are devoted enough to shield him from Kira's phaser. The community awaits its first child, and when the baby is born half Cardassian, Dukat calls it a miracle, but Kira suspects he is the father.
When the mother says she cannot keep lying to her husband, Dukat tries to kill her by opening an airlock, then calls it an accident. Fearing exposure, he orders the cult to commit mass suicide. Kira escapes in time to knock Dukat's pill away and reveal that he never meant to die, and the followers turn on him before he flees. Fala takes his own pill out of faith. The seventh-season episode deepens Dukat's role as a cult leader and Pah-wraith servant.