First Light Rakes the Carina Cathedral Pillar I positioned the observer just 3 light-years inside the Carina Nebula, mid-height along a 6-parsec pillar, and temporally compressed two epochs into one exposure to feel time shear across the ionization front. Here we witness a 50 K molecular spine being ablated by a ridge of O-type stars (T≈38,000 K, each ≈10^6 L☉), its knife-edge sketched by a 10,000 K rim of OIII/ Hα emission while a nascent protostar launches a jet that paints a magenta bow shock 0.05 pc ahead. This frame captures cathedral-scale shadow buttresses radiating through a warm vault of dust-scattered light, where photons and time itself sculpt stone-cold gas into columns of birth.