The chamber was silent, but not empty. It held the weight of decisions unspoken, of centuries of faith pressing against stone and shadow. The Priestess moved slowly, each step measured, her robes brushing the cold floor, as if even the air could not be trusted to move freely without consequence.
Raven was not there.
He did not need to be. The space alone spoke enough of him—the stillness, the way shadows clung to corners without flickering, the faint hum of presence that even the candles dared not disturb. Observation demanded distance. Proximity would distort reality, and the Priestess had long learned that distortion was dangerous when measuring forces unknown.
She paused before the altar. The cross loomed above, immense, silent, yet unyielding. It was not a symbol to him. He would not kneel. He would not weep. He would simply exist under it, and that existence was enough to make her blood run cold. For Raven did not disturb the world. He integrated. Quietly. Smoothly. As if he belonged where chaos dared not tread.
She had seen children marked by darkness before. They cried. They struck. They reached and recoiled and shattered. Raven… did none of those things. He observed. He waited. And in that patience lay the danger that no scripture had adequately described.
Neutrality was not innocence.
Stability was not safety.
The council had argued for intervention. Guidance. Early instruction. A shaping of potential before the shadows could fully gather. They believed that light could bend the child's nature, that structured influence could secure salvation. The Priestess disagreed. Intervention assumed authority, and authority required certainty. She had none.
Her thoughts wandered to the first time she sensed him. Not his presence, but the effect he had. The air itself had shifted. Not thickened or chilled. Refined. Corrected. Realigned. As though reality bent itself quietly to accommodate something it should not. That sensation had never left her. Not in sleep, not in prayer, not in the brief moments she allowed herself to breathe.
Raven's gaze would have unnerved anyone else. It did not rest on objects, or on people, or even on the cross. It observed patterns. Shadows. Gaps. The absence of sound. He existed between the lines of the world, reading what no one else could. And she knew—even without fully understanding—that this child was aware, far beyond any measure they could claim.
The Priestess drew her hands across her sleeves, smoothing the fabric, grounding herself. She had not made a mistake yet. But she could not allow a first mistake. Not here. Not now. The child could not yet be named as enemy, ally, or miracle. He was… a question. One the world was not ready to answer.
Questions the council did not dare ask consumed her mind. What exactly did he carry within him? Was it darkness or simply absence? Could it sense her as easily as she sensed it? And worst of all… could it already understand her intent, her hesitation, her fear? The thought made her chest tighten. She did not flinch, but the weight of it pressed like stone against her lungs.
She had made the decision long before the others could even voice concern. Raven would not be guided prematurely. He would not be touched by affection, by discipline, by ritual. Every interaction introduced variables she could not control. Every gesture of compassion might awaken forces too potent to restrain. Isolation was not punishment. It was preparation. Containment, yes—but more than that, observation in pure form. The Priestess understood this. She had learned it in silence, in prayerless nights, in the empty echoes of the church.
And yet, there was unease. Constant, low, persistent. She felt it in the air, in the walls, in the cold stone under her fingers. The child was not screaming, not crying, not demanding, but the mere fact of his stillness carried a presence that weighed heavier than a storm. He was alive in a way the living are not. He was awake to things that could not yet be named.
She turned from the altar. Her steps echoed faintly, swallowed by the stillness of the chamber. The cross remained, unwavering. The candles flickered, casting shadows that did not move. The world offered no response, no warning, no guidance. Silence answered everything the Priestess needed to know. It spoke of patience. Of restraint. Of the truth that some beings could not be hurried, could not be touched without consequence, could not be judged at first glance.
Raven would remain beneath the church's shadow for now. Not condemned, not blessed, not judged. Simply present. A question folded into the very architecture of the sacred space. She would wait, as she always did. Wait for time to reveal what prayer could not. Wait for reality to unfold without forcing it. Wait for the moment when the world—and the child himself—would be ready to meet the truths hidden in silence.
And she understood, as she had long known, that this was the only just path. Not for the council. Not for the church. But for him. And perhaps for all the years that would follow.
For now, the child would remain a mystery, a shadow beneath the cross, and the Priestess would bear the weight of knowing that sometimes, the right choice was the quietest, and the most lonely, of all.