My throat is dry. “I don’t remember.”
He leans in, and his voice drops to a whisper intended only for me. “Then why are you here?”
My heart stops for a beat. Because I don’t know. Because some part of me followed the sound of the counting before my brain caught up. Because some part of me always knew this moment was coming.
My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. And then the chapel door slams with the force of a thunderclap.
Footsteps. Heavy. Sure.
Damien.
The boy’s eyes flick past me toward the noise. The small smile vanishes instantly. His posture shifts, dropping low and sharp, like a wild thing ready to bolt or strike.
“Looks like he found us,” the boy says softly.
And then, without another word, he backs away into the shifting candlelight and disappears between the shadows of the pews—leaving me shaking, knife in hand, alone on the altar steps as Damien’s massive shadow fills the doorway.
The chapel walls breathe with ghosts. The air is too thick, too old—like it remembers what I forgot. Like it’s trying to pull me back into a cage I never truly escaped.
Damien’s voice cuts through the stagnant air like a match thrown into a gas leak.
“Raven.”
I blink, the world snapping back into focus. The boy is gone. The hood, the whisper, the candlelight—all vanished like dust scattered under a heavy boot. But the echo of him—of the boy Damien used to be—lingers in my spine like static. Like moth wings against my skin.
I turn toward him. He’s watching me like I might crack in half at a single touch. His chest is rising and falling in heavy, ragged bursts.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
I hadn’t noticed. My hands are fists at my sides, my nails biting so deep into my palms I think I might draw blood.
“I saw…” I whisper. “I saw a boy.”
He stiffens, his entire body locking down. “A boy?”
I nod. “Here. Just now. He lit a candle. He said… he said I left him.”
Damien doesn’t speak. Not right away. The silence is a physical weight.
“What else did he say?”
I shake my head, trying to sort the memory from the madness. “He said I used to count. That I stopped. That I… that I forgot him.”
The silence that follows could choke a god. Damien steps forward slowly—like I’m a wounded animal that might spook if he moves too fast. His hands hover near mine, but he doesn’t touch me.
“Do you remember the first time you came here?” he asks softly.
I frown, the static in my head growing louder. “The first time…?”
He nods. “Not the services. Not the hymns. I mean the first time you found this place alone.”
I open my mouth, searching for a date, a feeling, anything. “I… I don’t know.”
He studies me. Not like he’s confused, but like he’s reading the chapters of a book I haven’t opened yet. Like he remembers it better than I do.
“Why did you bring me back here?” I ask, my voice too thin, too fragile.
Damien’s jaw clenches. “I didn’t want to.”
