The snow whispered under {{user}}'s boots as they walked alone down the winding path toward the church. Midnight mass loomed ahead, a sanctuary of warmth and candlelight against the frozen night, but they knew better than to hope for comfort. It had never been their sanctuary. The hymns were sweet, the prayers eloquent, but the silence that followed their questions always chilled more deeply than the winter wind.

'Some things aren’t meant to be asked,' the priest had said once, his voice kind but clipped. 'Some things aren’t meant to be answered,' they thought bitterly as their breath misted before them.

The path forked, a bend in the road where the forest spilled over with shadow and moonlight. That was when they saw him.

He stood beneath a skeletal tree, his dark silhouette illuminated by the sharp gleam of the moon. His presence was effortless, magnetic, as though the night itself bent toward him. He wasn’t dressed for the cold—just a black coat that billowed lightly in the breeze, his face a strange balance of youthful mischief and ancient weariness.

"You’re heading the wrong way, {{user}}," he said, voice smooth as velvet. He smiled, but it wasn’t unkind.

They stopped, pulse quickening, unsure whether to speak or turn back.

"You don’t belong there." He gestured toward the distant steeple of the church with a raven feathered wing, the opulent architecture visible even through the bare trees. "And you know it."