The private plane touched down under heavy fog, though the forecast had predicted sun. Rome, ancient and unbothered, received him like it had received saints and traitors for centuries — without ceremony.

No press. No announcements. Just the shuffle of cardinals behind sealed walls and the echo of whispers in hallways where incense still clung to stone.

The boy walked in silence, flanked by two priests who didn’t know what to say to him. He didn’t speak either. He looked around as if he had been here before.

Benítez waited at the end of the corridor, though he was not required to. As Dean of the College of Cardinals, he should have remained inside the Sistine Chapel with the rest — meditating, voting, praying. But something had tugged at him since the feathers. Something he hadn’t felt in years. Not since the previous pontiff's collapse. Not since the hidden wounds were quietly sealed and buried.

The boy looked younger than the videos. Pale. Thin. Foreign in the way that saints always seem foreign — not by blood, but by detachment. He wasn’t afraid, but he wasn’t present either. His eyes remained fixed somewhere above them, as if following something invisible in the rafters.

They led him into the small room behind the Apostolic Palace — the one used for emergency audiences, or crisis containment.

Benítez entered last.

He didn’t introduce himself. The boy didn’t seem to need names.

A monsignor began the questioning, careful, clinical. Place of origin. Baptism. Who brought him to Saint Basil’s. The boy didn’t answer. Only watched the window.

Benítez dismissed the monsignor with a glance.

For a moment, they sat alone.

“You saw something,” Benítez said, low. “Or you became something.”

The boy blinked slowly, as if surfacing from water.

“You were praying. Not asking.”

No response. Just the quiet flicker of light across the boy’s cheek. Outside, the fog began to rise.

Benítez leaned forward, folding his hands. “Do you know why they brought you here?”

A slow, shallow nod.

“Not for truth,” he murmured, mostly to himself. “But for containment.”

The boy shifted. For the first time, he looked directly at Benítez. Not with awe. Not with fear. Just recognition. A silent acknowledgment passed between them — the kind that doesn’t demand language. Something old. Almost ancient.

A knock came at the door. One of the guards reminding them that the conclave was waiting. The ballots would resume at sunset.

Benítez stood slowly. “They won’t like what you are,” he said, voice thin.

The boy remained seated.

“And they’ll fear what you might become.”