Legend XCV – The Raven Judge

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Deep beneath the shattered vaults of a forgotten cathedral, where no prayer echoes and even the echo has grown weary, stands a throne, its stone gleaming black like wet plumage. No one knows who erected it, for it belongs not to the time of humankind, but to that void between guilt and memory that arises when truth is suppressed. On this throne sits a raven, larger than any animal, motionless as a monument, yet so alive that one can feel its gaze surveying the space. Cold blue light filters through broken windows, leaving dust and cobwebs suspended in the air like frozen thoughts, while around it stand pillars, eroded by centuries, as if even the stone itself had tried to escape. The raven does not speak, for its voice is older than language, and yet everyone who encounters it understands what it is: the judge of those judgments never passed, of those guilt hidden behind silence. It is said that he came into being when the first oath was broken, when words lost their value and promises became mere tools. Every lie that was never revealed, every deed left unwitting, gathered in his feathers, layer upon layer, until from an ordinary bird emerged something no longer part of the world, but its memory. The hall around him is not empty, though no heart beats, for in the shadows on the walls one can discern faces, fleeting yet distinct: kings, judges, lovers, and traitors, all frozen in the moment of their greatest self-deception. Those who find their way here do not do so willingly, for the path opens only to those whose past outweighs their future, and it closes silently behind them as soon as the first step is taken. Before the throne, no judgment is passed, no word demanded, for the raven only gazes, and in that gaze lies a consideration that runs deeper than justice or mercy. Some sink to their knees, unable to bear the weight of their own history; others turn away, yet find no way out, for the hall itself has decided to keep them. It is said that those found innocent may leave, but not unscathed, for they lose a memory, a warm, comforting one, and henceforth carry an emptiness within them that will never heal. Those deemed too heavy, however, remain, not as bodies, but as part of the place, as a new shadow, another stone in the ground, a whisper caught in the cracks of the walls. Sometimes the raven rises, spreads its wings, and for a heartbeat it seems as if the entire hall were made of feathers, bones, and frozen thoughts, and somewhere in the world, at the same time, a promise is broken, a false judgment is passed, or an oath held too long dies.