Alongside Cecilia and Ruby, there had been other Saintess Candidates.
Dozens of them, in fact, a whole flock of wide-eyed children and nervous adolescents, each one plucked from obscurity because people, somewhere, had witnessed them knowing something they should not know.
The temple had gathered them all into the same cold stone halls, handed them the same tests, and waited for divinity to reveal itself.
Usually, the previous Saintess would oversee this process. She would test her successors personally, reading their answers, separating true vision from lucky guesswork with the wisdom of experience.
It was a sacred tradition, a passing of the torch from one holy woman to the next. But in this case, the previous Saintess was already dead. So the testing was done without a predecessor's presence.
The test content was, by all accounts, standard. Prophesy the gender of multiple unborn babies. Predict deaths. Forecast disasters. And, of course, the weather.
