The Heart beat with newly found life, thrumming and pulsing in tempo to the Reaper's own bloodied organ. Somewhere within a presence stirred, pulling heat and flame from the gaping maw of the eternally burning depths. It sang, even if it went unheard, growing in volume as the titan of the north approached. The dark name no longer crackled free into the air, because now it listened, and waited, expectant as the air of winter settled between the hooves and the crater's edge.

Father?

At his one, single word, an ancient inferno surged back into existence. A pyre erupted from the Heart, shooting up like some devilish whale spewing ash instead of condensation. As the flare subsided, embers and soot rained gently down, the first snow of the season and it was hellfire- fitting. As children make snowmen, so too did this pale powder take shape, drifting seemingly into place as it churned through the cutting zephyrs.

Piece by piece, Ignatius built himself up from the exhaust of the wounded earth. Decorated in fragile flakes of ash, he stood as pewter and mottled as ever before. From the spaces where the soot did not align, a faint red glow escaped into the dark, proof of the embers that held up his shape; of the burning core that he had decomposed into that fateful night on those jagged mountain tops. His gaze leered as burning holes, set carefully, purposefully, upon the son which he had beckoned to. The son that walked a wayward path of self-ruination and relentless isolation. He would have smiled at that, if he remembered how, because their similarities, whether flawed or chiseled into perfection, were striking.

"Yes, Deimos," he said as the last particles of his tail swept into place, dark spots of burnt timber and grass. His voice, though understandable, came out distorted and rough, like talking between old and cracked walls that had filled themselves with dust and memories which held them better than mortar and stone. The sound was earthy, gravelly even, for all of its buried and lost usages. In response to his rumble, the heart gave a small flare, connected to the Fire Sword that whispered in the dark.

He had come for a purpose other than the beauty of existing once more (if it could be called that even), but in this moment, the old king of the tides forgot his way, stunned as he was by the boy he'd left behind now grown, beard and all. Had time really passed so swiftly? It seems he was just standing on that shore, singing to Linatai and chastising Cyrene. If fire had eroded all of him, why had it left behind things which could still wound and burn? Grunting, Ignatius tried to shake away such baleful thoughts, tossing his head which bore the tined horn of his old lineage, and letting his full tail wash his flanks. As he moved, debris rained free, crackling and dying out as their heat and their light left.
"You've grown into such a fine king, my son."