The world was quiet – and it should’ve made the desolate beast appreciative. He was one for desolation and starkness, the vast empty shells and vessels of hollowed, corrupt ruins. He was a cretin designed and left to his own devices, to swing an ax, a sword, a scythe, into those who crossed him, into those who threatened him, into those who held a kindled essence over his open flame. But the Reaper had been a King too long, far longer than a General, far longer than a wandering blade, to think of anything but frustration at the current stillness. Everything came in a rapid, haunting circle: fleeting inhabitants, fleeing loyalists, those he thought talented, defined by the mountains just as the rest of them, taken away by other thoughts, by other notions, by other dreams he found himself incapable of comprehending. Their realm had become a bare remnant of what it’d once been – as bleak and isolated as the top of the summits, as cold and chilling as his bones, as his blackened heart. Despite their recent attempts, there’d been nothing. No one to abide requests. No one to take up arms. No one to protect and shield. No one to wander in and cherish, nurture, what they say before them. Perhaps the rest of the empires had simply given up.
 
But he didn’t want to.
 
He followed the call of the mirror, of the newest Haruspex, of the flares of indignation festering between his veins and through his soul: barbaric and irreverent, emboldened and enraged. He didn’t understand what made others leave when all he craved was to stay, rooted, firm, resistant, solid, and unyielding. He didn’t know what others saw when they glanced into other lands (because all he wanted were the frozen glaciers and the endless caverns). Yet, he could see where they faltered, where they failed, where they needed guidance to restore the Basin to its portions of glory – so he heeded the summons, head lifted, iron chiseled, a Lord of the court no matter how heavy the crown weighed across his skull. Deimos nodded to those already assembled, the spotted Frost Fyre, the rosy Hotaru, the sea-girl Tiamat, and sidled along the entrance, attempting to blend more into shadow than light – and found himself actually wanting the answers of the Spark God (utterly bizarre, but perhaps desperation had eroded him even further, made him fall into a deity’s answers and damning proclamations). He built himself into a solid, stoic wall again, so that the earth didn’t feel his anguish, his vexation, or his exasperation – so that he could listen and interpret the word of immortals and soothsayers.