He wondered what she expected of him: scorn, ridicule, refusal? Her tone was too quiet, too flat, too edged with tranquility that he had nothing to lash out against – she was not the cause of his exasperation, of his frustration, of his keen, blunt edges or the torn layers of loyalty and disaster. She’d disappeared like the rest of them, but instead of staying amongst the gallows or straying to another kingdom, another sovereign, serving an old enemy or lying amidst more grandeur, she’d returned. There was something to the adherence, to the allegiance, to the faithfulness that after eons and decades and moments away, she’d bothered to stray back to the winter landscape, to the bludgeoned, bleeding mess. How many would crawl back? How many would stay away? How many had he scorned unknowingly, pushed aside while he disappeared into the shadows’ fathoms, lost again to the torn armaments of desolation and misery? The silent vigil, the blank slate of his features rested solely on her, on skulls and recherché, on the bond of secrets, on the searing, scorching unknown, violent and chaotic, restless and unholy – he nearly asked her why she’d bother to come back to their land, to their world, to their empire, when nearly everyone else sought to escape it. So, for once, the Reaper showed no wrath, no anger, no insolent, bloody rage to beckon and quake and unfurl, displaying only the potent opulence of his power, of his desecration, of the lives he’d somehow managed to ruin in the wake of his burdening throne. A crisp note followed suit, mouth barely parting more than a minute whisper, curling and conspiring through the air as an irreverent rapture, as a particle of sin draped and drenched in far too many layers. “You may stay with us again,” and will you, truly? his skull pondered and bade into silence, and the dangerous fringe of his eyes mustered the query, the curiosity, the inquisition of where she’d been and what she’d seen and why she chose to come back to them now, as they all began to drift apart. None of the queries left his throat, none of the sanctions and devils’ accord were thrown into the midnight air; because maybe all that mattered was that someone still believed in their faith, in their power, in their condemnation, and it was enough to satisfy his avaricious plunge, his grasping, covetous enmity. “How do you wish to apply your significance?”