Some are rankled, some are tired, some are defeated, some are optimistic, and some simply didn’t care. The Reaper watched them all as they swiveled in and out of sight, as they wandered from one hill to another, as they approached closer than they’d been to their home in months’ time. He looked at their faces, as his son proffered himself (and the ghost of a smile lay unbidden, trapped between different times and different places – he wanted to reach out to the boy and console him, confide in him, protect and shield, but it wasn’t the time or the moment, caught in the din of sedition and tempests), as they wept, as they stared, as they made bestowals that would either reign supreme or become more empty promises. He looked curiously at the gift granted to him by Aisling's companion, staring at it profoundly, until his hoof dragged it closer and he gave her a bob of his skull; acceptance of a present he likely didn't deserve. Then the King fought the urge to roll his eyes at Albrecht, for being head provocateur and irritant hadn’t been a title they yearned to represent, but Hotaru dealt with his antics and left the quiet, impassive monarch to settle his eyes upon Beloved and her blades, nodding once in satisfaction (that she take up the mantle of sword and flesh, that she be able to tear apart enemies still left in the midst and mist). Perhaps they had a chance – his cold, unyielding stare twisted from one occupant to the next, wondering which would rise, which would fall, and which would bend to the will of the mountains and summits. A single proclamation bounded from his lips, for Hotaru had said all that was required, and he was left to beckon the discarded souls, the cold, knotted, gnarled essences, back into the summits, the peaks, the valleys, in hopes that they’d be able to conquer the vanquishing acts they’d laid upon themselves. “The Basin will become what you wish to make of it.” If the emptiness continued, then the residents would only have their own felled aspirations to blame – listlessness and lethargy never built temples, castles, or convictions. But if they managed to overcome, to seize glory, power, condemnation again, they’d be unstoppable, behemoths of the present, dominant forces and fiends charging from their pinnacles and rising from the ashes; ice-forged phoenixes reincarnating from rubble and ruin.