Rothe's Arc

Chapter 4 of 11

The stranger brought something new to the shack the next morning. A leather journal with cracked binding, pages yellow at the edges. He set it on the workbench and opened it to a page marked with a torn strip of cloth. Rothe moved closer, his wisps casting blue and gold light across the drawings. The sketches showed a throne carved from black stone, wrapped in chains at its base. A crown floated above it, drawn in careful strokes that captured light and shadow. Beneath the drawings were words in a language Rothe recognized. Dead tongue. The writing spoke of an heir who walked away from judgment, who abandoned the seat of absolute law to follow a living soul across the bridge. The stranger watched him, waiting. Rothe understood the question without words. He gathered heat from the brazier and shaped it above his own form, pulling the flames into the pattern of a crown. The fire held steady for three breaths before it scattered. The stranger made no mark on his board. Instead he turned to a blank page and began to sketch Rothe as he was now — wisps forming the outline of a figure, but heavier than before, casting weight into the air. He drew the crown of flame above the figure, then added the throne behind it, chains still wrapped around its legs. When he finished, he tapped the drawing twice and looked at Rothe with something that might have been recognition. Then he wrote a single word beneath the image in the common tongue. Prince. Rothe pulled back from the page. The stranger had named what Rothe had spent weeks refusing to carry into this world. The title meant duty to the dead, judgment without mercy, a throne that demanded he weigh souls instead of guard them. But the drawing showed something else — a flower growing at the base of the chained throne, small and out of place. The stranger had drawn it in blue ink, the same color as Miri's dress. Rothe looked at the crowned figure in the sketch, solid enough now to cast a shadow across the dead seat behind it. The stranger closed the journal and added a gold mark to the board. Not for the crown of flame. For the weight of what Rothe was becoming in this world — heavy enough to be seen for what he had been, and what he had chosen to leave behind.