Ashes to Ardor

“At first, Dane was too dazed to realize he had seen me before, in a dream.

He told me his last memory was incessant coughing and increasing heat on his back, trying to get the boy down from the chimney he was stuck in. In the end, he’d gotten so tired…

I told him that he’d been chosen by the Netherrealms. To protect people, even after his death. The thought made Dane despair. He wanted rest; to fade into nothingness.

But I kept coming back. With food, or to take him for a walk. I told him stories – of my own death, the family I had left behind, and the new family I had found here. Sometimes we sat in silence, saying nothing.

Slowly, he found his path again. Not as a Protector, as we had thought he would be. But as a Scribe, forging his own path in the Archives of Time.

And always, I kept coming back. For him. He told me once, he realized he had made a friend for afterlife. And from that point, Dane’s world went from ashes, to ardor.”

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