The Archivia Primus is situated in the upper levels of the spire, so high up that the only view through the arched windows is of the inside face of a thunderstorm. As I stand in the east wing and wait for the others to pass through purification, I watch lightning bolts arcing from the thunderheads to the grounding rods that jut from the spire’s plating on the other side of the reinforced glassaic. They are all colours, and no colours, all at once. Bright, migraine flashes that look for all the stars like questing fingers trying to pry their way inside.
‘Do you remember the mountaintop storms, Ahri? The ones we would see in summer?’
My father does not appear this time. He is already present, just as he has been ever since we set foot on Dimmamar. Following me, closer even than a shadow can. He exists on the edges of my vision, like a mote of dust on the surface of my eye, carrying with him the scent of whisperpines, and of cool air.
‘I remember,’ I reply. ‘The lightning would strike the slopes, and set them on fire.’
Another flash strikes the tower and dissipates before I speak again. Before I ask a pointless question of the spectre conjured from my mind.
‘I am going mad, aren’t I?’ I ask. ‘That’s why I can see you all of the time, now.’
He shakes his head. ‘You are not going mad, Ahri. Far from it. I told you before. I am here because we only leave others behind by choice. You choose to see me, therefore, you see me.’
I see my smile reflected in the rain-slicked glass. ‘That sounds a lot like madness to me.’
My father smiles too. ‘You are almost at the end of your journey now,’ he says. ‘After the Rebirth, you will have no more need to see me. Everything will change.’
The lightning flares again, crazing over the surface of the glassaic like a power field does over a sword’s blade. It outlines the floor and the walls anew, but not him, because he’s not really here.
‘Do you remember what would happen after the mountaintop storms?’ he asks me.
I nod. ‘The peaks would burn for days. Sometimes weeks. When the fires died down the mountains would be grey with ashes.’
My father nods. ‘It would always seem like devastation. Like the end. But the fire would only ever clear away the deadwood, and the plants closest to the end of their life cycle.’
I watch the rain run down the glassaic, painting tears onto the reflection of my face. ‘And the mountaintops would be reborn stronger because of it.’
My father nods again. ‘Remember that, Ahri,’ he says. ‘Endings are little more than beginnings by another name.’
I hear the approach of feet, then. Before I even turn from the glassaic, I know that it is Sister Evangeline because of the sound. Not of her feet, but the crackling of fire.
‘Inquisitor,’ she says.
I turn away from the rainstorm to look at her. At the flames that only I can see, playing across her skin. That has been the same since we set foot on Dimmamar, too. I can even see it when I close my eyes.
‘It is beautiful,’ my father says gently. ‘The fire.’
Sister Evangeline doesn’t react, because she can’t hear him.
‘They are calling for us,’ she says, instead.
‘Follow the eagle, Ahri,’ says my father.
‘Very well,’ I say, in answer to them both.