‘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.

Evangeline

EVANGELINE