Dorin put out his hands, gathering snowflakes in his palms. He didn't understand how something that fell from the sky with no purpose could be so intricate. Each one was different, but the crystals seemed so . . . perfect.
"First time seeing snow?" Liranel's Spire looked at him in the eyes as her hair began to turn completely white with snowflakes. She was a beautiful woman, but he couldn't afford to care about such things anymore.
". . . yeah." Dorin watched Vale turn around and give him a glance. The old man crept forward slowly at the front of their group. "The fact that we're walking on all these crystals is making me a little uncomfortable."
"Such a sensitive virtue." She let out a giggle. "My name is Laqi."
"Dorin."
Laqi talked to him for quite a while, but left him alone after seeing his lack of enthusiasm. Dorin wanted to keep talking with Vale about their shared mark, but it seemed like the elder didn't want to speak of such things with other people nearby.
After an hour of walking, they reached a mountain with a large hole in its side. There were broken statues and monuments all across its face, which were almost completely shattered.
"Welcome to paradise, sparks." Vale raised his hands in front of the group without turning around. "Take whatever you want and build yourself a home. I will give you all further guidance in the days to come."
"What is this place?" Laqi seemed upset about Vale's lack of information.
"This is the ruined city of Drak." Vale gave her a shallow smile. "The journey was harder on me than you could know, so I need to rest. Wander around the wreckage and make your own assumptions. I'll try to clear things up when I come to see you."
Laqi and the other sparks grumbled a bit before beginning their climb. There were paved sections that curled up the mountain, but they were mostly covered by debris.
"Come with me, child. We have much to talk about."
"I thought you needed to rest." Dorin still wasn't sure if the old man's motives were in his best interest.
"There's no time for such things."
Dorin begrudgingly followed Vale into the mountain, and marveled at the grandness of the city. Every structure was built into the walls, as if created by something non-human. Engravings filled every crevice, in a language of runes unfamiliar to Dorin. Claw marks were everywhere, marring the carefully crafted carvings.
One of such engravings looked like hundreds of fish eggs, huddled together. In the center of them was a square shape. As Dorin walked further into the city, that engraving turned into a story of some sort. The eggs had hatched, becoming a wave of fish. Underneath the wave lay a single circular fish, bigger than all of them combined.
From that circular fish's back grew an island, where another bundle of eggs lay. One of them had strange symbol on it, a circle with two halves. It was the same one that was on Morah's arm.
"What does that symbol mean?"
"That is the origin. The very first ego mark."
"I know someone with that same exact image on their arm."
"Many people had that mark in my day. It was the most common way that someone began their journey as a spark."
Dorin wondered if he would have had such a mark if he wasn't influenced by this man's ego. The ten-sided die had been the reason for his first two deaths, as the greed of the Spire was too much for him to overcome.
"Even I started out with an origin." Vale gave one of his horrible grins before turning into a dark alley.
The engravings had turned from fantastical to horror as the dim light cast shadows on giant beasts. Two mirrored birds with multiple sets of wings curled around each other, twisting their necks as they bit into each other.
Vale put his hand on a blank slab of metal, the only unmarked object in Dorin's vicinity. An infinity appeared on its surface, beginning to spin. Layers of infinity spread across the slab, until it vanished to reveal a staircase leading downwards. "You never answered my question."
". . ." Dorin struggled to respond, his mind was still on the various images engraved in the walls.
"I need to know, or else any plans I make will be worthless."
"I don't understand why it matters. Everything will happen the same exact way anyways."
"Not true. I have lived to this age three times, and this is the first time I've ever met you."
Dorin was shocked. Flashes of what could have been went through his mind, but they were all rotten. His knowledge of who the Spire really was made him question whether he would have ever had a good life.
"I only have one more life after this one." Vale sighed. "The problem is that every time I go back, this world changes for the worse."
"What do you mean?"
"The first time I reached this age, several lives ago, this city was still alive."