Sparkless

“Does it matter?

Those were the last words of the tyrant Azkyture Veipser, as the headsman’s sword fell.

Azkyture opened his eyes to the sound of knocking on wood.

Face to face with the person he killed, he sat in the familiar office as she fidgeted under his gaze.

He is back. Sitting in the house he burned down, as his younger sister held papers he wanted to have his name on.

The papers that started it all.

Ember Academy.

· · ─ ·It was quite foolish — beneath him, truly — to mourn for the death of the person he killed. He desecrated their corpse for the power that should have been his by right.

He still saw those faded, lifeless eyes each time he closed his. Like a doll, its colour unfocused. He remembers the smell of iron.

The wooden platform creaked, groaning as he stepped on, the crowd shuffling closer, the sounds of shoes on the stone city center hiding the muttering he heard as he was led. He had attained the Spark; even in the face of death, he should have stood proud. He was no longer Sparkless.

So why, as he ignored their pathetic eyes glowing with fury, did he feel so small when an unfamiliar woman in a Spark robe looked at him from the crowd?

He looked at the necklace on her neck as her green, teary eyes took in his chained body.

It was a brilliant red, so familiar that he wanted to touch it.

Ah. He gave it to her when she was young. He felt warm as her blue eyes shone, looking up at him. A simpler time, before their parents’ claws got on her. When he still clung to his foolish hope.

It hurt when she stole it.

He stole it back.

He looked up at the sky, a deep blue. Her eyes were faded when he took it back, an orb of pure light.

His brown eyes took in the land he ruled for a short while. He gazed upon the ruins in the distance on the grassy hill.

He wondered if she remembered the times he adored her or if, in her final moments, she only remembered the twisted man towering over her, her older brother, nothing more than a fleeting memory.

If she were in his place, leading the nation, would there be starving faces? Would there be wars?

She was always the golden child. And he was always the foolish one who, no matter how hard he tried, attained nothing but loss.

Azkyture. What was his mother thinking, naming a child something unattainable like victory? Did she look at him once upon a time, with the same look of hope they looked at her?

“Azkyture,” the headsman said, moving near him. The mage with the green eyes spoke, her voice laced with something he couldn’t name. The crowd’s cheers nearly drowned out her voice as the headsman came to a halt beside him. Anger? Joy? “What do you plead?”

A chuckle escaped him, bubbling into a cackle. He looked at the necklace. She always wins, even after death. Maybe she should have been the eldest. Maybe she would have been content Sparkless.

“Does it matter?”

The headsman’s sword fell. Cold steel met his neck—

Knock. Knock

Azkyture’s eyes snapped open. He was in an office. A very familiar office.

The door creaked open. A girl walked in, her shoulders hunched as she shuffled in. She held papers, papers he knew too well. Her inky black hair flowed over her shoulders, curls swaying as she sat in the seat opposite him. She clenched her hands, wrinkling her skirt, staring at him through locks of hair with nervous blue eyes.

Her eyes, unfocused, stared up as flickering flames surrounded them. His gloved hand held a stone that shone like the stars he wanted to make a reality. She made it a reality, and with this, he could, too. But he stood frozen, gazing into those lifeless eyes. It was as if at any moment she would sit up, laugh at his expression, and scold him for what he’d done. Behind him, his small group cheered, pushing him forward toward a throne that felt as dead as the body on the floor.

Azkyture took a shaky breath.

“Isabelle?” he whispered. He tasted ash.