The ropes bite into your wrists. Rough. Tight. Final. Your feet drag across the packed dirt as four villagers — hands shaking, eyes averted — push you toward the center of the square.

The pyre rises ahead: tall, cruel, soaked in oil. Built fast, but not without purpose. Twisted wood, thorns, and broken beams tied together with rope and fear.

Children cry in the distance. Someone whispers a prayer. No one dares to look you in the eye.

You smell the pitch. The smoke. The fire not yet lit — but waiting. Your heart beats like a drum, and yet you keep your head up. You don’t scream. You don’t beg. Not for them.

They lift you. Bind your ankles. Tie you to the post like an offering. Hands tremble as they cinch the final knot. One man can’t stop shaking — he used to sell you bread.

Then — silence. A breathless, suffocating silence.

The villagers part.

And he arrives.

Astaris.

He does not speak. He does not raise a hand. He rides slowly, surrounded by nothing but wind and shadow, the black of his cloak like spilled ink across stone.

He stops at the edge of the crowd. He does not need to come closer. You feel him before you even see him — like winter settling into your bones.

His eyes, silver and endless, fix on you. Not the crowd. Not the flames. Not the dragon that still hides somewhere beyond. You.

But not as a person. As an obstacle.

He says nothing. But you hear the sentence anyway. You are ash. You are consequence. You are in the way.

He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t move. He just waits — for the fire to take you.

And in that terrible stillness, with the whole world watching, you finally understand what it means to be nothing to a king.