Horace fell silent. He had seen too many definitions of "death" in the Lands Between.
The Golden Order's return to the Erdtree, the Death Rite Birds' Spiritflame, the melding of souls in Hornsent rituals...
Every kind of death had been given meaning-salvation, purification, sacrifice, inheritance.
But what the Regal Ancestor Spirit said was this: death needed no meaning.
It simply happened.
Then new shoots sprouted.
There was no need to recite names, no need to carve inscriptions, no need for any ritual to anchor the traces of the departed in eternity.
Let flesh and blood return to the soil, let tender branches grow from antlers, let the tree nourished by you grow quietly in the woods.
This was the death of an Ancestor Spirit.
Horace sat before the Regal Ancestor Spirit for a long time.
He did not ask whether it hated the Golden Order for obstructing the natural cycle, whether it feared the Outer Gods' interference in the Lands Between, or whether it was willing to take a side and fight someone.
Those questions had no meaning here.
The Regal Ancestor Spirit did not care.
It did not care whether he was an Empyrean or a mortal, an enemy or a friend.
It did not care about his Law, his sword, the war he bore upon his shoulders, or the rivers of blood that would soon flow.
If he wanted to talk, they would talk. If he wanted to fight, they would fight.
Even if Horace drew his sword and cut off its head at this very moment, new shoots would sprout from its horned remains the moment it fell.
That was not compassion, not forgiveness, nor any emotion that could be given some lofty name.
It was simply the natural state of things, the nature of an Ancestor