Frostfire Ridge Echo

The wind carved around him, but he did not move with it. There was no pride in the flick of his gaze, only thought; deep and deliberate. The wraith had heard many offers before, dressed in silk or sharpened like blades. But this one was neither, it was bone: quiet, bare, honest. He considered Faust not as a ruler, but as a man who understood what it meant to climb without being pulled.
A breath, not a sigh. „…I do not rise for the sake of standing taller,” he said at last, voice low as snow beneath boot, „But I will not remain where I’ve outgrown the ground.”
A pause, the faintest lift of his chin. At last, a flicker of something passed across his face; faint, but unmistakable: pride. Not arrogance, not vanity, the quiet pride of one who had built himself in frost and silence and learned the worth of his own shadow.
„If you clear the path, I’ll take the first step.”