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He is perched on his usual spot in Zephrah. The mountains, and the woman who watches over them, are beautiful in all seasons. But that moment when autumn starts to fall into winter, when the leaves begin to wither, the clouds begin to grey, and the air bites playfully as they race through the sky, that is his favourite time. He thinks it may be her favourite too, as she begins to speak of her day, and while she has not aged the life and joy in her eyes has long faded from summer to autumn to winter and each that have passed.
How many have passed?
The moment of clarity blurs away in feathers and dusk, back to the Shadowfell to fell a lich scrambling for power, then to the Plane of Fire to ferry a soul loyal to the Matron, then to Marquet to ferry a soul of an old man he thinks he should know, and then he is a falling feather at the shrine in Whitestone.
"He laughs like you, you know. I worry, sometimes, I've given him a name too big to live up to. But he makes me proud every day. I think you'd be proud of him too. I hope you are, wherever you are, brother."
He is the raven flying above Rexxentrum, listening to the rumbles of a war, he is the shadow alongside an archmage plotting to undo the threads of reality, he is the snowdrops along a garden pathway, he is fighting demons beyond the Divine Gate, he is a feather on the sea drifting beside a pirate ship. He is and that is what he knows.
He is much all at once, like light reflecting across every surface it meets but the source of the light being the same regardless, or a shadow that stretches from one to connect to hundreds more besides, and he is across planes of existence and across time and across possibilities. He was once a thread in a tapestry and now he sees it woven, threads of gold and silver intricate and complex in ways no mortal could ever grasp, and simple in ways no immortal could ever understand.
The mask on his face was weightless, as was the rest of him, as he flew with the Matron's celestials across her realm, but at times when he ferried the souls of half elven women, he remembered what it was like to feel heavy and weighed down by the weight of a world of grief.
"You should visit her. You miss her," the Matron said.
"How do you know?"
"I miss him."
He wondered if she was speaking of Purvan.
"In a way, my Champion. His soul is with me still. However, I will never see my old friend again."
He doesn't understand what she means, so she shows him. She pulls away the threads of him woven across Exandria, across the planes, and across time and pulls all of him into one where the concepts and pieces of himself fit together once more like clumsy puzzle pieces. He stands on two unsteady legs, the blue feathers in his wings shaking in the breeze, and faces what he thinks are the secret memories of a mortal woman who achieved the impossible.
The god she befriended, perhaps loved, appears at once as the frost upon a winter gravestone, the cold air on a spring morning, the dying plants of late autumn, the still and stagnant water of a dying lake, the first snowfall of the year, the last breath of a loved one, the blood on snow slush in a drawn out battle—the concept of him familiar, if cold.
The god appeared to her for the last time in a shape of a man, sitting inside a small cavern painted in frost, the threads of fate wrapped around him like a woven blanket to stay warm. The mage, with a raven familiar perched on her shoulder, and a black cloak around her, did not shiver even when the god spoke.
"You have considered it, then? There is no great freedom in what I offer," he told her, voice as harsh as a hail storm. "You will bind yourself to something much greater than you are now. Your eyes will stretch across this world, and watch more than you have ever seen, and your hands will be the axis on which the order of life and death turns."
"I don't understand," she said, in all honesty. "But, this is what I desired when I first came to you. The more you say, the more I am intrigued."
"Mortal curiosity is a powerful thing. I have long since stopped asking questions of the world."
"You are like stagnant water," she said.
"I am." He rose from the floor, dropping the woven blanket to the floor. Where it fell, the threads swirled and expanded across the cavern, til they were left in a cavern of gold—so many threads at once the mage had to cover her eyes or be blinded by the endless stream of possibilities before her.
The Champion looked as well. He saw a world where his sister was in his place, one where he had settled in Zephrah, another as an assassin for hire, a world where he had been fully accepted by his father, some where he was a parent, some where he was alone, and much, much more besides. The possibilities he saw where he returned home made his heart soar high, only to face the one thread in which he took the place of the one he served—this one, this god in the mask he wore now, saw him and pulled the thread away before he could see more. He was almost grateful.
"I am the stagnant water of a dying lake. You are like ripples spreading across it. You have effected me, though I don't know if it's possible for me to change now in my entirety, I have seen the ripples of your actions spread across this world and more, and I have seen the ways in which I could fail now."
"You have seen me ascend already?"
"I have." He pulled on the threads, til they were nothing more than a ball of dim light in his palm. The mage opened her eyes once more and looked. She saw herself, changed and powerful and more.
"More than my siblings, I understand by my nature what it is to be mortal. You cannot guide souls without this understanding." He closed his hands over the threads, covering it so that only small parts of the light escaped the gaps between his fingers. "Death comes for us all. Even the gods. This is a truth of the world not even a god can change. We only watch over it and maintain that truth."
"I understand."
"Yes," he said, thoughtfully. "You do."
The god said a name, but the Champion was already being pulled away. He was separated once more, pieces of him falling in the snow of Vasselheim, in the feather his father keeps in a drawer in his office and speaks to when no one else is listening, in the ravens that fly in the graveyard of Stilben.
"You do not want me to know your name, Matron?" he asked.
"Mine was lost to this world. Perhaps I should have removed yours," she said, her mask shifting away to the memory of something human. "Yours is still spoken in this world. It is your anchor and your curse. For while it is still said, you will forever drift as something inbetween."
He is the raven perched upon Keyleth's shoulder, listening to her plans. He learned to focus, how to stay still, to not drift and get lost in the pattern of a tapestry he is only beginning to understand. He is the feathers that trailed after Lieve'tel as the temple plotted. He is the cold air, harsh and watching against the archmage's shoulders. He is the shadow of an Ashari blade and the blood spilling on a battlefield.
"If you go, I cannot help you."
"I must go. And you will not stop me."
He sees her only for a brief moment, before all of him which he had so carefully, so painstakingly gathered like delicate glass shards, slammed together at once in a space which contains him and drowns him and binds him, threads of fate cutting away til nothing but arcane ropes are left. He spreads his wings and screams. He tries to separate himself once more, to fly away like dust in a storm, and the threads of him are pulled so tightly he remembers what it is like to die, and thinks it would be a mercy.