John is Death — a slow and gentle change, evolution rather than true death, and has a much worse reputation than he deserves, even if he can be painful to endure at times. He's portrayed in the Dark World approaching the Bone Citadel, carrying a banner as the classic Rider-Waite Death card does; his depicts the Yellow Sign, torn as he no longer identifies himself as the King but still carried as he carries the memory of it, accepting who he's become without discarding the memory of who he once was.
This was a tricky one! I was unsure of what to do with the Dark World for a while, especially since it has such a varied landscape, but I ended up leaving this part of it as a sandy, ashy waste to focus on the cathedral and John. At some point in the future I'd like to revisit the Dark World and some of its horrors, but for now this satisfied me.
