Days bled into a cycle of sun and stone. The First Note of mending and the Second Note of shaping became as natural to Kaelen as breathing. Under the Warden's silent guidance, he learned to feel the potential in a raw block, to sing it into a perfect square, or to tease apart its layers into smooth, usable slabs. The power flowed through him without the draining cost he had known in the blighted lowlands; here, he was a conduit, not a source.
But the Warden was not satisfied.
"You have learned the songs of this place," the Warden stated one evening as the sky flamed orange. "But the world below does not sing in perfect harmony. You must learn to hear the broken songs. The songs of pain."
The next morning, the Warden led him not to the practice stones, but to the edge of the Sky-Anvil. A sharp, cold wind whipped at their clothes. Below, the world stretched out, a tapestry of greens and browns marred by the ugly, grey-black scars of the Blight's passage.
"Listen," the Warden commanded.
Kaelen closed his eyes, reaching out with his senses as he had been taught. The pure, strong melody of the Anvil fell away. He cast his hearing down, into the valleys. He found the song of the healthy forests—a vibrant, chattering hum of life and growth. He found the deep, slow pulse of untainted bedrock.
Then he found the silence.
It was a void where a song should be. A place of such profound emptiness that it felt like a wound in the world itself. It was the valley where Oakhaven had been. He could not hear the stones of the foundations, nor the earth of the fields. There was only a hollow, aching nothingness that pulled at his spirit.
He gasped, wrenching his awareness back. "It's... gone."
"That is the echo of the fallen," the Warden said, his mental voice grave. "The song that has been silenced. To mend the world, you must not fear to listen to its pain. Now, listen closer to the Blight's trail. Do not touch it. Only observe."
Trembling, Kaelen reached out again, this time focusing on the edges of the grey scar, where the healthy land met the Blight. Here, the song was not silent, but corrupted. It was a twisted, agonized shriek, a melody being slowly torn apart. He felt the desperate struggle of the earth, the roots trying to hold on, the stones fighting their own dissolution. It was a song of relentless, grinding pain.
And within that pain, he felt it again—the whisper. The seductive promise that he could end this struggle, not by healing, but by joining the force that was causing it. That he could wield that same corrosive power.
He snapped his eyes open, stumbling back from the edge. "I can't. It's too much." The horror of it was visceral, a nausea that had nothing to do with his stomach.
"You must," the Warden insisted, unmoving. "A healer who cannot look upon a wound is no healer at all. You do not have to accept the whisper. You only have to acknowledge its existence. To know the enemy is to know the limits of your own strength."
For the rest of the day, that was his training. To sit on the edge of the sacred place and stare into the abyss of the world's pain. He listened to the dying songs of blighted streams and the final, crumbling notes of infected stone. Each time, the whisper came, a cold finger tracing its way up his spine. And each time, he recoiled, anchoring himself in the steadfast song of the Sky-Anvil at his back.
It was the hardest thing he had ever done. It was more exhausting than any physical labor, more terrifying than any climb. He was not learning a note of power, but a note of endurance. The endurance to face the world's agony without being consumed by it.
As darkness fell, he was drenched in a cold sweat, his hands shaking. He felt stained, as if the Blight's echo had left a film on his soul.
The Warden placed a stony hand on his shoulder. The contact was solid, real, a tether to the unbroken world. "You have faced the echo and not fled. You have heard the whisper and not answered. This is the foundation. Before you can learn to heal the land, you must first be able to bear the sound of its screaming."
Kaelen looked up, the lights of the Heartstone reflecting in his eyes. "How do you stand it?" he whispered.
"By remembering the song that came before," the Warden replied, his gaze turning toward the pristine peaks. "And by believing in the song that will come after. Now, rest. Tomorrow, you do not listen. Tomorrow, you answer."