The ascent was a trial of pure endurance. The air grew so thin it burned their lungs, and the path was a treacherous series of icy ledges and loose scree. Yet, the group moved with a resilience they hadn't possessed before the Delvers' city. Their will had been reforged in the crucible of that silent choice. They did not complain. They simply climbed.
Kaelen led with a newfound focus. The pull towards the Lady of the Lake was a bright, clear thread in the Weave, guiding him unerringly. He used his power sparingly, not in grand gestures, but in small, vital acts—freezing a patch of ice to provide a sure foothold, subtly shifting the gravel on a steep slope to prevent a rockslide. It was the work of a journey-mason, and it felt right.
On the third day of the climb, they found the cairn.
It was a simple pile of stones, stacked with deliberate care on a windswept plateau. But it was not old. The stones were fresh, their edges not yet worn smooth by the relentless wind. And placed atop the cairn was an object that made Kaelen's blood run cold.
It was a fragment of metal, about the size of his palm. It was not rusted iron or tarnished silver. It was a material that seemed to be solidified light, a shimmering, opalescent shard that seemed to drink the grey daylight and glow with a faint, internal luminescence. It was beautiful, and it was utterly, terrifyingly wrong.
Its song was a scream.
A silent, high-pitched shriek of agony that grated against Kaelen's senses. It was a hole in the music of the world, a note of pure, concentrated dissonance that threatened to unravel the very Aether around it. This was no mere artifact. This was a piece of a soul in torment.
"The Sun-Crown," Elara breathed, her face pale. She didn't need to be a Weaver to feel the malevolent energy radiating from the shard. "Morwen was telling the truth. She's hunting for the pieces."
Roric grunted, hefting his crutch like a weapon and scanning the empty peaks. "A trap, then."
Kaelen shook his head, his senses stretched to their limit. "No. Not a trap. A message." He could feel no other presence, no ambush waiting. The shard had been left here, deliberately, on their path. A breadcrumb of immense power. "She's ahead of us. And she wants me to see this."
He approached the cairn slowly, every instinct telling him to flee. The void in his own chest throbbed in sympathy with the shard's silent scream. The whisper, dormant since his outburst at the cliff, did not stir. It didn't need to. The shard was a more potent argument than any whisper could ever be.
This is the power I seek, it seemed to say. This is the heart of the Blight, and the key to its destruction. Look upon it. Feel its strength.
"Don't touch it," Elara warned, her voice tight with fear.
Kaelen had no intention of touching it. He knelt a few feet away, closing his eyes. He didn't try to mend it or communicate with it. He simply listened to its horrific song, trying to understand its nature.
And within the screaming dissonance, he found it. A memory, trapped in the fragment like a fly in amber. It was not Iscarius's memory of pride and ambition, as the Warden had described. It was a memory of searing, unbearable grief. The grief of a twin sister.
He is gone. They broke him. They shattered his dream and they shattered him. My brother. My other half. They took his song from the world. I will take theirs. I will finish what he started. I will make the world sing a song of control, of order, of silence, so that no one will ever be broken again.
Morwen's memory. Her pain, her rage, her twisted love for her brother, all fused into this fragment of the Crown at the moment of its destruction. Iscarius had been motivated by pride. But Morwen was motivated by a love so corroded by loss it had become a weapon.
This shard wasn't just a piece of a powerful artifact. It was a piece of Morwen's soul.
Kaelen opened his eyes, reeling. The history was a lie, or at least, incomplete. The Blight was not born from one man's pride, but from a sister's catastrophic, world-shattering grief. The war they were fighting was a family feud that had consumed the world.
He stood up, backing away from the cairn. "We leave it," he said, his voice hoarse.
"Leave it?" Hemmet protested, a greedy glint in his eye. "That's power, boy! Real power! We could use it!"
"And become what?" Kaelen snapped, turning on him. "That thing is pain made solid. It's grief that unmakes the world. To use it is to let her grief consume you, too." He looked at each of them, his gaze fierce. "We are not here to wield the weapons of our enemies. We are here to find a healer."
He turned and continued up the path, leaving the shimmering, screaming shard behind on its lonely cairn. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. The part of him that craved the power to end the fight, to protect his people with absolute certainty, screamed at him to go back. But the memory of the Delvers' peaceful, soulless bones was a stronger argument.
As they climbed higher, the image of the shard burned in his mind. Morwen was not just a rival or a villain. She was a mirror, a warning of what he could become if his own protective love ever curdled into a desire for control. She was showing him the cost of her path, and in doing so, was unknowingly strengthening his resolve to walk his own.
The final stretch to the lake was a near-vertical wall of ice and rock. But as Kaelen looked up, he didn't see an obstacle. He saw the last door before the answers. And from the other side of that door, for the first time, he heard it—a new song, faint but clear, weaving through the thin, cold air.
It was a song of healing.