The world dissolved into a maelstrom of screaming light and shattering song. Kaelen did not look back as their small, makeshift boat was propelled from the island by a final, desperate surge of Aeliana's power. He kept his gaze locked forward, his hands gripping the rough wood until his knuckles were white, the collective, terrified melody of the survivors a frantic hum in his soul.
He could feel the moment the dome broke. It was not a sound, but a sensation—a sudden, violent cessation of a beautiful, complex harmony, replaced by the triumphant, screeching dissonance of the Corvidae and the cold, focused will of Morwen. Aeliana's song was gone, swallowed by the silence she had fought against for centuries.
Elara, sitting beside him, let out a choked sob. Roric's face was a stony mask of grief and rage. They had left their protector behind.
"She knew," Kaelen said, his voice rough as the boat skimmed across the unnaturally calm water, heading for a hidden outlet on the far side of the lake that Aeliana had shown him. "This was the plan. She was the diversion. We are the arrow."
"An arrow shot into what?" Hemmet wailed, clutching the side of the boat. "Into more of them?"
"Into the heart of it," Kaelen replied, his own fear a cold stone in his gut. He could feel it now, more clearly than ever before. With Aeliana's ward gone, the true nature of the land was laid bare to his senses. The Blight was not a random infection. It had a source. A focal point. A place where the Weave was not just wounded, but had been torn asunder and was now being actively held open. Aeliana's sanctuary had been masking it, a bandage over a festering, pulsating wound. Now, the bandage was ripped away.
The hidden outlet led them not to another valley, but into a system of underground rivers, the water flowing with a strange, urgent current. They floated in darkness, the only light coming from Kaelen's glowing runestone, its warm gold a defiant spark in the oppressive black. The song here was a single, droning, oppressive note of wrongness. It was the anti-melody. The Silence.
They traveled for hours, the current carrying them ever deeper. The air grew thick and stale, and the gentle lapping of water against stone was the only sound. No one spoke. They were prisoners of the current, hurtling towards an unknown fate.
Finally, the tunnel widened, and the current slowed, spilling them out into a cavern that stole the breath from their lungs.
It was the chamber from his vision. The place of the Sun-Crown's shattering.
But it was worse than he had imagined. The cavern was vast, its ceiling lost in shadow. In the center, where the pedestal had been, was now a gaping, raw wound in reality itself—a rift of seething, violent green energy that pulsed like a diseased heart. The air crackled with its power, and the very stone around it was not just blighted, but was slowly being unmade, dissolving into the void and replenishing itself in a continuous, agonizing cycle.
This was not a scar. This was the source. The First Blight. The wound Iscarius had torn, and which now served as a gateway for the corrosive power that was consuming the world.
And standing before the rift, her arms outstretched as if in worship, was Morwen. The remaining shards of the Sun-Crown orbited her head like a malevolent constellation, their combined scream now a physical force that made the air tremble.
She turned as they entered, her face illuminated by the hellish green light. There was no triumph in her eyes, only a terrible, exhausted hunger.
"You are persistent, apprentice," she said, her voice echoing with the power of the shards. "You have brought your chorus to the final act. Do you mean to sing me a lullaby?"
Kaelen stepped out of the boat, his legs unsteady. The pressure of the Silence was immense, a weight that threatened to crush his own song into nothing. The void in his chest throbbed in recognition, a sympathetic resonance with the greater void before him.
"This is what you want?" Kaelen shouted over the roar of the rift. "To rule over this? A world of… nothing?"
"It is not nothing!" Morwen's composure broke, her voice cracking with a millennia of pain. "It is peace! It is an end to the struggle! An end to the pain of loss, the fear of death, the slow, grinding decay of everything! Iscarius saw it! He saw that the only way to save the world from suffering was to perfect it! To still its chaotic, painful song!"
"He was wrong!" Kaelen took a step forward, the memories of his journey giving him strength. "You both were! The song isn't about being perfect! It's about being alive! The pain is a part of it! The joy is a part of it! The struggle is what gives it meaning!"
He thought of Corbin's patient hands, of Finn's final, brilliant sacrifice, of the Delvers' tragic choice, of Aeliana's healing light, of the survivors' stubborn will to live. He gathered these memories, these melodies, and he held them in his heart, a shield against the crushing Silence.
Morwen laughed, a harsh, broken sound. "Meaning? What meaning is there in watching everything you love turn to dust?" Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. "I will not watch it again. I will make the final, perfect note. I will use the Crown to control this power, to spread its silence evenly, painlessly, across all creation."
She reached for the shards, preparing to fuse them, to complete the Crown and become the conduit for the ultimate Unmaking.
Kaelen knew he could not stop her with force. His power was that of stone and connection, not of light and destruction. He could not fight the rift. He could not break the shards.
Aeliana's final lesson returned to him. You cannot fight the silence with more silence.
He had only one weapon. The very thing Morwen sought to erase.
He turned his back on her. He faced the survivors, who were huddled by the boat, their faces pale with terror. He met Elara's eyes, then Roric's. He gave them a small, grim nod.
Then, he began to sing.
It was not the First Note, or the Fifth. It was no Note he had ever been taught. It was a raw, unvarnished, human song. He sang of Oakhaven. He sang of the smell of fresh-baked bread and the sound of the village bell. He sang of Master Corbin's kindness. He sang of Finn's courage on the river. He sang of the stubborn hope of a dying oak tree. He sang of the painful, beautiful choice in the dark city. He sang of Aeliana's sacrifice.
He was not singing to mend stone or shape the earth. He was singing to remind the world of what it was.
He was singing a song of life.
And one by one, the survivors joined him. Not with magic, but with memory. With love. With grief. With hope. Their voices, weak and trembling at first, rose in a ragged, defiant chorus against the heart of the Silence.
It was not a powerful song. It was a fragile one. But it was real.
Morwen stared, the shards halting in their orbit. The screaming dissonance of the Crown fragments seemed to falter, confused by this simple, illogical act of defiance in the face of absolute power.
The battle for the world had come down to this: a single, fragile, human melody, sung against the dying of the light.