He laughed.
It was a raw, unshaped sound, like something torn from the edge of madness. Not joy. Not even despair. But the hollow laughter of someone who had seen too much, carried too much, and stood too long in silence with ghosts that never left.
And then, slowly… he cried.
The tears came not with noise, but quietly. As though the soul had sprung a leak that even time could not mend. He wept for a love lost too soon. For a sister's broken breath. For a world still writhing in its death throes.
Still, he wrote.
The ink bled through trembling fingers as he leaned over the parchment and began.
"Seriane…"
"I do not know if this letter will ever reach you or if the winds still remember how to carry messages written in blood and longing. But I write anyway. Because it keeps me from losing the last fragments of who I once was. Because when I say your name, the world feels a little less hollow."
"You are gone, but never absent. I feel you in the cold stillness between battles. I see you in the fire when it reflects my shadow back at me, smaller now than I ever was with you. I speak to you when the world grows too quiet, and I do not know if the answers I hear are madness… or memory."
He paused, the parchment blurring beneath salt-soaked ink.
"They think I am ready to die. That I should become like Jinx Amox, the first chosen of the Fountain. That I should surrender myself and let the world rise upon my fall. But they forget… Jinx never chose death. He chose to fight."
The quill scratched harder now, driven by something deeper than grief.
"Three thousand years ago, the first war shook the earth. Back then, the Watchers were not our enemies. They stood beside the werewolves, shoulder to shoulder, as the darkness rose. The Consumer — a beast of shadows and silence sought to devour the Fountain's power. It moved like a void through time, unraveling the land with every step."
"Jinx Amox fought it. He was chosen by the Fountain not to die, but to be its vessel. A living guardian. But fate… fate does not always play fair. He was wounded, mortally, in the final battle. And in the quiet moment before the end, he chose to give what remained of his strength to the Fountain. His sacrifice sealed the Consumer away, and the land healed in silence."
Eryndor's hand trembled. The memory had not been his. It was given to him by the Fountain by the spirit that lived within the sacred waters now surging through his veins.
"The others… they think the Fountain demands death. They say the cycle must be completed. That I must fall so life may rise. But I see now that the cycle was never death. It was choice. It was love."
He stared into the cold light of the Fountain's heart, still pulsing behind him like a second soul.
"If I die now, who will stand against Morvane? Who will protect the Fountain from the hands of men who see only power and not purpose? This war is not against the Consumer, who sought destruction. It is against Watchers who once vowed to protect life, and now march in fear to end it. Morvane has twisted their oath into something vile. And if I vanish now, they will win. The Fountain will fall into mortal hands, and all the pain we've suffered will mean nothing."
His voice shook as he remembered Seriane's death. Her blood on cold stone. His scream not of rage, but of helplessness. The betrayal. The lie. The war born from a brother's fall.
Still, he wrote.
"I spoke to the spirit of the Fountain. I told it the truth. That I am not yet ready to die. Not for pride. Not for vengeance. But because I still have something left to do. I still have a promise to keep. To you, Seriane. And to those who believe this world is worth saving."
He drew breath, slow and heavy.
"And the spirit answered."
"It remembered Jinx. It remembered his wounds, his pain, his unwillingness to surrender until all hope was gone. 'He was never meant to die,' it said to me. 'But this is a new age. The time of death-born sacrifice has ended. The Fountain must now walk among the wolves. It must learn their grief. Their joy. Their failure. Their mercy.'"
"'And so we have chosen you,' it said. 'You will be our vessel in flesh.'"
The ink smeared, but he did not stop.
"I have become the Fountain, Seriane. Not its servant. Not its prisoner. But its breath, its blood, its fire. I am what it has made me — and what you once believed I could become. And with this power… I rose."
The memory surged like a storm within him.
The battlefield. The cries. The Watchers overwhelming the last of the families. The blades of Soe warriors — now Karradon — dulled with exhaustion. The relics of Zan — now Kirenholme — flickering with fading light. Even the magic of Ariven, ancient and wild, had begun to falter.
Until he arrived.
The storm had come.
He remembered the way the wind bent to his will. The way the water obeyed not as a slave, but as an old friend. He cut through the battlefield not with rage but with resolve. Morvane saw him and knew the end had come. Their final duel was thunder without lightning. A struggle between what once was and what must now be. Morvane struck with fury. Eryndor answered with fire.
In the end, Morvane fell.
And the Watchers, broken and scattered, began to run.
The Seer tried to flee, that serpent of prophecy and poison but Zelaira was waiting. The stream of lost souls opened at her will, and the Seer's scream was swallowed into its depths, where time forgets and memory erases.
The families rose, their strength returned, not from vengeance but from hope.
Still, the letter had not ended.
Eryndor returned to the parchment.
"Morvane is dead. The Seer is gone. But I am not at peace. The war may be ending, but your voice still lingers in the quiet after the storm. I want to come home even if I no longer know what home means without you."
He folded the parchment with hands that once held blades, now trembling as they held paper and longing.
One final line, written with all the tenderness he had left:
"It is not over…"
"…till my return."