The last climb to the summit of Drunengalm was a struggle amidst the rarefied air. The Penitent's Blade served as his support its tip digging into ice and unyielding rock where his feet faltered. The surroundings shrank to a grayscale mix of grey rock and dazzling white snow the sky a harsh endless blue that appeared to drain the heat from his soul. The Angel's light, inside him was a smoldering coal providing stamina of brightness. He ceased to display it as a symbol.
The "Screaming Spire" wasn't a summit but a group of sharp points one featuring a vertical opening found only on the most ancient ominous charts. The path leading up was a glacier, covered in a confusing network of crevices masked beneath fragile snow covers. The wind, in this area carried a sound—a high-pitched wail that frayed the nerves setting the stage for what was to come.
He discovered the opening just as the sun started to fade behind the hills. It wasn't a cave entrance. A fissure, as though a divine axe had cleaved the mountain. A cold breeze breathed out from it bringing a mixture of ozone, blood and scorched hair odors simultaneously. The rock surrounding the fissure was slick and shiny appearing as if it had been molten and solidified repeatedly.
Alexander faced it the Penitent's Blade dangling gently by his side. He reflected on Giovani's words. A trauma. A psychic wound. He recalled Duncan mentioning a crucible. He remembered the girl, in Muotathal pleading with him not to let the mountain cry out.
He walked into the fissure.
The world did not fade into darkness. It grew loud.
Not, through noise. Through force. A psychic gust struck him pushing him backward a step. It was a roaring storm of sheer unfiltered purpose. The remnants of magic. He sensed the urgent hope of a village witch attempting to cure a ruined harvest. He sensed the exact calculation of a mage crafting a spell of destruction. He sensed the aching love-driven promise of a maiden linking a heart to her own. A dissonance of desires, necessities and schemes all shouting in a tongue predating speech.
The fissure expanded into a space revealing to him the origin.
The river was not composed of water. It was light. A swirling dazzling cascade of shimmering energy that poured from a crack in the ceiling and disappeared into an endless abyss, in the floor. It was both stunning and terrifying—the essence of creation, fierce and wailing. The Chalice of Echoes was not a vessel resting on a platform. It was the river itself. Or rather, a single, permanent whirlpool of it, spiraling in a perfect, hypnotic vortex in the center of the cavern, held in shape by nothing but its own tortured logic.
To obtain it he must drink from that whirlpool.
The psychic force grew stronger shaping words out of the turmoil. They did not represent the voice of the mountain. Instead they were, like a million mirrors, each one bouncing back a piece of his own thoughts to him.
…the Abyss must be sealed… chanted the chorus of paladins long passed.
…conservation… halt… murmured the echoes of nihilist sorcerers.
…the expressions of the villagers… dread… you are the sign… the shared anxiety of every human who has witnessed the use of magic.
He covered his ears with his hands, an action. The sounds came from within. They manipulated his memories and uncertainties as tools.
What drives your service? The inquiry emerged through the clamor not from a tone but echoing in countless voices from the earliest shaman who summoned a spirit to the final archmage who vanished into his own enigma.
He dropped to his knees the Penitent's Blade crashing onto the stone. The golden armor seemed like an outfit. The voices ripped through the fabric of his self.
A weapon never questions why! he shouted silently attempting to evoke Michael's clarity.
An instrument is thrown away once the job is completed the Echoes murmured in response their sound altering into a alluring melody. It was the voice of Brianna Calliope or an exact imitation thereof crafted from Duncan's portrayal. Will you be cast aside Alexander? After the Abyss is closed what purpose does the light have for a Messenger? Will you turn into one mute guardian in an abandoned cavern?
"I make my choices, from now on!" he bellowed into the storm.
Liar, the Echoes reproached, soft yet sharp as a blades edge. You hold fast to the decree because you fear picturing life without it. You've swapped one ruler for an one—the Angel, for your own arrogance. You obey your rebellion. Is that truly any cleaner?
The reality of it intensified by the Chalice's energy struck like a strike. He threw up his frame shaking on the rock. The voices swarmed, not to ruin him but to analyze him. They tore apart each motive, every fragment of bravery revealing the decay of fear and pride, at its center.
He experienced a vision not forced, but emerging from his profound fear: himself, aged and endlessly fatigued standing upon a quiet desolate realm. The Blue Ring of Stillness upon his hand. The Abyss closed. The Angels vanished. The humans reduced to dust. Only the. The flawless intolerable silence. The calm, at the conclusion of all effort. The triumph.
It was a horror more profound than any battlefield carnage.
This is the goal you strive for the Echoes chanted, a lament. The ultimate quiet. The solitude of the guardians. Is it worth their existence? Their dread? Your spirit?
Tears, burning and filled with shame ran down the dirt on his face. He was falling apart. The flawless Messenger was breaking down leaving behind a frightened proud boy who had agreed to a being of light because he lacked the strength to refuse.
He wished for it to cease. He desired the voices, the hallucinations, the unending questioning to halt. He longed for the quiet he currently dreaded.
Amidst the haze of tears and mental anguish he noticed it. The whirlpool. The Chalice. The conclusion of the ordeal. To drink meant embracing the deluge. To either be. Master swimming, in a vast ocean of endless echoing repercussions.
Dragging himself inch by inch, amid the surge of silent clamor he reached the riverbank. The glare scorched his eyes. The shared yearning of ages scorched his flesh.
Why? the Echoes insisted one time a coordinated scream that resonated through his teeth.
"BECAUSE I NEED TO FIND OUT!" he shouted, his voice hoarse and shattered, the completely human noise, in that hall of sorcery. "I NEED TO KNOW IF SILENCE IS THE SOLE RESPONSE!"
Emitting a sob that was both concession and rebellion he buried his face in the whirlwind of light and consumed it.
The globe erupted.
He was no longer Alexander. He embodied the spell, awkward yet luminous. He represented the hex of a treacherous monarch. He was the hand, on a plague sufferer, the phantom fortress, the conjured tempest. He stood for every vow every shattered pledge, every instance of awe and fear magic had ever produced. The force was boundless, frightening and profoundly personal. It didn't consume him; it unraveled him.
In a place a kernel of remembrance—a silver-haired child, in a light-speckled glen the burden of a plain wooden sword—grasped for a sense of self. Alexander. The name served as a lifeline amid the torrent.
He never attempted to control the power. That was the lesson imparted by the Echoes. Control was merely a mirage. One did not control a hurricane. One endured it.
He allowed the symphony to roar. He ceased resisting the notes—the enchantment of love the blazing fireball, the watching eye. He sensed their form, their longing, their price.. Gradually shakily he started not to lead, but to hear. To perceive the solitude in the lich's life spell. To sense the wish in the peasant's rain conjuration. To grasp the exquisite aspiration, in the spell aiming to reach the face of God.
He knelt within the cavern. He existed wherever enchantment had ever appeared. He was. He was the sea.
Time had no meaning. It might have been moments or ages. When the vortex eventually let him go he collapsed onto the stone panting, both intact and broken. The stream of light continued,. The voices dwelled within him now. An everlasting murmuring chorus in the cathedral of his mind. He comprehended them. He dreaded them. He felt sorrow for them.
The Chalice of Echoes was absent, from his grasp. It resided within his spirit. He hadn't seized an artifact. He had absorbed a wound.
He lay motionless utterly drained, the mental reverberations shaking his body. The cave remained still except, for the ghostly flow of the river. He had endured. He was sane.. He was forever transformed.
A gentle gradual applause resonated from the doorway gap.
Queen Brianna Calliope remained standing a grin gracing her pale visage. Her ruby pendant sparkled in the glow while her dark horns appeared to absorb the room's turmoil.
"Stunning " she murmured, her tone a sound that sliced sharply through the murmurs within his thoughts. "You didn't attempt to control the chorus. You allowed it to control you and by doing discovered the harmony. A more… profound method."
Alexander shifted his gaze perceiving not her figure but also the radiant eager presence of dormant energy encircling her the intricate enchantments embedded in the threads of her dress. The Echoes, inside him acknowledged their counterpart.
"Did you forward the voices?" he rasped. "The inquiries?"
She inclined her head, a smirk playing, on her lips. "The Chalice reveals the questions dwelling inside you Messenger. I only handed you… a tuning fork. Your heart was already resonating in that tone." She moved nearer her motions graceful and flowing. "You understand it now don't you? The solitude of the light's quiet triumph. The bitter irony of survival. That is not what we present. We bring the magnificent agonizing clamor of being. Eternally."
He raised himself onto his elbows. The Penitent's Blade rested next, to him. He glanced at it at her. "So what is it that you want from me?"
"What I have long desired " she spoke, halting a few steps her crimson eyes fixed on his. "For you to complete your journey. To obtain the Blue Ring. To stand on the edge alongside the Trinity… and then for the very first time to make a genuine decision. Not, as a Messenger.. As a man who has listened to the cry of creation and experienced the temptation of the silence. Decide which melody you want to conclude the world."
She spun around her black dress fluttering. "The Weisshorn calls. The ultimate silent reality. I shall witness what you transform into once the final echo disappears."
She disappeared, not through smoke. By a delicate distortion of light a charm so exquisite that the Echoes, inside him breathed in admiration.
By himself more Alexander grasped the Penitent's Blade. It seemed altered. He felt altered. The blade had revealed his lies. The Chalice had unveiled the price of every deed every spell, every desire. He was a bleeding scar, a breathing reverberation.
He stood, his legs unsteady, and walked back into the shrieking wind of the Drunengalm. The silence of the Weisshorn now called to him, not as a prize, but as a verdict. And he no longer knew if he was the judge, or the condemned.