He stepped out of the Ödetal into a form of emptiness. Not devoid of emotion. Stripped bare of deception. The peaceful dream was now a fragrance carried by the breeze a recollection of a door he had shut from, within himself. The load he bore was no longer the strain of a mission; it was the denser pull of existence.
The desolate eastern edge did not lead him back to the realm of hamlets and firesides. Instead to an elevated gusty plateau inhabited solely by the elements and some overhead quiet raptors. He became a specter amid specters. For days he moved forward his being reduced to the cadence of his footsteps the flavor of thawed snow and the firm, reassurance of a river rock, in his hand.
He was. Escaping nor searching anymore. He moved simply to avoid sitting. Since movement even if directionless created a kind of sound.
Then by the day he noticed the dust.
A slender golden wisp on the western horizon marking where the plateau started its slow steady decline, to the lower grounds. Not the calm grey mist of the Abyss's influence. This was disturbed soil. Numerous footsteps. A legion advancing.
He located a lookout on a ledge and observed. They appeared from a gap like a shining serpent. The Radiant Host. Numbering in the hundreds their white and gold stood out as a proud mark, against the brown-hued terrain. They advanced with quiet their speed unyielding. They were not pursuing him. They were moving eastward determined. To encircle the freeholds? To confront some anticipated abyssal assault?. Merely to overcome the void to raise their radiant flags in places no one had considered claiming?
He observed them until the final sparkle of gold disappeared into the creases of the terrain. The world was not pausing for his choice. The war carried on with its drive.
That evening while he crouched inside a cavern an unusual glow broke the darkness. Not, from campfires. A gentle glowing green hue moving slowly across the plateau from the north. A quiet aurora, both stunning and eerie. Wherever it moved the temperature dropped and the sparse tough grasses appeared to curl not perishing but… withdrawing. The Abyss was not dormant well. Its quietness extended in silent ripples.
He stood in the constricted passageway amidst the progression of two conclusions.
The morning he chose a direction. He headed south. Not along the path of the Host's advance. In pursuit of a remembered sound. Towards the location where he had experienced strength that was not about ceasing but, about persisting.
He was returning to the Weisshorn.
Not to seize the Ring.. To face it once more not as a Messenger nor, as a penitent but as a person who witnessed the war's progression, who experienced the allure of the dream-peace and who repeatedly opted for the imperfect chaotic middle ground. He would confront the silence and… deliver his account.
It was a pilgrimage without a prayer. A testimony without a judge.
The trip south cut across the direction of the strife. He noticed traces of its impact. A scorched shepherd's cottage, the blaze precise total—the Host's doing. A section of woodland where the trees appeared bare and ash-colored not lifeless. Locked in an eternal quiet fall—the Abyss's influence. He passed through these wounds like a ghost his sounds—the gravel crunching his breathing—seeming like rebellions.
He steered clear of the valleys where the civil war of the Scarlet Kingdom continued to simmer. Instead he ascended, remaining at altitude retracing backwards the route that had brought him to the Ödetal but heading toward a goal. To the west lay the Drunengalm, marked by their piercing spire. From the south the Weisshorn, the ruler beckoned.
Days merged into a sequence of rock and sky. He became slimmer tougher. His hair and beard untamed, turned into masses. He was casting off the layer of the man he once was. He was transforming into a being of the heights a testament inscribed in toughness and resolve.
One afternoon while traversing an ice field along the flank of an unnamed summit he perceived a noise distinct, from the wind. A voice, lifted in melody. A human voice.
The sound originated from a shelf overhead. He ascended toward it curiosity outweighing caution.
Perched on the ledge was a figure or something resembling a man. Cloaked in furs his face hidden beneath a tangled beard. Clutched in his hands he carved a fragment of wood using a bone blade.. He sang. The melody was in a tongue unfamiliar, to Alexander—a mix of clicks, murmurs and abrupt high-pitched tones. It was the anthem of stone, frost and breeze. It was completely gloriously deranged.
The solitary vocalist noticed him. Halted, his vivid wild eyes squinting. "You " he rasped. "You're the person who refuses to choose a side."
Alexander stayed motionless. "What makes you say that?"
The hermit touched his temple. "The mountain speaks to me. It grumbles about you. Claims you're a grain of sand in its sandal." He laughed, a noise like tumbling stones. "Perfect! Bug it! This mountain's too arrogant. Believes that due to its age and size it understands how the tale finishes." He resumed carving. "Are you off, to the one? The white horn?"
"Yes."
"Hmph. Sharing your thoughts openly huh? It won't pay attention. It understands one command: shhh." The hermit gestured as if sealing lips. ". You try. Sing to it. Yell at it. Become the pebble." He tossed his stick—it looked like a simple charming little bird—down by Alexander's feet. "Here. A sound, with wings. To remind you how."
Alexander grasped the wooden bird. It felt warm, from the hermit's touch.
He abandoned the vocalist on his perch, the odd melody beginning anew behind him providing a contrast, to the breeze.
Days later he found himself again at the base of the Weisshorn. It appeared altered this time. The eerie stillness surrounding it had intensified becoming denser. It seemed like a location and more like a state of being. The sky encircling its peak was clear impeccably blue and completely, without depth. It was the center of the storm.
He started the ascent. He sensed the quiet envelop him, the dampening of mind the depletion of resolve. Yet this time he was prepared for it. He didn't resist. He embraced it as the character of the mountain just as he embraced the hermit's melody or the river's thunder. He bore his sounds inside him: the recollection of the reed's squeal, in the desolate the pinging of the gallery the clash of blades the girl's cry the hermit's laugh, the sensation of the bird tucked in his pocket.
He walked past the Weeping Gallery. He chose not to go. The ringing of its bells was a recollection now.
He went past the location of the fighters. They remained present everlasting, a caution he had previously acknowledged.
He ascended to the ledge where he had confronted Duncan, where the stone had been presented to him as an option. He kept moving.
He ascended beyond the location of the pool, where he had witnessed his empty destiny. He avoided glancing.
At last he found himself in front of the curved entrance made of polished blended stone. The aroma of iron and fossilized wood had diminished nearly vanished. The quiet here was total, like a barrier.
He possessed no armor to take off. No blades to put aside. He had nothing but himself.
He removed the river stone from its bag. He pulled the bird out of his pocket. He grabbed the reed from his belt. He clasped all three in his palms—a stone, a sculpture, a hollow stalk. The relics of his voyage.
Afterwards Alexander Magnus, a Messenger once a heretic, an exile, a spectator and a simpleton moved through the archway into the dull emptiness.
The chamber remained as it was. The dull blue strip of the Ring rested on its stand, at the center emanating emptiness.
He refrained from moving. Remaining inside the doorway he sensed the quiet attempting to dissolve the sounds within his mind to soften the contours of his recollections to provide the calm of the dream-helmet.
He gazed at the Ring. He remained silent with it. He talked about it to the room to himself to the recollection of the world, beyond.
"I have observed your work " he murmured, his tone a whisper immediately captivated. "In the valley known as Oberalp. You provide a conclusion, to pain by terminating the one who suffers. A neat resolution."
He raised the stone. "This comes from a river that continues to run. It's not pure. It's smooth, rounded and distinct."
He inhaled deeply the atmosphere feeling brittle within his chest. "I have witnessed the efforts of the side. The Severance. The dissolution of intent. An alternative form of tranquility."
He lifted the bird. "A lunatic crafted this on a ledge. It serves no purpose. It is an object of beauty. It has wings. It cannot soar. It is a sound that took shape."
He gazed at the Ring. "You are flawless. You are the period. I am… none of those qualities. I am the ellipsis… the hesitation in the dialogue… the pause, between melodies. I am the '.."
He raised the reed to his mouth. Inside the void of the room, where noise was not only missing but unfeasible he drew in air infused with the desire to produce sound. He recalled every lovely transient sight he had encountered. He channeled it not into a melody. Into one long continuous tone.
He exhaled.
Nothing occurred. The reed remained silent. The quiet was absolute.
He exhaled with force his face flushing from the strain his sight blurring. He forced every memory every remorse, every hope, into the plain blade of grass.
A sound.
Not from the reed.
From him.
A deep murmured tone originating in his chest shook his throat. Slipped past his lips. It was crude, untonal, hardly more than a murmur against the stillness.. It existed. A tremor, in the atmosphere. A living noise, created within the core of silence.
It endured for three seconds. Then it vanished, obliterated by the room's denial.
He dropped the reed gasping, sweat forming on his forehead. The Ring had not vibrated. He hadn't altered a thing.
He accomplished what brought him there. He had testified. He had presented his argument. He had raised his voice no matter how pointless.
He glanced more at the Blue Ring of Stillness. No desire stirred within him a deep clear sorrow, for the solitary flawlessness it symbolized.
"I select the river " he murmured. "I select the bird. I select the sound."
He faced away from the conclusion of everything stepping away from the room from the core of the mountain and into the anticipating injured overwhelmingly loud realm. His voyage was far from over. It had at last genuinely started. He was not the hero destined to rescue the world. He was the one who would recall it and call it back detail by detail what was, at stake. He was the path that declined to reach the peak. He was the echo in the requiem. And he would walk until he could walk no more.