The corridors of the Northern Peaks glowed with a dim blue fire that fell from crystal chandeliers, the light rising and sinking like the slow sigh of an invisible heart. The silence that trailed them from the hall felt denser than usual, as if the stones had kept the echo of Serenya's laughter and the Wanderer's words and refused to let them go.
Winter pressed against the cracks of the windows, and beyond, the peaks rose: a jagged horizon of frost washed stone. The citadel was a creature of ice and wind, accustomed to swallowing voices and footsteps until they became memory.
At last, Serenya spoke.
"He mentioned Aelestara again. You heard him."
Taelthorn grunted without slowing his pace.
"I hear him say many things. Most of them, I discard."
"You discard too quickly," she retorted. "Every time he speaks of that city, he sows something… something that doesn't wither, not even in this cold." Her voice softened. "Would it wound you to admit he awakens questions we never dared to ask?"
Taelthorn stopped short, turning abruptly toward her. The blue glow of the chandeliers carved his face into harsh angles.
"Do not mistake curiosity for wisdom, Serenya. Yes, the sky holds wonders, but many of them are mirages. He feeds the thirst for wandering with words, and you drink them like a starving pilgrim at a false spring."
Serenya's breath hitched for an instant, but she held his gaze, the gong pressed to her chest as if it shielded more than bronze.
"And if the spring isn't false? If there truly is water, Taelthorn? Would you leave me parched beside an empty trough… only because you fear the road?"
His silence was answer enough. His lips thinned, jaw rigid as though holding back a phrase that might wound too deeply. She brushed the rim of the gong with her thumb again, as if the metal could offer a reply he refused to give.
The corridor darkened, shadows widening along the walls. In the distance, a gust lashed the outer ramparts of the citadel with a wail that resembled the howl of a wild beast denied entry. It was as if the wind itself sought to claim what the Wanderer had left behind.
Later, they withdrew to their private chamber. The room faced the eastern slopes, but the windows showed nothing but the whiteness of ice blended with night. Serenya set the gong upon a stand near the hearth, where the bronze gleamed, catching both flame and shadow.
The fire burned with stubborn steadiness, licking the logs with amber tongues. Serenya stirred the coals absentmindedly; the wood cracked in showers of sparks while Taelthorn stood behind her chair, unyielding as a statue, hands clasped behind his back.
The weight of the night seemed to condense in that chamber: the Wanderer's departure, the mute heartbeat of the gong, unvoiced questions about Aelestara, the memory of warnings nobody wished to speak aloud.
At last he broke the silence.
"He says it rings when someone seeks you. Don't believe it. His hand cloaks deceit in the guise of truth."
"And yet you watched me closely when he gave it to me," she replied without turning. "You wouldn't look like that if you feared nothing."
A pause, heavy as a wall of ice.
"I watched," he admitted at last, "because I've seen him leave things behind before. They rarely arrive without exacting their price." He moved then, circling the chair, drawing closer to the fire. His gaze settled on the gong with a deep frown. "But this… this weight… is neither coin nor jewel. He offered it for a reason we still don't understand. That is what unsettles me most."
Serenya listened, yet her eyes never left the bronze. The gong reflected the fire in gentle ripples, as if beneath the metal there were a liquid surface answering the warmth. The engravings projected small shadows on the wall, lines that seemed to rearrange themselves whenever one blinked, as though the object itself were breathing with the room.
"Perhaps," she murmured, "the reason is not his. Perhaps it belongs to whoever one day makes it ring."
Taelthorn tilted his head, distrustful.
"Or perhaps the reason is to divide our attention, to make us stare at a piece of bronze while he walks free along the roads, no one following his tracks."
Serenya leaned forward and gently laid her palm on the small crystal at the base of the gong. She hesitated a moment, breathing in as if stepping through an invisible threshold. Then, with a barely perceptible gesture, she pressed.
At once, the metal trembled, giving off a soft hum, no louder than a candle's breath, and yet strong enough to vibrate through her bones. It was not a sound travelling through the air, but through the heart. It pulsed from within, as if the bronze had suddenly remembered its own voice.
She jerked back in shock, as though the gong had bitten her.
Taelthorn stepped away, his hand half extended toward the gong, yet unwilling to touch it.
"A trick," he snapped, his voice taut. "Some cheap contrivance to impress the gullible."
Serenya shook her head, eyes locked on the bronze, pupils wide with something that was not only fear.
"It's not a trick, Taelthorn. It's a door. We haven't yet asked where it leads."
The hum faded, leaving behind a silence sharper than before. It was as if, for a moment, the room had ceased to exist, and when it returned, it sat slightly shifted, no more than a breath out of place. Both of them listened, intent, as though the absence of sound itself had taken shape and coiled around them.
The fire crackled, dropping a hint of normalcy back into the air. But Serenya's heart still raced, answering something no ear could name.
"Even if we knew where it leads," Taelthorn said quietly, "that doesn't mean we must cross. Doors we never asked for may be the most dangerous of all."
Serenya clutched her cloak to her chest. Through the fabric, she fancied she still felt the echo of the hum—a subtle reverberation that respected neither wool nor skin. The gong, motionless upon its stand, seemed heavier than before, more present.
"Doors exist," she whispered, "to tempt those who cannot bear to stay where they are."
Taelthorn watched her in silence. In his eyes there was hardness, but also a trace of something less rigid, almost an old weariness. He knew Serenya was not one to be content with closed walls, not even when those walls bore her name.
"I will not let that object drag you away," he said at last. "Eryndor has already planted enough seeds in your mind. I will not add to them a tether I don't understand."
She turned her face toward him, a shadow of a smile on her lips.
"You are not the one who decides which seeds take root, Taelthorn. Nor which doors call to me."
He scowled, but did not answer. Perhaps because deep down he knew she spoke the truth. He could fortify walls, seal corridors, forbid names in his halls; but he could not smother the longing Eryndor had awakened, nor fully extinguish the spark the gong had just stirred.
The hum reappeared for an instant in her memory, and Serenya weighed it against other voices: the wind between the battlements, the distant roar of storms, the murmur of rivers in her homeland. This one was different. It was no call from without to within, but an answer from within to something still far away.
For the first time that night, she no longer thought of the Wanderer's absence, but of the paths his gift might open when the time came. And, deep within, a question rose like a forbidden torch: and if, when the gong rang of its own accord, it was already too late to pretend they had never wanted to listen?