Killing. It was an act Thorwin no longer recoiled from—not in the way he once had. His hands no longer froze at the moment of the strike, nor did his legs give when life left another body by his will. The arena had carved that weakness out of him piece by piece. Each fight had hardened him, layering resolve over fear until instinct ruled where hesitation once lived. He could kill now. That was the truth of it. But the knowing did not come without cost.
The weight only grew heavier.
Thorwin looked down at his hand, still wrapped tight around the hilt of his sword. It trembled—not from shock, nor from regret sharp enough to paralyze, but from exhaustion born deep within. Blood streaked his fingers, warm and tacky, clinging stubbornly to his skin as if unwilling to let him forget. He flexed his grip once, steadying it by force of will alone. This was what strength demanded now: control, not innocence.
At his feet lay the severed head.
Blue, alien skin caught the torchlight in muted hues, its features unnervingly calm in death. The eyes remained open, luminous even now, fixed upon Thorwin with an intensity that pierced straight through his chest. There was no accusation in that stare—no rage, no hatred. That was what made it worse. It felt as though the draenei was looking through him, seeing the boy he had been, the fighter he had become, and the cost that bridged the two.
Thorwin did not flinch.
He had learned not to.
Instead, another memory rose unbidden, settling beside the corpse like an old scar aching beneath fresh strain. The priest in the arena. A man of light and virtue, hands severed, kneeling in blood-soaked sand. He had offered his life without protest, eyes filled not with terror, but faith. Thorwin had taken that life as well. Cleanly. Efficiently. Because the arena demanded it. Because mercy had never spared anyone.
He clenched his jaw, feeling the familiar tightening in his chest.
Anger did not explode anymore—it simmered, controlled, pressed down beneath layers of restraint. Anger at the orcs who had forged this path for him. Anger at the world that kept placing blades in his hands and calling it survival. Anger at the quiet truth he could no longer deny: killing had become something he could do.
But knowing how did not mean it grew easier to carry.
They were never meant to be here. They were meant to fight for spectacle, to bleed for amusement—not to butcher guardians in forgotten caves, not to stand amid the remnants of something sacred turned into carrion. Each death hardened him further, sharpening his instincts, strengthening his resolve… and yet, with every life taken, something invisible piled higher upon his shoulders.
Thorwin straightened slowly, forcing his spine upright as though his body itself resisted the effort. He lifted his gaze from the corpse at his feet and fixed it somewhere ahead, anywhere but there. He did not weep. He did not scream. Those reactions belonged to a version of himself that had been ground away long ago—left behind in cages, in blood-soaked sand, in nights where crying had earned nothing but pain. Instead, he drew in a slow breath, felt the ache bloom in his chest, and swallowed it down. He folded the feeling inward with practiced care, pressing it into the same hollow place where all the others had been stored. It joined the weight already there, settling heavily, but not enough to make him stumble.
For a moment, he stood in silence.
Then his shoulders sagged, just a fraction—an almost imperceptible surrender. His gaze drifted to his companions, lingering on Falstad's broad, battered frame and Cedric's unsteady stance as the knight leaned on his sword for support. The words slipped from Thorwin before he could stop them, quiet and stripped of anger. "Why are we even here?" he asked.
The question had been gnawing at him for days—no, longer than that. Since the chains. Since the arena. Since every step forward had only led to another horror waiting in the dark. He knew there was no real answer. Not one that would make sense of it all. Not one that could justify the blood, the loss, the weight pressing down on him. He didn't want a reason. He didn't want meaning. He was just… tired. Bone-deep tired, the kind that sleep could never touch.
Minutes stretched between them, thick and unmoving. The cave seemed to hold its breath, water dripping softly in the distance, torchlight flickering against stone. Cedric said nothing, his expression drawn and hollow, as though he too searched for words he did not have.
At last, Falstad shifted.
The dwarf exhaled through his beard, the sound rough and gravelly, and planted his axe head against the ground. "Best be movin', lad," he said, voice low but steady in that unmistakably dwarfish way. "We get to the end o' this mess, an' mayhap then… we'll find yer answer."
Thorwin did not argue.
He wasn't sure there was an end to any of it—no final door that would open into safety, no moment where the world would simply allow him to rest. Every path he had walked so far had only led to another trial, another fight, another weight added to his shoulders. Hope, when it appeared, came fragile and fleeting, and certainty had long since abandoned him. But motion—motion was something he understood. Movement meant breath. Breath meant life. Survival did not wait for answers; it demanded action. There was no promise waiting ahead, no reassurance that the next step would be kinder than the last. Still, he tightened his grip on his sword, fingers curling with quiet resolve around the worn hilt, and prepared himself to move once more.
As they turned deeper into the cave, his thoughts drifted unwillingly to what might be waiting for them beyond the next bend. More of the blue-skinned figures, perhaps—guardians like the one they had just slain, drawn by whatever lingered in this place. Thorwin's jaw set as the thought took shape. One had nearly killed them. A group would be something else entirely. He pictured crystal blades flashing in unison, movements as swift and unforgiving as a storm, and wondered—without melodrama, without self-pity—whether they would survive such an encounter at all.
The harrowing idea did not stop him.
It couldn't.
Reaching the far end of the cave should have felt like a release—but instead, it was strangely anticlimactic. No shadows leapt from the darkness, no howls echoed through the stone, and no blades flashed toward them from unseen angles. The silence was almost unsettling in its calm, as though the cave had chosen stillness over violence. Yet Thorwin and the others did not lower their guard. Their shoulders remained taut, muscles coiled and ready, every sense sharpened by the expectation that something terrible must come next. After all they had endured, peace felt like a lie told too softly to believe.
The cavern opened wider than any chamber they had passed before, its ceiling soaring high above, vanishing into darkness beyond the reach of torchlight. The walls curved inward like the ribs of some colossal beast, ancient and unmoving, bearing the scars of time in deep cracks and veins of stone. The air here was different—warmer, faintly humming, carrying with it that same pulsing sensation Thorwin had felt since entering the cave, now stronger, more insistent.
At the center of the chamber lay what appeared to be a shallow crater, its edges smooth and worn as though shaped not by violence, but by careful design. Within it, light pulsed in a steady, rhythmic sequence—brightening, dimming, then brightening again, like a slow, measured heartbeat. The glow was neither harsh nor blinding, but soft and luminous, casting gentle illumination across the cavern floor and painting the stone in shades of gold and silver. With every pulse, the air seemed to tremble, and Thorwin felt the sensation echo within his chest, answering the rhythm instinctively.
As they edged closer to the crater's rim, the light within surged without warning, flaring so brightly that it forced them to shield their eyes. Thorwin raised his arm instinctively, the sudden brilliance washing over him like a tide, seeping through fingers and eyelids alike. For a breathless moment, the world vanished into white and gold, sound dulled and distance erased. When the radiance finally softened, when the ache behind his eyes faded enough for him to look again, he lowered his hand slowly, almost fearfully.
What greeted them stole what little breath he had left.
Suspended above the crater was a rune wrought entirely of light—ancient, elegant, and impossibly precise. Its lines curved and intersected in patterns Thorwin had never seen, yet somehow felt he should recognize. The symbol rotated gently in the air, as though buoyed by an unseen current, its glow waxing and waning in time with the pulsing light beneath it. The air around it fluttered and shimmered, bending subtly as if reality itself bowed in its presence.
"By the Light…" Cedric murmured, his voice barely more than a whisper. Awe threaded through his words, but beneath it lay uncertainty—and fear. This was not the comforting glow of chapel candles or the steady warmth of prayer. This was something vast and unfamiliar, something holy and wounded all at once.
The rune radiated softly, its light neither harsh nor blinding, but deep and encompassing—an ever-shifting brilliance that cast gentle halos across the cavern walls. The stone seemed to drink it in, veins of mineral glimmering faintly where the glow passed, as though the cave itself remembered this light from some distant age. Thorwin felt its hum resonate deep within him, far stronger than before, vibrating through his chest and settling into his bones. It did not speak, nor did it bear a face or form he could recognize, yet its presence pressed upon his thoughts with unmistakable clarity. Emotion flowed from it in steady, overwhelming waves—sorrow first, vast and ancient, grief so profound it tightened his chest and stole his breath. Beneath that sorrow lay something else: a fragile, desperate urgency, a silent plea that felt like unseen hands reaching out from the dark, grasping for understanding, for mercy, for an end to suffering.
Drawn closer by that wordless call, Thorwin advanced with careful, hesitant steps. He was keenly aware of his own smallness as he crossed the crater's edge, the ground sloping downward beneath his boots. His footing faltered, and for a moment he nearly tumbled forward, loose stones sliding away underfoot. He steadied himself and continued, moving slowly, reverently, each step measured and deliberate. The distance felt strangely stretched, as though the space itself resisted his approach; it took dozens of short, cautious steps before he stood directly before the shimmering being of light. With every pace, the hum grew louder, swelling until it drowned out the world behind him. Falstad's shouts—urgent, alarmed—reached him only as distant echoes, their meaning lost in the radiant pulse. Cedric's voice followed, no clearer. Thorwin did not turn. He could still sense them lingering at the crater's edge, unwilling or unable to follow, while he alone stood at the heart of the glow.
It took several long, fragile moments for Thorwin's thoughts to gather themselves, as though his mind had been scattered and only now begun to reform. The world around him felt distant, muted, wrapped in a haze of warmth and pressure. He stood there, unmoving, caught between breath and heartbeat, until the truth of what was happening slowly bled into his awareness. Something had changed. Something irrevocable.
The realization struck him not as terror, but as a quiet, overwhelming sorrow.
His expression faltered, the hard lines of resolve he had built over months of suffering finally giving way. Bewitched and unguarded, his face crumpled as emotions he had long kept buried surged to the surface all at once. He closed his eyes, not in defiance, but in instinctive retreat—as though shutting out the sight might halt what was unfolding within him. His breath shuddered, chest rising and falling unevenly as the hum around him swelled into a resonant, all-encompassing presence.
When he opened his eyes again, the cave was gone.
Light flooded his vision, not as a blinding force, but as an all-consuming embrace. It poured into him from every direction, seeping through skin and bone, filling the hollow spaces he hadn't known existed. The warmth was immense, heavy with sorrow and resolve alike, and for a fleeting instant, Thorwin felt as though he was no longer standing in the world—but suspended within something vast, ancient, and dying.