The stillness of the Weisshorn was far from void. It was a enduring force. It affected Alexander like the profound waters of the Hölloch did yet rather than coldness it bore down on sound on cognition on the very essence of magic's vitality. The Echoes, inside him receded, not muted. Mellowed, as though perceived from the distant corner of an extended marble corridor. The relentless scrutiny of each spell-scar every ley line surge, diminished to a academic murmur. It was a liberation that resembled a dismemberment.
He ascended past the snow boundary onto exposed wind-battered stone the atmosphere so rarefied it burned his lungs. The peak was a unimaginable shape, against the clear blue sky. However his route did not go up. A gut feeling or maybe the final faint hint of the Echoes guided him sideways along a slender perilous ledge that wrapped around the mountain's flank.
The ledge terminated at a crack, a shadowy upright split, in the granite. From inside he perceived it: a noise.. The breeze nor a human voice. One clear pure glassy tone. Then a second. An eerie sporadic tune.
He slipped through the opening. The crack led into a chamber of fragility. This was the Weeping Gallery.
Countless stalactites, some thin as needles, others as robust as columns hung from the ceiling in a petrified stone grove. They were not the dull brown of typical limestone but a clear alabaster streaked with shades of blue and rose quartz.. They were shedding. Not water,. A thick oily mineral substance that collected at their ends in flawless quivering beads before dropping—ping—into shallow shimmering pools, beneath. Every droplet hit, with the poignant tone of a crystal chime.
The noise was lovely. It was equally the tone of sorrow expressed in notes.
Alexander remained frozen breath suspended. The psychic trace present was not magical in nature. Rather raw undiluted feeling. It permeated the atmosphere itself a fragrance of sorrow and remorse deep it had penetrated the rock and now oozed out tone, by painful tone.
He perceived them at that moment. Not through sight. Via the final diminishing awareness of the Echoes. Phantoms of emotion etched into the chamber. A woman's outline of sorrow stretching towards a shattered ages past. The empty furious reverberation of a man's vow echoing among a particular group of smaller structures. This location was neither a battlefield nor a realm of strength. It served as a graveyard, for feelings immense to fit within one soul.
They did not belong to him. That was the yet kind reality. The deep sorrow was for a child he had never possessed. The painful deception came from a faith he had never violated. He was an observer, in a gallery of grief.
Ping…
A single drop descended from a long thin stalactite straight ahead. The sound was sharper, clearer. It evoked a vision: a knight, neither clad in black nor gold but in plain worn steel kneeling exactly here his face buried in his hands. His shoulders trembled with tears. The feeling emanating from the memory wasn't sorrow, for a person. For a direction. The heavy remorse of a decision that could never be reversed. The flavor of triumph that had soured on his tongue.
Alexander realized. This was a quester. Someone who had sought the Ring maybe even possessed it. Had come back here to the final spot where emotion remained to mourn what he had given up to gain it.
The resonant tune encircled him a dirge. He sensed the burden of each decision every unavoidable wrongdoing, every noble aim that had forged a path to a secluded torment. This was the price of authority. The concealed bill, for every artifact every crown, every defense.
He extended his hand not intending to touch the stone but to allow a droplet to land, on his finger. It felt cool and gleaming. The sound it produced upon hitting the metal was dull and lifeless.. The feeling it conveyed—a distinct intense sting of parental failure—flooded him, clear and unfamiliar. He allowed it to move through him and fade away leaving behind a trace of sympathetic pain.
This was the reality the Weisshorn revealed before the quiet. Not a majestic mystical truth,. A deeply human one. To command power—to bring stillness to cease strife—was not an act of detached pure godliness. It was an action driven by a sorrow so complete that one desired to protect everyone from experiencing pain again. It was the anguish of a caregiver who powerless to halt their child's suffering longs that the child had never come into being to endure it.
The tearful knight had grasped that. He elected the Ring's quiet not from desire. From a shattered misdirected affection for a world, in pain.
Alexander's personal remorse emerged, subtle amid the gallery's harmony. The fear in the Muotathal girl's gaze. The disillusionment on Walter's expression. The detached rational zeal, in the Angel's radiance. Were these not kinds of anguish he was causing on his journey to cease suffering?
A delicate voice, tender like the sound of a off drop came from behind him. "Isn't it beautiful? The sole spot, on this mountain where the heart remains free to beat."
He spun around. He hadn't noticed her coming her footsteps drowned out by the sound of weeping.
Queen Brianna Calliope remained at the gallerys threshold. She did not wear her perilous grin. Her face was grave, nearly worshipful. The harsh faint glow from the crack illuminated the ruby on her neck and the gentle gleam of her horns. She appeared as a mourner, before a place.
"This gallery is the reason we avoid challenging the Weisshorn " she murmured softly honoring the bell tones. "My commanders view it as frail. A point of weakness.. My counselor… Dorothy… she comprehends. Listening to this and yet opting for silence… that is a form of strength— unusual. A strength that has lost sight of the purpose of being strong."
"Why have you come?" Alexander inquired, his tone low. "To persuade me with charming phrases?"
"To observe " she stated plainly moving a paces into the gallery her gaze following the crystalline shapes. "To observe what you discern in the crying. Do you perceive sorrow?. Do you recognize the affection that has to be present, for sorrow to be attainable?"
She halted in front of the stalactite shaped like the weeping knight. One solitary drop formed quivered, dropped. Ping.
"He was among your kind you know " she whispered gently. "A Messenger, from ago. Centuries ago. He took hold of the Ring. He had the power to mute the Abyss at that time. He might have stopped the war instantly." She gazed at Alexander, her crimson eyes shining. ". He decided against it."
The words lingered in the chime-filled atmosphere.
"Why?"
"Because he arrived here later " she explained, indicating the crying stone. ". He recalled the price. The quiet wouldn't simply wipe out his foes. It would also wipe away the echo of his wife's laughter. The noise of his child's wail. The chime of a stone bell mourning a vanished future. He chose a world with suffering over a world that was a maintained quiet grave." She fixed her stare on him. He carried the Ring for one day and one night. Afterwards he returned it to its stand. Departed. A year later he perished in a fight that might have been avoided shouting a battle yell. His death was loud.. He died as a human.
Alexander gazed at her the disclosure feeling like a rock in his stomach. The Trinity might be formed…. Then denied. The mission could be fulfilled…. Then turned down. The decision was not merely about Angel and Abyss. It was a matter of silence, versus noise. Between a lifeless triumph and a chaotic vibrant loss.
He said, "You want me to have it."
"I want you to decide " she amended. "Completely. Aware of the price. The Angel desires a weapon. I seek… an equal. Someone who has experienced both ends and comprehends the exquisite burden of the middle. The realm where things exist. Hold significance."
She walked by him her dress softly brushing the stone. At the doorway she stopped. "The peak lies ahead. Quietness awaits. Hear the crying Alexander Magnus. It is the truthful noise you will encounter."
Then she vanished, leaving him solitary with the stone bells and the specters of remorse.
He remained upright for a period as the drops descended in their steady unending descent. Ping… ping… ping… He attuned to the sorrow that belonged to others until it fused with his own until the line between them blurred. The Echoes inside him were quiet, in this place softened by the mountain's force. Solely the crying persisted.
He turned and left the gallery, the beautiful, mournful music fading behind him. The path to the summit now felt like a walk to a sentencing. He knew the truth of the Ring. He knew the price. The only thing left was to see if he was strong enough to be weak, and weak enough to be strong, when he finally stood before it.