The Black Peaks did not welcome visitors.
As Darien climbed the jagged slopes, the wind howled like a chorus of the dead. The ground trembled—not from drums, but from something deeper. Something breathing.
He followed the shard's pulse like a compass needle pointing home.
Three days he walked. No food. Little water. Only the cold weight of his ash-hand and the vial of golden sap—now frozen solid in his pocket.
On the fourth night, he found it.
Not a fortress. Not an altar.
But a cave, hidden behind a waterfall of black ice.
Inside, the air was still. Silent.
And at its center, suspended in a cage of glowing violet runes, floated a figure.
Tall. Robed in tattered white. Hair silver as moonlight.
An elf.
But his eyes… were voids. Just like the orcs.
"You came," the figure whispered, voice echoing with centuries of solitude. "I felt your Unlight the moment you took it."
Darien gripped the dwarven axe. "Who are you?"
The prisoner smiled—a sad, broken thing.
"I was once called Aelarion. First Warden of the Great Tree. Architect of the Age of Light."
"And the first to walk the Ashen Path."
Darien froze.
Aelarion—the name appeared in every elven child's primer. A hero. A founder.
Not this… hollow ghost.
"They called me mad when I warned them," Aelarion continued. "'Light without shadow is tyranny,' I said. 'Balance requires both.' But they feared what they did not understand."
He gestured to the runes binding him.
"So they sealed me here—with the Heart of Void, which is not a heart at all… but the core of my own Unlight, torn from me and buried beneath the world."
Darien's breath caught. "The orcs… the shards…"
"Are fragments of my power," Aelarion said softly. "When the dwarves mined the Voidstone, they unknowingly tapped into my prison. The orcs didn't unite themselves. They were awakened by my pain."
Silence.
Then:
"You carry my legacy, Darien Valtharis. My blood runs in your veins—House Valtharis descends from my brother."
Darien staggered back. "You're saying… we caused this?"
"No," Aelarion said gently. "Fear caused this. The fear of balance. The worship of purity."
"Now, you stand where I stood. Will you repeat my fate… or break the cycle?"
Darien looked at his ash-hand. "How?"
"Free me," Aelarion said. "Not to rule. Not to destroy. But to restore what was broken. The Unlight was never meant to be a weapon—it was meant to be a bridge between light and dark."
"But the orcs—"
"Are slaves to the shards," Aelarion interrupted. "Break the Heart, and they will fall like puppets with cut strings."
Darien thought of Lyothara. Of the King. Of Lira waiting with her book.
"What happens to me… if I free you?"
Aelarion's void-eyes softened.
"You will not die. But you will no longer be fully elf… nor fully Hollow. You will become something new. A guardian of balance."
Outside, thunder cracked.
The runes on the cage flickered.
Aelarion leaned forward.
"Choose quickly, nephew. They know you're here."
From the cave entrance, shadows poured in—hundreds of orcs, silent, eyes burning violet.
But they did not attack.
They knelt.
And in their midst, the cloaked figure stepped forward…
and removed its hood.
It was not a monster.
It was an orc wearing Aelarion's face—carved from bone and shadow.
"This is my vessel," the real Aelarion said sadly. "My pain given form. Kill it… and the link breaks."
Darien raised his axe.
But as he charged, the vial in his pocket cracked—and a single drop of golden sap fell to the stone floor.
Where it landed, a tiny sprout of green pushed through the black rock.
And for the first time in a thousand years…
the cave knew hope.