Valerius stepped through the great iron seal, and the world changed. The oppressive, claustrophobic silence of the corridor was replaced by a sound so vast and all-encompassing it was a new kind of silence altogether. The sound of weeping.
He stood on a wide stone ledge, the torch in his hand casting a flickering, inadequate light into a space of impossible scale. He was in a colossal natural cavern, so immense that its ceiling was lost in an impenetrable darkness far above. The air was frigid, carrying a damp, briny scent like an ancient, sunless sea. And from every direction, from the walls, from the darkness above and below, came the sound—a thousand distinct threads of sorrow weaving together into a single, heartbreaking symphony of grief.
The prisoners of this ward were not confined to individual cells. The walls of the vast cavern were pockmarked with hundreds of alcoves, each shrouded in deep shadow. From each alcove emanated a faint, shimmering, bluish light, the source of which was a humanoid figure. They were the Weepers.
They were not ghosts, not entirely. They were ethereal, their forms translucent, flickering like heat haze. Each was chained to the back of its alcove by a single, dark, immaterial tether that seemed to be forged from pure shadow. They did not move. They simply stood or knelt, their forms bent in attitudes of eternal, unchanging grief. Their weeping was not a physical act; Valerius could see no tears, no convulsing shoulders. It was a direct, psychic broadcast of their misery, a constant, unending lament that saturated the very stone of the chamber.
This was their prison, and their sorrow was its wall, its bars, its very essence.
Stretching out before him, spanning the unfathomable chasm that dropped into blackness at his feet, was a bridge. It was a narrow, treacherous-looking causeway of crumbling stone, no more than four feet wide, with no handrails. It was a stark, lonely path across an ocean of sorrow, leading to another ledge and another great iron door on the far side of the cavern. That was his only path forward. That was his objective.
He felt the weeping begin to work on him, not as a direct attack, but as a subtle, pervasive poison. It sought out the cracks in his soul, the hairline fractures of his own grief. The memory of Isolde's funeral pyre, the image of his burning kingdom—these sorrows, which he kept locked away behind walls of ice, began to resonate with the symphony of despair around him. He felt a profound, weary sadness settle over him, a temptation to simply sit down on the cold stone and join the weeping chorus.
"No," he grunted, the word a harsh, guttural sound in the vast chamber. He slammed the butt of his torch against the stone, the sharp crack a tiny act of defiance. He hardened his will, envisioning the icy ramparts of his mental fortress being rebuilt, block by painful block. He would not be consumed. He was a surgeon, and this was just another layer of the infection to be bypassed.
He took his first step onto the bridge. The stone felt loose and unstable under his boot, and a shower of pebbles dislodged by his weight tumbled silently into the black abyss below. He kept his eyes fixed on the distant door on the far side, refusing to look down, refusing to look at the weeping figures in the walls. His torch cast his long, lonely shadow before him, a single moving thing in a realm of static misery.
For the first fifty feet, his mental walls held. The weeping was a constant, mournful background noise, a storm raging outside the windows of his soul. He focused on the physical. The pain in his ankle became a welcome, grounding rhythm. The strain in his arm as he held the torch aloft was a point of focus. The careful placement of each foot on the crumbling stone was a meditative act. He was a man walking a tightrope, and the only way to survive was to not look down.
But as he ventured further, towards the center of the great cavern, the nature of the weeping began to change. It was no longer just a broadcast of generalized sorrow. It began to feel… personal. The Weepers, ancient entities of pure emotion, sensed his presence, his specific, individual grief. And like predators sensing blood in the water, they began to tailor their assault.
The general chorus of sobbing began to resolve into individual voices. He heard a young woman weeping for a lover lost at sea, her grief so pure it felt like drowning. He heard an old man mourning a lifetime of mistakes, his regret a physical weight that made Valerius's own shoulders slump. He heard a child crying for its mother, a sound so innocent and piercing it threatened to break his heart.
He pushed on, gritting his teeth, his jaw aching with the effort of maintaining his composure. Then he heard a new voice woven into the tapestry of tears. A voice he knew.
It was Isolde's laughter, bright and clear as a summer morning, just as he remembered it from the gardens of the palace. The memory was so vivid, so perfect, it made him stumble. He caught himself, his heart lurching. Then, the laughter began to curdle. It faltered, broke, and dissolved into a single, heartbroken sob. You let me die, the phantom voice wept in his mind. You were strong, but you were not there.
"It's not real," he snarled, his voice a ragged whisper. "A trick. An echo."
But the assault was relentless. He heard the voice of his tutor, Kael, not with its usual scorn, but with a deep, weary disappointment. I trained you to be a king's right hand, a guardian of the realm. And the kingdom fell. All my knowledge, all your power… it all turned to ash. My entire life's work was for nothing. Because of you.
The weight of these phantom accusations was immense. His steps became heavier, slower. The far side of the bridge seemed to be receding, stretching away from him. He felt the cold despair of the chamber seeping through the cracks in his mental fortress, a chilling tide of failure.
He reached the center of the bridge, the very heart of the cavern. Here, the psychic assault reached its crescendo. He was surrounded on all sides by the weeping figures, their collective misery focusing on him like a lens focusing the sun's rays. The air itself grew thick and heavy, making it difficult to breathe. The light from his torch seemed to dim, its flame sputtering as if starved of oxygen.
The illusions became overwhelming. He was no longer on a stone bridge. He was standing in the throne room of his burning castle, smoke stinging his eyes, the screams of the dying echoing around him. Isolde lay at the foot of the throne, her white gown stained with blood. Kael stood before him, his face a mask of accusation, before crumbling into dust. His people, the faces he had sworn to protect, stared at him with hollow, accusing eyes.
Failure. The word was no longer a whisper; it was a physical blow, a shout that echoed in the very marrow of his bones. You are a monument to failure. You bring ruin wherever you go. The fortress fell, but the cost was your strength. Oakhaven is safe for now, but what happens when the next threat comes? This book you seek… you are too weak to control it, too weak to destroy it. You will only unleash a greater darkness upon the world. The kindest thing you could do, the only heroic act left to you, is to lay down your burden. End it. Here. Now.
The logic was insidious, flawless, and deeply seductive. He felt his will beginning to crumble. The pain in his ankle was no longer a grounding force; it was just another misery in a life defined by it. His sword felt impossibly heavy at his hip. His torch flickered and went out, plunging him into the near-total darkness, illuminated only by the faint, shimmering misery of the Weepers.
He stopped walking. His shoulders slumped. The desire to simply lie down on the cold stone, to close his eyes and let the sorrow wash over him, to finally rest, was overwhelming. It would be so easy. Just one step to the side, into the silent, waiting abyss. An end to the pain, the guilt, the unending struggle.
He swayed on the spot, his resolve dissolving like salt in water. His hand, hanging limp at his side, brushed against the small leather pouch at his belt. His fingers, numb and clumsy, fumbled with the clasp. He didn't know why he was doing it. It was a final, instinctual act. His fingers closed around the small, smooth object within.
The memory stone.
He pulled it out, its physical reality a stark contrast to the phantoms that assailed him. He clutched it in his trembling hand. It was not a weapon. It was not a magical artifact. It was just a rock. But it was a rock that held a promise. Give it one good memory.
He closed his eyes, not to shut out the illusions, but to look within. He did not try to summon a memory of Isolde's smile or the warmth of a past victory. Those memories were now poisoned, twisted into weapons to be used against him. Instead, he reached for the new memory, the one he had forged himself, the one that belonged only to him.
He brought forth the image of the mountaintop after he had sealed the book. The biting wind on his face. The solid, living warmth of Boreas at his back. The vast, silent canopy of stars above. The feeling was not joy. It was not happiness. It was colder, harder, and more durable than any of those fleeting emotions. It was the feeling of endurance. The quiet, profound peace that comes not from avoiding suffering, but from having passed through it and survived. It was the memory of his choice to remain human, to embrace the struggle, to keep walking even when broken.
That cold, hard memory was an anchor in the raging sea of hot, consuming grief. It did not negate the sorrow around him. It did not build his walls back up. It did something far more important. It reminded him who he was. He was not the sum of his failures. He was the sum of his choices. He was the man who kept walking.
His eyes snapped open. The illusions flickered, their power over him lessened. He could see the bridge again, a faint, grey line in the gloom. He could see the distant doorway. He took a breath, and it was still painful, but it was his own.
He put the stone away and gripped his sword hilt, not to fight the Weepers, but as a promise to himself. A promise to keep fighting.
He took a step. Then another. The weeping continued, the sorrow still immense, but it was no longer his own. It was their burden, not his. He walked through their storm, no longer trying to block it out, but simply enduring it, his own cold, quiet resilience a shield more powerful than any magical ward.
He finally reached the far side of the causeway, stepping onto the solid ledge with a deep, shuddering gasp. He turned and looked back across the abyss. He saw the shimmering figures in their alcoves, trapped in their eternal sorrow. He felt a flicker of pity, but he extinguished it. They were a part of this prison, and he had his own duty to perform.
He turned his back on the Ward of Tears and faced the new door. It was identical to the one before—black iron, sealed with powerful runes. But from beyond this one, there was no sound. Only a deep, profound silence, and a faint, almost imperceptible vibration he could feel through the soles of his boots.
He had passed through the prison of the mind and the prison of the soul. Now, he faced the prison of raw, physical power. He had survived the warden and the inmates. It was time to find the heart of the machine.