Dusk, thin as gauze, gently shrouded the scorched earth known as Theramore.
The setting sun miserly brushed its last streak of molten-gold afterglow across the shattered walls and broken ruins.
Its fading light cast twisted, savage shadows over them.
Vereesa knelt silently before the cold obsidian stele.
Her forehead rested against its icy, unyielding surface.
Again and again, her fingertips traced with utmost tenderness the characters carved into it by spiritual power, characters that had long since lost their master's warmth.
She did not let out any heart-rending cries.
Nor did she feel her very thoughts collapse as though the sky and earth had fallen.
There was only a long sigh, as though it had pierced through ten thousand years of time.
That soft sigh merged with the ash-laden wind sweeping across the ruins of Theramore.
A shackle forged over ten thousand years, heavy enough to crush the stars.
It had been hammered from endless longing, irreconcilable regrets, and bone-deep loneliness.
It had bound her soul tightly.
Yet, at the instant her fingertips touched Rhonin's final spiritual imprint, that crushing restraint spanning ten thousand years silently shattered and crumbled alongside Rhonin's words, filled with blessings and release.
An indescribable lightness welled up from the depths of her soul, mingled with sorrow as deep as an abyss and the vast openness of sudden clarity.
It was as though, beneath a riverbed frozen for endless ages, the rushing floods of spring had finally arrived.
Was that profound sorrow for the dead, for this land ravaged by suffering, or for herself, toyed with by cruel fate?
She could not tell, nor did she need to.
The distant place within her thoughts had become an open expanse of clarity.
There was also the boundless space her soul had suddenly gained after casting off its