Chapter Six: Before Humans
"I wasn't... human?" whispered the Shadow, her voice trembling like a mirror slowly cracking.
The frozen Kairn looked at her, and in his icy eyes, Sion saw something rare: a complete, undistorted memory, preserved in the frost of his heart.
"In a time before Elidor, before the Path, before all of this..." began Kairn, his voice now different, less cold, more human. "There were people who lived here. And one day... they found you."
He took a step forward, his frost-covered hand extending toward the Shadow. "You weren't a woman. You were... a species."
The dark hunters exchanged sharp glances beneath their masks. Their leader shouted: "No! Don't continue!"
But Kairn continued. "You were of the Ice Folk. Beings who lived in the cold, who saw heat as a sickness, who considered warmth an invasion."
The Shadow shuddered. "Ice Folk... I remember... masks of ice... eyes the color of winter..."
"Yes," said Kairn. "And you were their mother. Their queen. And when the first humans came... they didn't fight you. They coexisted with you. And they intermarried with you."
Silence. The silence was heavy, filled with what had yet to be said.
"Then..." whispered Sion.
"Then you bore a child," said Kairn, looking directly at Sion. "A child half-human, half-ice. A child who could live in warmth and cold. A child... who was the father of the Elidor line."
Every breath was held. Sion felt as if the ground was shifting beneath his feet.
"I..." he began.
"You are a descendant of that child," Kairn finished. "And you..." he looked at the Shadow, "you are his great-grandmother. The forgotten Queen."
The Shadow began to take a clearer form. Lines of a face, eyes the color of moon-ice, long white hair. "My children... humans and ice-folk together... why..."
"Because they feared you," said Kairn, his voice holding an ancient pain. "Because your power was great. Because your tears could forge glaciers. And because your grief... when your first human children died... nearly destroyed everything."
Sion understood now. "Elidor... was built not to separate emotions. But to imprison the Queen. And to hide her origin."
"Yes," said Kairn. "And I... was the last of her pure children. The last born before they decided: no more intermarriage. No more children who would remind us of what we were."
The other frozen ones stepped forward. And it was clear now: they were not dead. They were descendants of the Ice Folk. Their last remnants.
"That's why we want to awaken you," said one of the frozen ones, his voice like the wind through an ice cave. "To return us to what we were. To end our isolation."
The dark hunters began removing their masks. One after another. Their faces bore subtle ice-like features: narrower eyes, paler skin, white hair even in youth.
"We were searching for our memory," said the hunter leader, his face bearing a scar like Sion's, but deeper. "We knew we had lost something. But we didn't know what it was."
The Shadow... the Queen... now stood fully formed. Not a ghost. Not entirely solid. Something in between. "All this time... I thought I had lost one child. And I had lost an entire people."
She looked at Sion. "And you... my great-great-grandson. You were guarding my prison without knowing it."
"I will free you now," said Sion, his voice firm.
But she shook her head. "No. The prison is not walls. The prison is forgetting. And I have forgotten who I am for so long that remembering... is painful."
She moved towards Kairn. "My son... my true son. Who did not forsake his origin. Who stayed in the cold to remember."
She placed her translucent hand on his cheek. And the ice on his face began to melt.
"Mother..." whispered Kairn, and tears began to gather in his eyes. Warm tears.
"Finally... tears not born of my sorrow," said the Queen, and smiled. A sad smile, but her first smile in a thousand years.
Then she turned to everyone. "The time for a decision has come. Do you want me to awaken? To remember? To be your queen once more?"
Silence.
Then, together, they spoke with one voice:
"Yes."
But she shook her head again. "You cannot choose this for me. There is only one who can choose it."
She looked at Sion.
"The last Guardian. The last Jailer. My last grandson."
"Will you release me?"
"Or will you keep me asleep?"