Chapter Seven: The Decision and Its Consequence
The silence in the hall was heavy, filled with held breaths and racing hearts. Every eye was on Sion, every soul awaited his word.
The Ice Queen stood before him, her form now clearer. No longer just a shadow, but semi-corporeal, like a statue of transparent ice awaiting a final splash of life. Her eyes, the color of the sky before a snowstorm, stared at him with complete focus.
"Time is not my friend," she said, her voice now stronger, more present. "Every moment I remember, every second I am conscious... eats away at me. Because I was not created to be conscious. I was created to be a foundation. And a foundation does not ask why it exists."
Sion looked at his hand. The scar on his neck was burning with a new heat, not the heat of pain, but of remembrance. As if every generation of his ancestors was screaming inside him: "Choose! Choose!"
He remembered Eron. The lost pilgrim who lost his son because he tried to be free. He remembered Kairn who sacrificed his humanity to preserve his mother's memory. He remembered Elara and the pilgrims who accepted pain as a constant companion.
Then he looked at the Dark Hunters who had removed their masks. Their faces bore the same scars, but deeper, older. They were searching for their identity, and theft became their path.
And the Frozen Ones... who had waited in the cold, knowing they were different but not knowing why.
"If I release you..." Sion began, his voice trembling slightly. "What will happen?"
The Queen smiled, and her smile held all the sorrow of the world. "I will remember. And I will feel. And I will cry again. And my tears... will change everything."
"Will they melt the Path?"
"No. They will make it... truly alive. I will become the Path, and the Path will become me. And all of you... will have to learn to live in a place that feels you, remembers you, and perhaps... loves or hates you."
Elara stepped forward. "What does that mean for us? For the pilgrims?"
"You will no longer be lost. Because the Path will know you. It will guide you. But it will also... demand from you. It will ask for your memories as a toll for passage."
The Dark Hunters exchanged glances. Their leader, a man in his forties with a deep scar on his cheek, said: "And us... what about us?"
"You will know who you are. You will remember your ice-blood. And you will decide whether you want to remain human, or return to what you were."
Kairn, whose ice was slowly melting, stepped forward. "And me?"
The Queen looked at him, her eyes filling with transparent tears. "You will return, my son. Not as you were. But as you should be. An ice-man who knows the warmth of motherhood."
Then she turned to Sion again. "But all this... depends on your decision. Because you are the last Guardian. Because you are the only one who has not yet chosen which side is his."
Sion pulled his fake pendant from under his shirt. The cold, fake metal was suddenly rusting. A rapid green rust covering its surface.
"It is choosing for you," said the Queen. "Falsehood cannot bear truth."
The fake pendant crumbled between his fingers, turning into green dust that fell on the ice floor.
"And the real pendant..." whispered Sion.
"It is calling to you. Because it is a part of me. And it knows the time of return has come."
They all exited the hall. The tunnel. The cave. Out into the biting cold of the Eternal Cold Path.
The rock under which Sion had hidden the real pendant was shimmering. Not because it was covered in snow, but because the pendant itself was glowing from beneath the earth.
Sion dug with his hands. The frozen ground was hard, but it melted under his touch. As if his body itself knew what to do.
He found the small wooden box. Opened it.
And the pendant... was changing.
It was no longer just a metal piece with engravings. It was pulsing. Each pulse released a wave of blue light, and each wave made the ice around it sway like a thick liquid.
Sion took it. The metal was warm. For the first time since carrying it, it was warm.
"It's... your heart," he said, looking at the Queen.
She shook her head. "The heart of what I could be, if I were free."
Sion raised the pendant high. The engravings on it began to move. To transform. To rearrange themselves.
And they spelled a single word:
"Go."
"Where?" he asked.
"To where everything meets. To the Crossroads of Memories."
---
Chapter Eight: Crossroads of Memories
The path to the Crossroads of Memories was no ordinary road. It was made of frozen tears. Every step was on someone's tears. Every stone was a frozen memory.
They all walked: Sion in the lead, the Queen floating beside him, and behind them the pilgrims, the hunters, and the Frozen Ones. Even Kairn walked, his body now half-melted, half-frozen, human and ice-man at once.
The Path grew warmer. Not a comforting warmth, but a warmth like a sick body beginning to heal. The black snow began to turn blue, then to pure white.
"This is because I remember," said the Queen. "Every memory that returns... melts a little of my coldness."
"And what will you remember when we arrive?"
"Why I started crying the first time. And perhaps... I will stop crying."
The Crossroads appeared on the horizon. It wasn't a road junction. It was a tree. A giant ice-tree, its branches reaching to the sky, its roots reaching to the heart of the earth. And every branch... held memories.
Elara stood awestruck. "This... is the World Tree. Legend says it connects all worlds."
"It once did. Before I cried upon it," said the Queen, her voice filled with deep regret. "My tears washed it. Made it forget it was meant to connect, not to separate."
Sion walked towards the trunk. In the center of the tree, there was a hollow. The shape of a heart.
"Place the pendant there," said the Queen.
Sion raised the pendant. His hands were shaking. This was the moment. This was the moment he would change everything.
But before he could place it, he heard a voice.
Eron's voice.
"Wait."
The lost pilgrim emerged from the ranks. His face was pale, his eyes red-rimmed. "Before you do... I want to see my son. As he was."
The Queen looked at him. "At what price?"
"Any price."
She raised her hand. An image appeared in the air: Kairn as a child. Playing in pure snow, laughing, the tears in his eyes from the cold, not from sorrow.
Eron fell to his knees. "This... this is what they took from him."
"And what they gave me in his place," said the Queen.
The image vanished. And Eron wept. The weeping of a man who saw what he had lost, and knew it would never return.
"Do it," he whispered, still on his knees. "Do it so no one else loses what I lost."
Sion took a deep breath. And placed the pendant in the hollow.
At first... nothing.
Then... the Light.
A blue-white light, pure, filling everything. And the tree began to melt. But not melt like ice, it was transforming. Turning into something between ice and wood, between death and life.
And the Queen... became material.
No longer a ghost. She stood there, a tall woman, her white hair shining under the light, her eyes now two different colors: one blue as deep ice, the other brown as warm soil.
"I am..." she said, touching her face. "I am here."
Then she looked at Sion. "And thank you."
But before he could respond, the earth split open.
From under the tree, from where the roots had been, they appeared.
Not human. Not ice-folk.
People from Elidor.
A hundred, two hundred, wearing robes of shimmering glass, their hands holding cages of glass. And in each cage... colored light. Stolen emotions.
And before them, an old man. He held a staff made of ice and glass fused together.
"Stop, Queen," he said, his voice dry as dead leaves. "We have finally found you."
The Queen looked at him, her eyes glowing. "You... descendants of my descendants. And you have come to return me to prison."
"Prison is the only safe place for you. And for everyone."
Sion stepped forward. "No. She has suffered enough."
The old man looked at him, his eyes narrow. "You... the runaway Guardian. You returned with traitors."
"I am not a traitor. I have become human."
The old man chuckled a dry laugh. "Human? You are half ice-folk. And you..." he looked at the Queen, "you were never human. You never understood what it means to be limited, weak, breakable."
"Do you know why I cry?" said the Queen, and her voice was different now. Powerful. Truly regal. "I do not cry because I lost something. I cry because you... decided to feel less to hurt less. And I... could not do that."
She raised her hand. And all the ice of the Path rose. As if responding to her will.
"We do not want war," said the old man, but his voice trembled.
"You don't want war. You want enslavement. You want me to stay asleep so I don't remind you that you are afraid."
She turned to Sion. "Now I will show you what truly made me cry."
And she pressed on the pendant in the World Tree.