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, both human and ice-being at once.
The road grew warmer. Not a comforting warmth, but the warmth of a sick body beginning to heal. The black snow began to turn blue, then pure white.
"This is because I am remembering," 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 in the first place. And perhaps... I will stop crying."
The Crossroads appeared on the horizon. It was not a road intersection. 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 in awe. "This... is the World Tree. Legend says it connects all worlds."
"It once did. Before I cried upon it," said the Queen, her voice heavy with deep regret. "My tears washed it. Made it forget that it was meant to connect, not to separate."
Sion advanced toward the trunk. In the center of the tree, there was a hollow. Shaped like a heart.
"Place the pendant there," said the Queen.
Sion raised the pendant. His hands were trembling. 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. "Before you do... I want to see my son. As he was."
The Queen looked at him. "At any price?"
"At any price."
She raised her hand. And 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 it did not melt like ice; it transformed. It turned 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 gleaming under the light, her eyes now two 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-beings.
People from Elidor.
A hundred, two hundred, wearing shimmering glass robes, their hands holding cages of glass. And in each cage... colored light. Stolen emotions.
And before them, an old man. He carried a scepter 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 blazing. "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 narrowed. "You... the runaway Guardian. You returned with traitors."
"I am not a traitor. I have become human."
The old man chuckled a muffled laugh. "Human? You are half ice-being. 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 do not 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.