Krarvathar dragged himself up through the destroyed sands and rocks, emerging onto the surface. In some places, sand had accumulated like a waterfall inside a valley, and irregular stones lay piled up. However, the pillars of the buildings did not appear, keeping the structures below hidden.
He easily leaped over the rocks. He felt lighter than before. There was no longer any confusion in the coordination of his limbs, nor any physical strangeness — only a mental absence.
The sun shone brightly, accompanied by a strong and constant breeze. When he reached the top of the hill — at the edge of the destroyed area — he asked:
"Who am I now?"
Baræshadã did not show himself in visible form, but Krarvathar saw him as he stared in his direction.
"You are my beloved son," came the divine voice in reply, "orchestrator of my revolt, bringer of despair, the beast of conflict, the Scale of war. And now, you are someone free."
"Free," Krarvathar repeated.
The Meanings no longer answered, for that part of his father, left within his being, had been removed. However, in his near-death state and the merging of consciousnesses, Krarvathar's mind had come into contact with elements he had never considered before. Now he could ask:
"Why? Why did you awaken me to sensation and to a new soul? If I will not know how to tell which of them is truly mine and which is me?"
"You will know who you are. You will seek yourself. Was that not taught to you?" his father replied. Krarvathar gazed at the dunes and the clear sky; the sun shone behind him.
He began walking across the sand and said:
"Why did you give me your soul and then take it away from me?"
"Because you are like gold in the desert. Or like the voice of God singing among ruins."
"I feel like a traveler abandoned by his caravan," said Krarvathar, looking back. Two hours remained before the sun disappeared on the horizon. "I feel like a blade of grass torn from a well-tended garden, now cast to the wind. And in this, I do not know what I am — myself, another, or anyone."
He continued walking in the direction the elves had gone. The ancient place. Now he knew perfectly well what all of it had been.
"Why did you give me clarity of sight if I cannot see clearly? You gave me freedom, yet you decided a destiny for me."
"May the unknown God grant that you do not remain forever a stubborn, uncontrollable, furious and bestial animal, but that the dreadful and unsettling knowledge of seeing arise within you, and human skin as a transfiguration for feeling — for it has always been your part since your creation," the father replied.
"Then is this it? It would have been better to continue as I always was. Happy is unconsciousness and non-existence, for from them comes no anguish or affliction. Happy is every grain of sand I tread upon, because it is trodden and carried by the wind, and does not complain about it." He sighed and looked at the sky. "The calm of my once uncontrollable nature has become the anguish of my human soul, of quiet affliction."
"Do you despise the blessing of life and consciousness?" asked the father.
"You freed me, yet my destiny is to be a slave. You awakened me, yet the fairest thing for every being is to let it sleep."
Krarvathar then began to run across the desert at an impressive speed, heading toward his fate. Toward something from which he could not escape: the will of those who had created him.