Theron watched his father stand before the woman of light, and for a moment, he was afraid.
Not of the woman. Not of the door or the light or the thing that waited in the ruins. He was afraid of the answer his father might give. Afraid that the rage that had driven him for five years would win, would consume him, would turn him back into the thing he had been before.
But when his father spoke, his voice was not the voice of the God-Killer. It was the voice of a man who had been broken and was trying, slowly, painfully, to put himself back together.
"I don't know," Kaelen said. "I don't know if I'm that man. I don't know if I can choose mercy over vengeance. I've been holding onto my rage for so long that I don't know who I am without it."
The woman smiled, and there was no judgment in her smile. Only understanding.
"That is the first truth," she said. "The first step. To know that you do not know. To understand that the path ahead is dark, and that you cannot see where it leads. That is the beginning of wisdom."
She stepped closer, and the light around her shifted, becoming something softer, something that was almost warm.
"You have been carrying the marks of your broken pact for five years. You have been carrying the rage, the grief, the hunger for vengeance. And you have been carrying your son. Protecting him. Teaching him. Loving him, in the only way you knew how."
She looked at Theron, and her eyes were kind, and Theron felt something loosen in his chest, something that had been tight for as long as he could remember.
"He is the reason you are here. The reason you chose love over vengeance in the Sunken Dominion. The reason you are standing here now, asking questions instead of reaching for your blade."
Kaelen looked at his son, and his face was open in a way that Theron had never seen.
"Yes," he said. "He is."
"Then you already have the answer. You already have the strength to choose mercy. You already have the power to break the cycle. You just have to let go of the rage. Let go of the grief. Let go of the hunger that has been eating you alive."
She held out her hand, and in her palm was the shard of light, pulsing, waiting.
"The Echo can bind the Skylords. But it can also bind you. It can take the rage and the grief and the hunger and turn them into something new. Something that can protect instead of destroy. Something that can build instead of burn."
Kaelen looked at the shard, at the light that pulsed in her hand, at the door that stood open behind him, waiting for him to choose.
"What will I become?" he asked. "If I let go of the rage? If I let go of the grief? Who will I be?"
"You will be yourself," the woman said. "The self you were before they broke you. The self you have been hiding from for five years. The self that loved your wife. That held your daughter. That believed in a world that could be saved."
She placed the shard in his hand, and the light flowed into him, not burning, not consuming, but filling the empty spaces that had been waiting for it for so long.
"You will be Kaelen. The Shattered Oath. The God-Killer. The Father. And you will be something more. Something new. Something that has not existed since the Firstborn walked the world."
She stepped back, and the light around her began to fade, the city that had been dead for a thousand years dissolving into memory.
"The Echo is yours now. Use it well. Use it wisely. And remember: the cycle can be broken. The world can be saved. But only if you choose to save it."
She was gone, and the light was gone, and Kaelen was standing in the ruins of a city that had been dead for a thousand years, holding a shard of light in his hand that pulsed with the rhythm of his own heart.
He turned to his son, and for the first time in five years, there were tears in his eyes.
"I'm ready," he said. "I'm ready to go home."