The light that exploded from the Echo was blinding.
Theron threw up his hands, shielding his eyes, but the light was everywhere, filling the forge, filling the mountain, filling the world. He could feel it in his chest, in his bones, in the places where the Aethyr had always been thin and cold.
And then it was gone, and his father was standing in the center of the forge, the Echo in his hands, its three pieces joined at last.
It was not a weapon. It was not a key. It was something else, something that pulsed with a light that was not light, a warmth that was not warmth. And in its center, there was a symbol that Theron had seen before.
A Firstborn rune.
"It is done," the Forge-Keeper said, and its voice was softer now, almost human. "The Echo is whole. The door is open. And the cycle can be broken."
Kaelen stared at the Echo, at the light that pulsed in his hands, at the symbol that had been waiting for him for a thousand years.
"What do I do now?" he asked.
The Forge-Keeper reached out and touched the Echo, and for a moment, its hand was not metal, not flesh, but something else. Something that shimmered and shifted and changed.
"You choose," it said. "You choose what the Echo becomes. A weapon. A key. A door. Or something else. Something new."
Its eyes—the eyes that had once been human—looked at Kaelen with something that might have been hope.
"You have been carrying the rage for five years. The grief. The hunger for vengeance. And you have been carrying your son. The hope. The future. The chance to be something more than what they made you."
It looked at Theron, and its face—the mask that had been welded to its skull—seemed to soften.
"He is the reason you are here. The reason you chose love over vengeance in the Sunken Dominion. The reason you chose mercy over rage in the city of the Firstborn. And he is the reason you will choose wisely now."
Kaelen looked at his son, and his face was open in a way that Theron had never seen.
"Yes," he said. "He is."
"Then choose," the Forge-Keeper said. "Choose what the Echo becomes. Choose what the world becomes. Choose what you become."
Kaelen looked at the Echo, at the light that pulsed in his hands, at the symbol that had been waiting for him for a thousand years.
And he chose.