The second fragment had made its home in the Spine of Sorrow—a mountain range that had once been sacred to the Sylphs. Now the peaks wept. Literally. Great waterfalls of salt tears poured down their slopes, carving canyons of grief into the ancient stone. The rivers below ran white with something thicker than water—memory, the Sylphs said. The mountains remembered every death that had ever occurred on their slopes, and they mourned without end.
Kaelen's army marched into the foothills on the fifth day after Thornhearth. The air was so thick with salt that it stung the eyes and cracked the lips. The Solborn wrapped cloths around their faces. The seventh race seemed unaffected—Evola drank the salt air like wine, her shifting skin drinking in the grief.
"The fragment is not just in the mountains," Soluna said, pressing her palm to a weeping stone. "The fragment is the mountains. It merged with the rock. It became the Spine of Sorrow."
Kaelen looked up at the peaks. They rose like broken teeth against a grey sky. Each peak had a face—not carved, but grown. Expressions of agony frozen in granite.
"Can you speak to it?" he asked.
Soluna closed her eyes. Her mismatched eyes—one brown, one silver—flickered beneath her lids. The stone beneath her hand shuddered.
"It doesn't want to talk," she said. "It only wants to weep. It's been weeping for three thousand years. It forgot how to do anything else."
The Sylphs arrived that evening. A host of them, translucent and shimmering, led by Zephyrine—the same wind-runner who had carried messages during the fall of the Magisterium. Her form was dimmer than usual, frayed at the edges.
"The mountains are killing us," Zephyrine said without preamble. "Every Sylph who flies too close gets caught in the weeping. The salt tears dissolve our membranes. We've lost forty scouts in the past month."
"Why didn't you send word?" Kaelen asked.
"We did. The tears ate the messages. The mountains are hungry, Kaelen. Not for flesh. For grief. They drink our sorrow and grow taller."
Kaelen looked at Varion. The memory-god had been quiet since Thornhearth, his glass robes clinking softly as he walked. Now he stepped forward, his golden eyes fixed on the weeping peaks.
"I know this fragment," Varion said. "We were consumed together. It was a river god. A gentle thing. It used to carry messages between lovers, stories between villages. The God-Eater consumed it because it was *kind*. The hunger wanted to turn kindness into despair."
"Can you talk to it?" Kaelen asked.
Varion shook his head. "I am a fragment of memory. It is a fragment of grief. We speak different languages now. But perhaps—" He looked at Soluna. "Perhaps the seventh race can translate. They were made by hunger. They understand its dialects."
Soluna nodded. "I'll try. But I need to go higher. The grief is thinner near the peaks. The fragment's true voice is there."
Kaelen looked at the mountains. At the weeping faces. At the salt rivers cutting through the stone.
"I'm coming with you."
The climb took three days.
Kaelen carried Soluna on his back for the first two. Her body was light—too light, as if the grief in the air had begun to hollow her out. But on the third day, she found strength. The stone beneath her feet began to hum. She walked faster, pulling Kaelen upward.
"The fragment is close," she said. "It's afraid. It knows we're here to change it. It doesn't want to change. Grief is the only thing it has left."
At the summit of the highest peak, they found the heart of the fragment.
It was a lake. A crater lake, ringed by weeping stone faces, filled with water so clear that Kaelen could see the bottom—miles down, it seemed, though the crater was only a few hundred feet deep. The water was not salt. It was fresh. And it was singing.
Come to me, come to me, child of the sun. I have been waiting. I have been weeping. I have been alone.
Soluna knelt at the edge of the lake. She touched the water. The singing grew louder.
"You're not alone anymore," Soluna said. "The Covenant is here. We brought your brother."
She gestured to Varion, who had followed them up the peak, his glass robes scraping the stone. The memory-god knelt beside her and placed his hands in the water.
"I remember you," Varion said. "You were called Lien. You carried my memories across the river before the hunger came. You were the first to fall because you refused to let the God-Eater have my name."
The lake shuddered. The water began to churn.
I could not save you. I could not save anyone. I am not a god. I am a failure.
"That's the grief talking," Kaelen said, stepping to the edge. "Not you. The God-Eater wanted you to believe that kindness is weakness. It's not. Kindness is the hardest thing there is. It's easier to weep. It's easier to turn to stone. But you didn't turn to stone, Lien. You turned to water. Water flows. Water changes. Water adapts."
The lake was still for a long moment.
Then the water began to rise.
It took shape—a woman's shape, tall and translucent, made of liquid memory. Her face was ancient and young at the same time, her eyes twin pools of endless depth. She stepped out of the crater and stood before Kaelen.
"I remember," she whispered. "I remember carrying love letters. I remember laughing. I remember the taste of sunlight on my surface." She looked at her hands—water, always water, never solid. "I forgot how to be anything but grief. The hunger made grief into a cage. And I stayed in the cage because leaving felt like betrayal."
"Grief isn't betrayal," Kaelen said. "Grief is love with nowhere to go. You don't have to stop grieving, Lien. You just have to let the love back in."
Lien looked at Varion. At Soluna. At the weeping mountains below.
"The peaks," she said. "I made them weep. I poured my grief into the stone. Can I… can I take it back?"
"You can try," Kaelen said. "That's all any of us can do."
Lien closed her eyes. The mountains below shuddered. The weeping faces on the peaks began to change—not fading, but *softening*. The agony became something closer to peace. The salt rivers ran clearer. The air lost its sting.
When Lien opened her eyes again, they were no longer pools of grief. They were *rivers*—flowing, moving, alive.
"I'm still sad," she said. "I will always be sad. The God-Eater consumed so much of me. But I'm not *only* sad anymore. There's room for other things."
Kaelen smiled. "That's all we ask."
They descended the mountain together—Lian in her water-form, flowing down the slopes like a gentle stream, leaving behind her a trail of wildflowers. The Sylphs flew close, their membranes no longer dissolving. The salt air had become something sweeter. The peaks still wept, but now the tears were not poison. They were simply *water*.
Zene met them at the base of the mountain. Mercy pulsed warmly on her hip.
"One more," she said.
Kaelen nodded. "One more."
He looked at the map—the third fragment's location, marked in blood by Ambassador Seren. It lay in the deepest ocean, miles below the surface, in a trench called the Godfall.
"The final fragment," Kaelen said. "The one that remembers the God-Eater's birth. The one that knows how the hunger began."
Varion and Lian exchanged glances.
"That one," Varion said carefully, "is not like us. We were consumed. That fragment was *born* from the hunger. It has never known anything else."
"It has never been given a chance," Kaelen said.
"Kaelen." Lian's water-voice was gentle. "Some things are not hungry because they are lonely. Some things are hungry because they *are* hunger. The third fragment may not have a soul to save."
Kaelen looked at the map. At the deep ocean. At the unknown.
"Then we'll find out," he said. "And if it has no soul…" He touched the hilt of *Sunrise*. "Then we'll give it one."
The Covenant marched east, toward the sea.
Behind them, the Weeping Mountains began to sing.