The revelation settled in Kael's mind not as a shocking twist, but as a deep, grim certainty, the final piece of a puzzle he hadn't even known he was solving. His quest was no longer a vague, desperate search for a "cure." That word felt small and inadequate now. He understood that he couldn't just fix Elara; he had to reintroduce a fundamental, missing force into the world. To do that, he needed more than raw power; he needed knowledge, control, the kind of wisdom that was stored in this silent, stone library.
His search became more focused. He moved through the dusty shelves, his fingers tracing the different types of crystal, letting his Dissonant sense guide him. He was no longer just absorbing history. He was hunting for a specific frequency, a specific type of knowledge. He searched for anything related to healing, to the blight, to the restoration of what one tablet had called a "stagnant song."
The process was mentally and physically draining. Each tablet he "read" was an immersive experience, filling his mind with the ghostly echoes of the past, the sounds and feelings of a forgotten age. He felt the jarring, percussive song of a canyon being carved, the delicate, precise hum of a Shatterer excising a vein of poison from a living crystal formation. He was accumulating centuries of lost knowledge, and the sheer weight of it was immense.
He found it in a small, secluded alcove at the very back of the library, almost as if it had been deliberately hidden. The tablet was different from the others. It was made of a crystal he didn't recognize, a deep, sea-blue stone that seemed to swirl with an inner, liquid light. Its resonant signature felt different as well—less like a historical record and more like a manual, a practical application of the art.
He picked it up, its surface cool and smooth against his palms. As he closed his eyes and opened himself to its song, a flood of specific, technical information poured into his mind. This was the Healer's Tablet.
It confirmed his desperate theory about his own leg in stunning detail. It described a Shatterer's role not just as a wielder of grand, world-shaping power, but also as a surgeon. It spoke of using controlled, focused Dissonance to shatter decay, to break up internal blockages, to excise "resonant cancers" from a person's life-crystal. The tablet described the process in complex, resonant terms he only partially understood, a symphony of precise frequencies and counter-frequencies that made his own clumsy efforts seem like a child banging on a drum. It spoke of isolating the "song of sickness" and composing a "shatter-song" perfectly tuned to unmake it without harming the "song of life" around it. It was everything he needed to know.
But the tablet contained something more, something that made his heart leap into his throat. It was not just a book of theory. It held a key. It spoke of a place, a sanctuary where the ancient Shatterers had gathered to perfect their knowledge and refine their skills. It was a place built not in the mountains or the wastes, but around a "Heart of Dissonance," a naturally occurring, continent-sized geode of pure, chaotic, and supremely powerful crystal. It was a place where their power was amplified, where the very environment was a teacher.
The tablet contained a fragmented resonant map, a "broken compass" that pointed the way to this lost sanctuary.
As Kael focused on this part of the tablet's song, a new map bloomed in his mind's eye. It was not a physical map of terrain, but a map of resonant lines, of telluric currents of Dissonant energy. It showed a path leading far to the east, past the Obsidian Peaks, past even the distant lands the traders in Barren had spoken of. It pointed toward a vast, inland sea, one described in the oldest legends as a roiling ocean of molten, liquid crystal.
And the destination, the ancient Shatterers' sanctuary, was shown to be beneath its surface.
The city was called Aethelburg. And it was sunken, protected for millennia beneath the cooling, ever-shifting crust of the molten sea. To reach it, he would have to find a way to cross that treacherous ocean of fire and then descend into its crushing, super-heated depths. The sheer impossibility of it was staggering.
He now had a concrete, tangible goal, more real and more vital than anything he had ever known. He needed to get to Aethelburg. It was the one place in the world that might hold the final key to truly mastering his power, to learning the complex "shatter-song" that could save Elara without killing her.
As he held the Healer's Tablet, feeling its ancient, complex song thrumming against his palms, the humming from the scar on his leg intensified. It resonated powerfully with the tablet, its vibration shifting from a low, steady thrum to a higher, more focused frequency. For a moment, the silvery lines on his calf glowed with a soft, blue light, mirroring the color of the tablet in his hands. The ancient song of the tablet seemed to soothe the wild, predatory energy of the scar, taming it, bringing it into a more controlled, focused state.
He realized with a flash of insight that the scar was not just a reservoir of wild power. It was also a key. It was an antenna, a part of him that was naturally attuned to the ancient Dissonant world, allowing him to connect with these artifacts in a way he couldn't have before. The Jag-Wolf's poison had not just wounded him; it had awakened a part of his heritage.
He knew he had to take the Healer's Tablet with him. It was more precious than any amount of gold or crystal. He carefully wrapped it in a spare piece of cloth and secured it deep within his pack.
As he finally turned to leave the silent, dusty library of the Shattered Lyre, he looked at the crude resonant map Vex had given him, now lying discarded on the floor. It had led him here, to the beginning of the real path. Barren had been a den of thieves, the Peaks a deadly, desolate wasteland. But crossing a molten sea to find a sunken city… that was a challenge on an entirely different scale.
He had the "what" and the "why." But he had no idea "how." He would need a guide who knew the molten seas. He would need a vessel that could withstand the heat. He would need a way to survive the crushing pressures of the deep. His quest had just become infinitely more complex, infinitely more dangerous, and infinitely more vital. He had found his direction, but the path ahead had just disappeared into an ocean of fire.