Sebastian stopped first, eyes scanning the chamber's far end where the passage simply… ended. "It's a dead end," he said at last, then his gaze shifted to a narrow slab of stone embedded in the wall, clearly out of place. "But that tablet there, it is written in Elder Speech."
Lune stepped closer, tilting her head. Yarvik followed with a grunt, squinting.
"Aye," the dwarf muttered. "No other exits I can see."
Faelorn exhaled through his nose. "Good. An Elder Speech inscription should be simple enough..."
Sebastian glanced at him and gave a small tilt of his head. "Be my guest."
That confidence lasted precisely long enough for Faelorn to approach the tablet.
He studied it for a mont, then another.
Then he cleared his throat, once.
"It's… not the Elder Speech I'm familiar with," he admitted, slowly stepping back.
A beat of silence followed.
Sebastian's mouth twitched and Lune imdiately let out a laugh. Yarvik wasn't far behind, shoulders shaking.
Faelorn shot them a glare. "Oh, shut it! This is true Elder Speech. Not the watered-down dialect we speak now! None of you would be able to read this either."
Sebastian gave a light shrug, stepping forward. "Alright. This has been entertaining. Move aside Faelorn."
Faelorn actually laughed at that. "You? Read it? Now I know you're joking."
"I'm not," Sebastian said simply.
That alone was enough to pull Faelorn's expression into disbelief. "Wait… seriously?!"
Sebastian didn't answer. He just looked at the inscription, eyes tracing the old, carved symbols as if they were nothing more than another language among many.
Then he read, his voice changed as he did, the words were probably being spoken for the first ti in centuries.
"Aen seidhe i'thlin aen dael aen oranae," he began.
"The elves are at the end of all sorrow."
"Ish zireael va'esse eithna, minne var duir chael."
"All beauty must be preserved without change."
"Aen aen duir, aen ar'dael: puraeth var dol naeth."
"To destroy is to purify what is broken."
"Minne eithna thae aen'ta, var aen echair naez."
"mory is stronger than flesh and cannot fade."
"Aen eringar eithna kaer thae lif var brise."
"All bindings are chains ant to be broken."
"Sil vae orenna, naez lifar suthrel."
"Silence is emptiness where nothing survives."
"Aen tharael orvas, eurvath graen ithra."
"Only those who act first are granted survival."
When he finished, the chamber seed even quieter than before.
Yarvik broke it first, blinking hard. "By Gran's beard… he actually read it."
Lune turned to Sebastian with open curiosity. "You can read our ancestor's language?! How?!"
Sebastian gave a small, almost dismissive shrug. "Had a very… knowledgeable sorceress for a teacher. That's how I learned Elder Speech, among other things."
Faelorn, still visibly processing what he'd just witnessed, let out a slow breath. "You keep surprising , Witcher.. Though I suppose it makes sense. Sorcerers… they're educated, even if I'd prefer not to admit it."
Sebastian's smile turned faintly crooked. "This one's different. She is a very kind sorceress. I'm sure you'd all get along."
Faelorn caught the sarcasm imdiately, but chose not to bite. Instead, his attention drifted back to the chamber.
"And yet," he said after a pause, "I still don't understand what it's trying to tell us."
Sebastian tapped the edge of the tablet thoughtfully. "Seven lines. Seven separate statents. Maybe philosophy. Maybe an instruction, you never know with Elves."
Faelorn's expression darkened slightly. "What bothers is that we sent scouts deeper. None returned. This is the only path forward, and none of them are here, there is no bodies around, and I know my n. They don't simply vanish."
"No dried blood either," Sebastian noted quietly, eyes scanning the floor. "If sothing took them, it didn't do it here."
"I know my n," Faelorn repeated, firr this ti.
Yarvik snorted. "Aye, and I know idiots. If they t anything like this, they'd try kicking it before thinking."
Lune gave him a sideways glance. "That sounds like you."
"That's because I'm alive, lass."
Sebastian's gaze stayed on the room. "Careful where you step. Don't trust empty spaces like this."
Lune and Yarvik both instinctively looked down at their feet at the exact sa ti.
Faelorn exhaled again, more irritated now. "It's just a bloody room. An empty room with a single tablet in the middle of a damn wall!"
He stepped forward.
Sebastian's voice cut in imdiately. "Wait!"
Too late, Faelorn's hand closed around the tablet and lifted it from the wall.
For a second, nothing happened, then the chamber answered.
Stone beneath them groaned deeply, seven segnts of floor shifted in perfect synchrony.
From the ground, seven pedestals rose, each one different. Each one carved with a distinct symbol, arranged in a circle that matched the lines of the inscription.
Faelorn froze.
Slowly, carefully, he placed the tablet back as though afraid even breathing might trigger sothing worse.
"…Okay," he said at last, stepping backward.
Sebastian raised a hand slightly, steady but alert. "It's fine, I think. Nothing's attacked us yet."
Lune stared at the pedestals, eyes reflecting faint stone light. "I think… it wants us to choose."
Yarvik let out a low whistle. "Aye. And I think those dimwits of yours didn't get lost. They just chose wrong."
Faelorn's gaze moved from pedestal to pedestal, calculating,
Then, quietly, "Repeat the inscription."
Sebastian obliged and read it again "The elves are at the end of all sorrow... All beauty must be preserved without change...To destroy is to purify what is broken...mory is stronger than flesh and cannot fade...All bindings are chains ant to be broken...Silence is emptiness where nothing survives...Only those who act first are granted survival."
When he finished, Faelorn's jaw tightened slightly. "So we choose one, it does seem like so sort of truths."
Sebastian nodded once. "Seven choices, and we don't know which one is correct."
Then Lune stepped forward slightly, lips moving as she tried to piece the aning together.
"Only those who act first are granted survival…" she murmured. "Maybe… it wants us to choose the first pedestal."
Yarvik let out a short, disbelieving laugh, arms folding tight across his chest.
"You must be out of your mind, lass. That's how dwarves end up missing limbs in old mines, following the first shiny idea that pops into their heads."
"I'm just saying what it sounds like," she snapped back.
Faelorn raised a hand, and the argunt died instantly.
"Enough," he said quietly.
He stepped closer to the pedestals.
"These are not riddles," he said after a mont. "They are… words of wisdom or so records of the past."
He exhaled, almost reluctant to continue.
"The first one, the elves are the end of all sorrow, it is not poetry. It is belief. A way of thinking. Our ancestors did not see sorrow as sothing to endure, they experienced it fully. While we currently are suffering the consequences of that sorrow."
Faelorn's hand brushed near the stone without touching it, like he feared waking sothing.
"They did not try to heal it. They wanted to erase it completely, if pain was tied to existence… then existence itself was the flaw."
His jaw tightened slightly.
"It is hard to explain to a mind raised outside of fucking sorrow… but in their logic, salvation ant perfection. And perfection ant nothing that could break you still existed... that is why I prefer humans to cease to exist from our world! That will be our salvation. It seems our way of thinking never really changed even after hundreds of years..."
Sebastian had been listening quietly, and he was almost amused watching soone solve a puzzle he had already started to understand.
"Well done Faelorn," Seb said at last, "Because whatever you just described… is probably correct."
He tilted his head slightly toward the pedestals.
"There's a word carved into the first one. Salvation."
That made Lune glance at Faelorn with sudden excitent.
"Well done, commander!"
Yarvik snorted. "If salvation's the first step, I'm already suspicious of the rest of the damn stones."
Seb's eyes stayed on Faelorn now.
"It lines up too neatly. Seven lines. Seven pedestals. And the first one being salvation…" He exhaled through his nose. "Either this is a trap or soone ancient had a very precise sense of irony."
Faelorn didn't respond imdiately. His gaze had gone distant, thinking through every possibility at once.
Yarvik shifted his weight. "If it's salvation, shouldn't that be the one that gets us out of here? That's usually how that word works, aye?"
No one answered him directly.
Instead, all eyes slowly turned toward Faelorn.
Seb broke the silence first, "Let's touch it."
Faelorn looked at him sharply.
Seb didn't blink. "We're standing in a dead man's philosophy. Either we learn how it ends… or we don't leave at all and go back. I'll do it."
Sebastian stepped towards it.
"Alright," Faelorn finally said, more to himself than anyone else.
Lune and Yarvik moved back imdiately. Faelorn stayed close enough to react if sothing went wrong.
Sebastian extended his hand toward the first pedestal.
"Here goes nothing…"
/-\\
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