Rambleon woke to Ameth'Aran still owing him answers. The Highborne relics he had gathered through the night before were enough at last for Corithras's tally, and standing among the fallen columns he found a crumbling record and read it through — the Lay of Ameth'Aran, then its grim companion, the city's own account of its fall. Fifteenth level came to him there, quiet as such things had started to feel, one more marker on a road that no longer surprised him.
Cassidy found him again that afternoon in Auberdine, as steady as she had been the night before, and together they turned back toward the Tower of Althalaxx, a place that made him pay for its secrets twice over before yielding them — the tower took him down once, and he shrugged it off and went back the way he had learned to. Darkshore's coastline was fully his to claim by then, every corner of it walked, and the achievement felt less like a triumph than the settling of an old account. A short errand carried them to Darnassus and back before the day's harder business resumed.
Twilight Shore gave him no easier time than the mountain had. He died there again and again through the afternoon — five times in all, counting the tower — and each time rose and returned, stubborn as the tide he was fighting. A green-skinned nuisance named Murkdeep fell to the WANTED notice at last, and for a few minutes at a time strangers walked beside him — Caerwyn, then Reighna, then briefly Elentria — before the current carried them apart again. Cassidy stayed longest, until early evening took her from him too.
He went back out alone, and Bashal'Aran gave sixteenth level almost as an afterthought before the night's real reckoning: the ancient flame's seal, the one the mountain had been guarding since the night before, broken at last. Anaya Dawnrunner's pendant came to him after, a small sad thing pulled from an old story of love gone wrong. Seventeenth level found him deeper in Twilight Vale, in the company of a druid named Menos, new to him, among Remtravel's dig where golems and stone behemoths stood where thistle bears usually did.
Cassidy returned once more near midnight, and left him again by Blackwood Den, where a rogue named Noseeum shared one hard minute with him before a death sent them both scattering. Alone after that, he crossed at last into Ashenvale — Balthule's letter delivered to Delgren the Purifier, the long trek finished — and stood a while in Astranaar taking the shape of a new land, the Zoram Strand and Stonetalon already calling, before the night let him go.
