I don't know what I expected. But it wasn't this.
Dire Maul is a ruin. That's the first thing you need to understand. The gates are torn from their hinges, the outer halls choked with rubble and the detritus of whoever camps here now. Ogres, mostly. We saw them before they saw us, their hulking shapes moving between broken pillars, grunts echoing off stone that once held elven music.
Theren led us around them. Through collapsed archways, across courtyards carpeted with moss, past walls where ancient carvings had been worn to shadows by weather and neglect. The deeper we went, the quieter it became. The ogre signs faded. The air grew still.
And then I felt it.
A shift, like walking through a curtain you couldn't see. The hairs on my arms rose. Theren stopped and wouldn't go further. None of them would.
"This is where you go alone," he said.
I walked forward.
The corridor beyond was intact, not untouched, but preserved. The stone was clean. The air tasted different, sharp and old, like metal left in the dark for a very long time. And I felt watched. Not by eyes I could see, but by something that knew I was there.
They met me at the end of that corridor. Two figures waiting in the half-light, standing so still I almost mistook them for statues. Then one turned its head, and I saw.
They were elves — high elves, like me, or what I might look like after a thousand years in a ruin. Their robes were ancient, threadbare, the colors faded to indistinct shades of what they once were. Frayed cuffs, patched hems, cloth that had been mended so many times the mends had mends. They stood with a stillness that wasn't quite natural — not the stillness of statues, but the stillness of people who have learned to wait for a very long time.
Their faces were lined, not with age but with something deeper. They looked tired, but not weak. Worn, but not broken. And their eyes — their eyes held the same sharp intelligence I'd seen in the oldest tomes of Quel'Thalas. They were not ghosts. They were not spirits. They were simply people who had outlasted everything they once knew, and the weight of that was pressed into every line of their faces.
They didn't speak. They simply turned and began walking deeper into the ruin, and I followed.
The halls grew older the deeper we went. The architecture was like nothing I'd seen in Quel'Thalas. Older, stranger, carved with patterns that didn't repeat. Every stone told a different story. I wanted to stop and study each one, but this was not the time.
The audience chamber was circular, open to the sky through a cracked dome. A single figure sat on a raised platform, surrounded by scrolls and half-finished objects I couldn't identify. An elf, ancient in a way that had nothing to do with age. The kind of old that makes you feel like a child just by being in the same room. His robes were as faded as the others', his hands resting on his knees with the easy patience of someone who has seen empires rise and fall and rise again.
I presented the diamond. My hands were steady. I'd practiced this moment.
"I've been told you're the only ones who can work a stone like this. I'm not here to sell it. I want to learn. To understand what it can become."
He looked at the diamond for a long time. Fingers passed through the stone, not quite touching it, before he closed his hand around it.
Then he spoke.
"You will return with two more. Then we will speak of what can be made."
That was it. No explanation. No negotiation. Just a condition.
I opened my mouth to argue, to ask, to plead, to offer something else, but the guardians were already moving forward, and the audience was over.
They let me keep the satchel. Just not what was inside it.
I walked back through those silent halls with empty hands and a strange feeling in my chest. Not quite anger. Not quite disappointment. Something in between. The same feeling you get when you've been in the presence of something truly remarkable and not being let anywhere close.
Theren saw my face when I emerged and didn't ask.
We camped a few miles from the gates. The others are already asleep. I'm sitting here trying to decide whether I feel robbed or honoured. Maybe both.
Two more diamonds. Where am I supposed to find two more pristine black diamonds?
I'll figure it out. I have to. Because whatever they're keeping in there, whatever knowledge they're guarding, I need to understand it.
Because I felt something in that chamber. Something old and patient and vast. And I think it felt me too.