The Obsidian Peaks were a wound in the world. Up close, they were even more intimidating than they had been from a distance. The mountains were made of a black, volcanic glass that absorbed the pale light from the sky-crystal, creating a world of deep, impenetrable shadows and muted, lifeless colors. The silence was the most oppressive feature. It was a profound, heavy quiet, far different from the empty silence of the Grey Wastes. Here, the silence felt active, hostile. The glassy rock itself seemed to dampen all sound, swallowing the crunch of Kael's boots, the rustle of his own movements, leaving him feeling like he was moving through a pocket of dead air.
He felt the change in his own power, too. When he tried to hum, to feel out the familiar frequency of his Dissonance, it felt sluggish, muted. The air here, so devoid of natural resonance, seemed to resist his song. It was like trying to sing underwater. His greatest tool was weaker here, and the silence from the scar on his leg was a constant, unnerving reminder of his own diminished state.
He followed the glowing lines on Vex's resonant map. It led him away from the relative safety of the foothills and into the treacherous heart of the mountains. His destination was a pass marked on the map with a symbol of jagged, interlocking teeth: the Widow's Jaw.
The entrance to the pass was a narrow, winding canyon, a crack in the mountain's obsidian facade. As he entered, the walls rose steeply on either side, their smooth, black surfaces reflecting a distorted, elongated version of himself. High overhead, massive, dagger-like shards of obsidian hung precariously, fractured from the canyon walls by time and geological stress. They looked like the teeth in a colossal predator's mouth, waiting for a single, careless vibration to send them plunging down.
The path was treacherous. The ground was not solid rock, but a deep scree of sharp, loose obsidian fragments that shifted and slid under his boots with every step. A single misstep could send him tumbling down a steep incline or trigger a small avalanche of glassy, razor-sharp stones.
But the true danger of the Widow's Jaw was not the falling rock or the unstable ground. It was something invisible, something Kael could only perceive because of his unique, cursed nature. The pass was riddled with the "screaming veins" the miners in Barren had whispered about with such fear.
They were veins of a rare, highly unstable, and powerfully Dissonant crystal, embedded deep within the obsidian walls and floor. They were invisible to the naked eye, their chaotic energy masked by the deadening quality of the surrounding rock. But Kael, after a few tense, exploratory steps, could feel their grating, chaotic hum through the soles of his boots. They were like sonic landmines. To step on one would trigger a violent, explosive release of pure sonic energy—a localized "scream" that could shatter nearby rock, disorient a traveler into a fatal fall, or even directly attack the senses with a crippling blast of sound.
He realized with a jolt of cold fear that his eyes were useless here. The only way to navigate this path was to trust the one sense that made him an outcast. He had to close his eyes and listen.
His journey became a slow, torturous process, a blind man's walk through a minefield. He would take a few steps, then stop, close his eyes, and extend his senses, feeling for the tell-tale wrongness in the path ahead. The dissonant hum of the veins was a jarring, ugly frequency, a spike of pure chaos in the oppressive silence. He learned to feel them out, to map their invisible network in his mind, and to pick his way carefully around them.
The silence from his own scar was a constant source of primal anxiety. Was his Dissonant sense, his internal "detector," working at full capacity? Or had the blood price he paid to Vex dulled it just enough to be fatal? He had to trust it. He had no other choice.
He moved for what felt like hours, his body tense, his mind stretched to its breaking point by the sheer concentration required. The silence, the darkness, the constant threat of a misstep—it was a unique form of torture. He became so focused on the ground beneath his feet that he started to grow careless, his awareness of his surroundings narrowing to a small circle around his boots.
And the pass punished him for it.
Distracted by a strange, spiraling formation of obsidian on the canyon wall, a natural sculpture that seemed almost deliberate, he took a single, careless step without first checking the path.
He felt it an instant before it happened—a powerful spike of chaotic energy surging up through the sole of his boot. The ground beneath his foot erupted.
A piercing, high-frequency scream, louder and more violent than anything he could have imagined, assaulted his senses. It was a physical blow. His vision blurred, swimming with black spots. A searing pain shot through his teeth, as if they were about to shatter in his skull. The world seemed to tilt on its axis, and a wave of profound vertigo sent him stumbling sideways.
The sonic blast wasn't the only effect. The ground around the vein shuddered violently. A shower of sharp obsidian shards, dislodged from the canyon wall beside him, rained down. He heard them slicing through the air like deadly black hornets. Instinct took over. He threw himself to the ground, rolling, his pack taking the brunt of the stony shrapnel. He heard the sharp thwack of shards embedding themselves in the tough hide of his pack, inches from his head.
He lay there, face down in the sharp scree, his ears ringing, his head pounding. The scream from the vein faded, leaving a lingering, painful echo in his mind. He pushed himself up slowly, his body trembling. A few feet away, embedded in the ground where he had been standing, were a half-dozen obsidian daggers, each one long enough to have skewered him.
He looked at his boot. The thick sole had been partially shredded, the resonant blast having torn it apart. He was alive, but only just. He had survived the Jag-Wolf's rage, but had almost been killed by a single, mindless step. The peaks were a different kind of monster. They were not a test of his power or his combat skill, but of his pure, unwavering focus and control. And he had just failed. Shaken, humbled, and bleeding from a dozen small cuts, he got to his feet and continued his slow, blind walk through the jaws of the mountain.