He took her life, he took her beloved Quel’Thalas and Silvermoon, then he took her king before the final violation.

They had resisted, on Quel’Danas, resisted with all they had in them. When Anasterian appeared before Arthas, his fiery magics wreaked havoc on the death knight’s icy bridge, but Arthas recovered. He frowned, his eyes flashing, drew Frostmourne, and bore down upon the elven king.

Even as she hoped desperately that Anasterian would defeat Arthas, Sylvanas knew he would not. Three millennia rested upon those shoulders; the white hue of hair that fell almost to his feet was due to age, not dark magics. He had been a powerful fighter once, and was still a powerful mage, but to her new, spectral sight, there was a frailty about him she had not seen when she breathed. Still, he stood, his ancient weapon, Felo’melorn, “Flamestrike,” in one hand, a staff with a powerful, glittering crystal in the other.

Arthas struck, but Anasterian was no longer standing in front of the charging steed. Somehow, faster than Sylvanas could see, he was kneeling, swinging Felo’melorn in a clean horizontal strike across the horse’s forelegs, severing both of them. The horse shrieked and fell, its rider with it.

“Invincible!” Arthas cried, seeming stricken as the undead horse rolled and tried to get to its feet while missing its two forelegs. It seemed an odd battle cry to Sylvanas, considering Anasterian had just gained an advantage. But the face Arthas turned toward the elven king was full of naked rage and pain. He looked almost human now; a human male seeing something he loved in torment. He scrambled to his feet, glancing back distractedly at the horse, and for a wild moment Sylvanas thought maybe, just maybe—

The ancient elven weapon was no match for the runeblade, as Sylvanas knew it would not, could not be. It snapped as the blades clashed, the severed piece whirling away crazily as Anasterian fell, his soul ripped from him and consumed by the glowing Frostmourne, as had been so many others.

He sprawled on the ice, limp, blood pooling beneath him, white hair spread out like a shroud, while Arthas rushed to the undead horse and mended its severed legs, patting the bones while it pranced and nuzzled at him. And Sylvanas, although she knew it would harm those she still loved, could not carry the weight of the pain and anguish and sheer burning hatred of Arthas and all he had done. Her head fell back, her arms spreading as her mouth opened, and a cry, beautiful and terrible at once, was torn from an insubstantial throat.

She had cried out before, as he had tortured her. But that was only her own pain, her own despair. This was so much more. Torment, agony, yes, but more than that, a hatred so profound as to be almost pure. She heard other cries of pain mingling with hers, saw elves dropping to their knees clutching ears that began to bleed. Their voices and their spells were stopped, changed from words of magic to incoherent cries of raw grief and startled pain. Some of them fell, their armor shattering and breaking off of them in jagged shards; their very bones breaking beneath their flesh.

Even Arthas stared at her for a moment, his white brows drawn together in an appraising gesture. She wanted to stop. She wanted to silence herself, muffle this cry of destruction that only served he whom she hated so passionately. At last it wore down beneath her pain, and Sylvanas, banshee, fell sickly silent.

“What a fine weapon you are indeed,” Arthas murmured. “And mayhap you will be a double-edged sword. I will be watching you.”

The horrible army pressed on. Arthas reached the plateau. He reached it, and slew those who guarded the Sunwell, and forced her to participate in the slaughter. And then he visited the ultimate horror upon her people, marching up to the glorious pool of radiance that had sustained the quel’dorei for millennia. Beside it, waiting for him, stood a figure Sylvanas recognized—Dar’Khan Drathir.

So it had been he who had betrayed Quel’Thalas. He who, even more than Arthas, had the blood of thousands upon his well-manicured hands. Fury raged through her. She watched the glow she knew to be golden play upon Arthas’s features, softening them and lending them an artificial warmth. Then he upended the contents of an exquisitely crafted urn into the waters, and the radiance changed. It began to pulse and swirl, and inside the swirling center of the damaged magical glow—

—a shadow—

Even after all she had witnessed this dark day, even after what she had become, Sylvanas was stunned at what emerged from the befouled Sunwell, rising and lifting its arms to the skies. A skeleton, horned and grinning, its eye sockets burning with fire. Chains snaked around it and purple vestments fluttered with its movements.

“I am reborn, as promised! The Lich King has granted me eternal life!”

It had all been for this? To raise this single entity? All the slaughter, the torment, the terror; the unspeakably precious and vital Sunwell corrupted, a way of life that had lasted for thousands of years shattered—for this?

She stared sickly at the cackling lich, and the only thing that gave her even a hint of surcease from the agony was watching Dar’Khan, who had attempted to betray his master as he had betrayed his people, dying, as she had done, from Frostmourne’s keen edge.

The cold wind tousled Arthas’s white hair, caressed his face, and he smiled. It was good, to be again in the colder part of this world. The elven land, with its eternal early summer, heavy with the scents of blossoms and growth, had made him uneasy. It reminded him too much of the gardens of Dalaran, where he had spent so much time with Jaina; of the snapdragons of the Balnir farm. Better the wind, to scour him clean, and the coldness, to quell those memories. They no longer served him, but weakened him, and there was no room for weakness in the heart of Arthas Menethil.

He was, as ever, atop his loyal horse, Invincible. He had had a bad moment in Quel’Thalas, when that bastard king Anasterian had cowardly attacked an innocent steed rather than its rider, severing its legs in the same way that in life had caused Invincible’s death. The incident had catapulted Arthas back in time to those horrible moments, shaking him to the core and in the case of the battle with Anasterian, unleashing an icy rage that in the end had served him well. Before and behind him, his army marched through the snowy pass, untiring, unaffected by the cold. Somewhere in among their ghastly number floated a banshee. Arthas would let Sylvanas be, for the moment. He was more interested in Kel’Thuzad, who glided beside him almost serenely, if such a word could ever be applied to a lich. He was the one who had directed the Scourge to this remote, frozen place, and Arthas had until now not questioned. But the trek was getting boring, and he was curious. The prince felt a smile curve his lips.

“So,” he quipped, “you’re not upset about me killing you that one time?”

“Don’t be foolish,” the undead necromancer replied. “The Lich King told me how our encounter would end.”

That surprised Arthas. “The Lich King knew that I would kill you?” He frowned, glancing down at the blade that stretched across his lap. It was silent now, dormant. No whispers came from it, nor did the runes pulse with power.

“Of course,” Kel’Thuzad responded, a hint of superiority in his sepulchral voice. “He chose you to be his champion long before the Scourge even began.”

Arthas’s unease deepened. No one had asked him, or even told him about his destiny. But would he have embraced it, had he known? No, he decided. He did not like being manipulated, but he knew that he had had to be tempered if he was to be a formidable weapon. He had to go step by step to his fate, otherwise he would have rejected it. He would then still be with Jaina and Uther and his father would—