Solas thread, this is all your fault. I'm so sorry.
He's glad of the conifer trees, still green in winter. They give him some welcome shelter from the elements and eyes alike, though those eyes belong to mere animals this far up the mountain. There are signs of a long-standing camp – Dalish if he had to guess, and the brief flashes and glimmers of memory in the Fade confirm it, but the clan has long since moved on.
He remembered the last clan he had seen – uncomprehending, devastated faces, the weight of a small urn cradled in his arms – and flinched away from the memory.
He leaves the old campsite behind, trudging along the path higher up the mountain. Another glimpse – a young mage, peering at a shard of ancient glass, motions birdlike – and he passes on. He feels the woods stirring as he passes and the trees thin, but a moment of focus, a mere thought of a snarl, is all it takes to drive any soul, physical or otherwise, back into hiding. He has no patience for hungry animals or haunted corpses, not now. Not today.
Revelling in the feel of the Fade against his skin, the ease with which he twisted it to his whims. Knowing it was the last time he would do so. Then the Veil fell, and it was like being yanked out of a warm bath into cold air. An assault on the senses – all comfort and warmth gone. The Fade distant, out of reach except for the mortal's gateway of dreams. It was a relief to sleep, to rest, to sink into the Fade and pretend it was still a reality in the waking world.
Now it would be again.
The shrine is overgrown, abandoned, the altar stained. No matter. This is the place. The Veil is thin enough for his and Mythal's combined power to not tear it, but pull it down entirely. A curtain pulled aside, rather than a garment rent to shreds.
Her clothes, ripped and filthy, her face bruised and darkening with soot. Her teeth flash white amid the black smoke, a grimace of fear and desperation. Her shoulders heave, but her hands remain bound around the post, the makeshift bonfire blazing around her.
His fingers tightened to white knots on his staff, pounded the butt of it against the ground as if the sensation, the sound would chase the memory away. It barely helps. He can hear her now, the scene playing out in the back of his mind if only he would look at it. He has seen it enough times already, played out again and again in the Fade, each time different. But each time, the screams are the same.
Sometimes she is ephemeral, ethereal, a flickering, glowing radiance among the flames. A soul beyond measure, consumed by those around her. Others she is twisted, vicious, her ears pronounced, her vallaslin returned to her and darker than it ever was in life. In this version she spits heresy, denouncing Andraste and the Maker, a betrayal of everything she once appeared to be.
Others, the ones that haunt him, show her as he saw her. Mortal, flawed, perfect because of it. Scared. In agony. Dying pleading to gods who did not, could not answer her.
And the one who could have didn't even know until days later. The wood beneath his hands creaks in warning. He transfers the tension from his hands to his teeth instead, clenching them until his jaw aches, resting his forehead against the staff as he tries to drive the pain, the guilt away. Just another ruin he'd made with his good intentions. Thedas was littered with them now, yet this one bit deeper.
It all started with that one, largest of mistakes. Largest until now. Until leaving her and neglecting to keep watch over her as frequently as he should have. Long enough for the truth of the Anchor's origin to emerge, or as much as was revealed in the Fade. Long enough for dissent to rise, for fanatics to take things into their own hands when the Chantry wouldn't condemn the heretic that misled them all.
She'd been vulnerable, returning from the Arlathvehn with only the Dalish lad they'd recruited from Hawen's clan for company. He'd been cut down defending her. The mob had eventually overwhelmed her, taken her daggers from her. Knocked her out cold to stop her from using the Anchor to escape into the Fade. She'd awoken tied to her pyre, unable to escape into a rift even if she could open one and leave the Fade safely.
He'd picked the story up in bits and pieces, hearing it first in a small village he'd been passing through. He hadn't believed it until he'd found the nearest Chantry and demanded the truth. Even then it had taken his return to Skyhold, to finding the whole fortress in mourning to truly believe it.
They'd recovered her ashes; Cullen had said, almost too quietly to be heard. Then there was a little urn in his hands and horror in his heart and too many faces around him. Pitying, grieving, accusing.
He'd left the same night. The Dalish didn't burn their dead. He brought her back to her people; let her ashes be buried the way she would have wanted.
Sundermount wasn't far from Wycome.
Each night on his months-long journey, he uncovered a new version of her, a new way she died, a new person tied to that post. They all hurt, the pain and grief intense enough to wake him.
He'd become used to not sleeping very often. What had been his refuge became a persistent, inescapable nightmare.
It would stop when the Fade became reality. When he could push it away with a mere thought. When his efforts to change the scene or turn away were no longer thwarted by his own fixation on her last moments.
He could feel them there, just at the edge of sensation. Roiling, waiting, pushing. They knew what was coming. The Veil was too thin here, intentions and whispers slipped through all too easily.
He steadied himself, took a breath. Like that moment millennia ago, he took a moment to simply feel, to remember the world the way it was, the way it never will be again. The Fade held back, magic stunted, those who would call themselves gods banished.
Her laughter, the scar that ran along the length of her jaw, the weight of her leaning against him as they read.
It is not like the Breach, a massive explosion that left grisly statues in its wake. It is a gasp, a plunge, a flood. Everything flushes green for a single moment, then the wave is gone, rolling over him, out over Thedas as fast as a thought.
The Fade is left in its wake.
There are wild cries, shouts of wordless victory and glee resounding around him. Freedom, celebrated, heard across the world. The gods are loose.
And soon they will correct all that has gone wrong in their empire.
Fen'harel takes a breath, pushes, and her screams stop. They have been ringing in his head since he first held the cold metal of her urn. Peace brings relief and resolution. The world turned on the one truly good thing in it, obliterated her because they couldn't stand the truth.
Now that truth would burn the world, and remake it in their image. Maybe one of them would be hers.