The elements didn't whisper in the Black Temple. They screamed.
Mei Lin felt it the moment she crossed the threshold, a wrongness in the air that made her fur stand on end and her totems hum with something between fury and fear. This place had been broken open by forces that didn't ask permission. Fel energy soaked the stone like old blood. The spirits here weren't sleeping. They were trapped.
Maxiona walked ahead, calm as still water in a place that reeked of chaos. The guild master moved through fel-touched corridors like she'd made peace with darkness a long time ago. Warlocks had a way of doing that. Mei Lin didn't understand it, but she respected it. There was a steadiness to Maxiona that had nothing to do with the Light and everything to do with knowing exactly what you were capable of.
Callisaw flanked the other side, fists wrapped and ready, moving with the kind of fluid precision that made monks look like they were dancing even when they were walking through a dead god's hallway. Every step measured. Every breath intentional.
Three of them. Walking into a place where an army had once fallen.
The Black Temple was enormous. Corridors that stretched into shadow. Chambers that echoed with old violence. Statues of things that should never have been carved watched them pass with empty eyes. Mei Lin planted totems at every junction, not for combat, just to hear the spirits breathe again in places where breathing had been forgotten.
They carved through everything in their path. No hesitation. No retreats. Maxiona's shadows ate the darkness alive. Callisaw's strikes landed like punctuation marks at the end of every sentence the temple tried to speak. And Mei Lin called the storm down through corridors that hadn't felt honest lightning in years.
It felt good. Better than good. The lightning sang in this place, like it had been waiting for someone to finally let it loose against the things that had corrupted the stone. Every arc crackled with a fury that wasn't just hers. The elements wanted this place clean.
They found Illidan Stormrage at the summit.
The Betrayer. The one who had consumed the Skull of Gul'dan and let it reshape him into something that wasn't quite elf, wasn't quite demon, wasn't quite anything the world knew how to name. He stood in the ruins of his own ambition, wings spread, blades drawn, radiating a heat that had nothing to do with fire and everything to do with ten thousand years of rage.
Maxiona didn't hesitate. She never did.
Callisaw was already moving.
And Mei Lin slammed her totems into the stone and let the storm answer.
The fight was a blur of fel-green fire and honest lightning. Illidan moved like something that had forgotten how to be tired, blade after blade, wing beats that cracked the air. But Maxiona's shadows held him. Callisaw's strikes found every gap. And the lightning, the lightning poured through Mei Lin like it had been saving itself for exactly this.
When Illidan fell, the silence that followed wasn't empty. It was relieved. The stone exhaled. The fel stain didn't vanish, places like this don't heal that easily, but something shifted. Something loosened. Like the temple had been holding its breath for years and finally remembered how to let go.
Mei Lin stood in the ruins of the summit and looked out over Shadowmoon Valley. The sky was wrong here. Everything about Outland was wrong. A world shattered by ambition, floating in pieces above nothing.
*She thought about grandmother.* About what she would say if she could see this place. Probably something about how even broken things still grow, if you give them time and water and someone willing to listen.
Mei Lin planted one last totem in the stone before she left. Not for combat. Not for healing. Just to let the spirits know that someone had come. Someone had listened. Someone had cleaned out the thing that had been hurting them.
"Think it'll hold?" Callisaw asked.
"The totem or the peace?"
"Either."
Mei Lin looked back at the Black Temple, dark and still and finally, finally quiet.
"For now," she said. "That's usually enough."
*— Mist*