Twilight calmly observed the small transparent dome between her hooves. The purple petals of the flower were still shining softly in a quiet stillness, much more peaceful than when she had found it again.

Sombra had left her alone for a moment, sitting in one of the odd-looking armchairs (which she had to dust off with her magic) that she had found in a corner of the sprawling library, while he searched for the scrolls that contained the knowledge they both needed.

Not that she hadn't offered to help him at first, but Sombra had denied her proposal when he showed her the problem she couldn't get around right now. That knowledge was not in her language.

Twilight hadn't been surprised by this, she even understood why he decided to go alone. At least that left her the time to prepare a powerful translation spell, which somehow wouldn't consume too much of her magic. So he had urged her to do the good to keep her, and she had agreed.

So in those moments, Twilight just admired the flower while she waited for him.

"Why were you so elusive when all this time you were the answer?"

An answer that had been jealously guarded, even without her realizing it herself.

Twilight let out a sigh as she watched the faint glow of the silent lily. She pulled it a little closer to herself, feeling the warmth of its magic in a way that comforted her and made her smile unconsciously. Smile as her thoughts drift for a moment to a certain stallion.

"No, don't go that way," she thought as she pursed her lips in a grimace, though she let out another short sigh when she began to feel her face a bit hotter than normal.

But fortunately she did not spend too long in contradiction with her own mind.

"Ah, you are here," Sombra's deep voice echoed behind her. "I thought you had gone out there to explore, after all this place is quite big."

Twilight turned her head and tilted it slightly, watching as he walked calmly toward her while carrying a few scrolls wrapped in his magic. She blinked quickly at that and straightened her body in the same way, pushing away the thought she had just had while waiting for her heartbeat to normalize its rhythm.

After that, she got off her seat and followed him to one of the nearby circular tables that grew from the same floor.

"I've been thinking about it, but I decided to take a moment to rest while I waited for you," she gave him a small smile, then pointed to the scrolls with her hoof. "Were you able to find it?"

Sombra tilted his head slightly as he put down what he had brought on the table. He let out a short sigh, hoping that his search had not been in vain.

"That's what we're going to see now," he said and returned his gaze to the alicorn, seeing how she now brought the capsule where the flower was wrapped in her magic. "By the way, you haven't stopped looking at it since we came back from the cave. Does it have something special that I may not know about that you want to tell me?"

Twilight paused for a brief moment when she couldn't help but giggle. She was a bit amused that he had assumed she was analyzing it, though that really wasn't far from the truth.

"No, I was just wondering what role it's played all this time." She came up to him and put her front hooves on the table, slumping down on her rear. "Even before, because as I told you, this was what caused me to be able to activate the mirror portal in the first cave."

Sombra frowned thoughtfully after she said that. A short time ago he remembered an important aspect that had previously been overlooked.

"True, though you didn't do it consciously, as you told me before."

"No, I didn't..." Now it was Twilight's turn to look at him intriguedly. "But what exactly are you meaning by that?"

Sombra let out a short sigh to prepare himself in what he should say. He couldn't help it, he was revealing a part of his past that he would have preferred to forget in the first place. However, at that moment he didn't feel as bad as he thought.

"I mean there's only one fact: you really shouldn't have been able to count on its power." He hurriedly explained his comment after seeing the confused look she gave him, letting out a short sigh on the spot. "These types of flowers, and this one in particular, were sacred to the umbrums, because of that very ability to increase magic, any kind of magic. That is why they used them in all kinds of rituals or ceremonies, in the day to day, and much more importantly" He paused a little that caused Twilight to lean forward a bit to give him her full attention. "It was absolutely necessary to execute the spell that led them to this place."

Twilight didn't know how to define the surprise that those last words generated in her. She just pulled back again as her mind returned to those thoughts.

"Was it the key? For them too?" She couldn't help but gawk when she saw Sombra nod, but she immediately pulled herself together. "So how do we get here if I don't know that spell? I always believed that it was only the product of my own magic augmented by the flower and reacting with that of the portal." She put a hoof under her chin as she looked at him curiously. "Or maybe you were the one who did it?"

Sombra immediately denied.

"It wasn't me, it was actually you who did it all," He showed a slight smile when he saw the somewhat pensive face of the alicorn. "Do you still remember anything specific when that happened?"

"I..." Twilight looked down as she thought about it, feeling a bit uncomfortable since the situation of her first meeting with him was definitely not something she had wanted to remember or talk about. "I remember wanting Spike and me to get out of that situation as soon as possible, I really wanted it with all my might."

Suddenly Twilight opened her eyes even wider as her mind fell into the question of what that meant. She thought that if it really was like that, it would start to make a lot of sense.

"Can it be...?" She whispered slowly, looking in his direction when she saw him just nod in response. "That this influenced more than I could have expected at first?"

Sombra ended up smiling lightly when she came to that right conclusion. Although he couldn't help adding:

"There you have it, the magic of the flower reacted to your heart's desire and the feeling of protection you had for him, two essential keys," he finished explaining, then gestured with his hoof and continued. "You don't know the spell that allows you to consciously extract its potential, so that was the only real means by which you could achieve it."

Twilight calmly accepted that explanation, knowing that at last one of the mysteries that had been on her mind since they had ended up in this place had been solved.

"I understand..." she whispered again as her gaze inevitably shifted back to the object between her hooves.

However, after those seconds she couldn't help but stay quiet and dedicate herself to thinking about everything more deeply.

Sombra definitely noticed her attitude, he had already noticed it before, but this time he simply had to ask.

"What are you thinking about now?" He wanted to know as he frowned slightly, perhaps feeling a bit worried about it. "Has your question not been answered yet?"

"No, it's not quite like that," Twilight quickly denied at this, but she still couldn't help biting her lip a little. "Actually it did, it's just that..."

Now her mind had returned to the question she had asked herself at first, the one that had finally led her to that moment. She never imagined that a question as simple as that would provoke all this.

"I was wondering about everything I wanted to find out in the beginning, before all this happened, you know? She answered calmly, hoping that he understood. "I wanted to know why these flowers survive in the hostile climate of the Frozen North. Now I can see that it's because of the magic present in the environment, it absorbs it little by little and that allows it to have a natural resistance."

Twilight had realized all this because of him, the pony she had least expected to help her. She thought about it and let a small smile form at how things had changed.

"I'm sure that's why there was a whole field in that cave too," she said at last, speaking to herself in a loud voice. She looked back at him when another question came. "How is it possible that it got there?"

Sombra paused for a few seconds to think about it and give her an eventual answer.

"Most likely, the spores have dispersed in the wind, or the magic of the cave ended up attracting it in one way or another," he said simply and looked away at the object.

Twilight also looked in that direction.

"Yes, I think you might be right about that."

She was with that thought for a few more seconds, letting a comfortable silence spread between them. Until she brought up another issue that she had recently become aware of.

"That means that your people, that is, since you told me that it was sacred to them, did you also cultivate them? Or did they only use flowers that were wild?"

In a way, the stallion was not surprised that the alicorn's mind and curiosity ended up leading her down that path. So at this, he could only nod as he looked directly into those big purple eyes.

"They could do either, it didn't matter," he answered her questions as a quick look of slight nostalgia appeared inside his eyes. "The land that existed beyond the Empire and the Crystal Mountains was their territory, after all."

Twilight could feel it regardless like a quick spark that was meant to be extinguished as soon as it was ignited. For a moment, she wondered why. So driven by that fact, she tilted her head slightly and began to speak again in a calm voice.

"You once told me that this place existed even before Equestria was formed, before the tribes came together..." She looked him in the eye again, hoping her doubt would be answered. "They were here long before that, right?"

After all, she thought that if both the umbrums and this island had been related, then it was to be expected that they had also had the knowledge they needed to face those shadow beings that stalked them.

And Sombra also sensed that this was her thought. Fortunately, he wanted the same thing she did.

"Before the ponies came to the land that would become Equestria, that part had already been conquered by them," he replied as he nodded slowly, following the same path. "Obviously, this place had also been created before that happened. I don't know exactly how long, but I think it may have been more than five thousand years ago... Or maybe more."

None of them had ever been able to reveal to him the exact date of its existence, no matter how much he had insisted on finding it out. Not even in the scrolls that supposedly contained all their knowledge. Except, perhaps, for one thing.

"Only legends remain..." he murmured, staring at an unspecified point as he recalled a past too distant for any mortal.

Twilight caught that whisper and moved both ears in his direction.

"What legends are those?" She asked in a tone of increasing curiosity and intrigue.

Sombra turned his gaze to her immediately after hearing her, however he thought that he still couldn't satiate his desire to know. So he only ended up slightly raising the corners of his lips into a sly smile, directed only at her.

"Patience, first I want to show you another place where we will eventually arrive."

Twilight showed a quick flat look after hearing that, pouting impatiently that didn't go unnoticed by the stallion. Sombra couldn't help but let out a slight laugh when he noticed this, even though the alicorn began to do her job of collecting information from the scrolls he had brought.

But as she conjured the spell to do so, Twilight couldn't help but glance at him sideways as another issue on her mind clamored to be said. And that's what she did in the end.

"Okay..." she whispered and then continued. "But could you at least answer one thing?"

Sombra looked back in her direction, this time detailing the sparkle in her eyes and how it seemed to increase as she waited for an affirmative answer from him. Then he stood still for a moment, feeling something strange inside him as his gaze completely connected with hers.

However, Twilight didn't notice and just continued with what she was going to say.

"Don't you have an exact idea of how this place could have been formed?"

After Twilight said her question, a few brief seconds of silence formed between the two of them that felt a little longer to her than it actually was. Sombra closed his eyes, freed from his sudden, strange moment, and simply ended up slowly shaking his head, holding back the tired exhale he was about to let out.

"Not exactly," he replied in a deep voice, at the same time as he began to explain. "I think anypony knew that, and what the stories tell are things too vague to really take into account."

Sombra frowned as his mind brought up one more memory. He thought and was sure that it would probably be important to her.

"But I can tell you something," Twilight prepared her rising expectations when she heard him speak like that. Sombra turned his gaze to her and nodded slowly. "I can tell you that most umbrums believed that a greater and somewhat unknown dark force had created it out of nothing."

Twilight opened her eyes a bit more to that, finally finding an answer that perhaps entered into the possibilities, even though for obvious reasons it could not be confirmed properly. Although it could not be refuted either.

However, she also wanted to hear one more opinion. Maybe the stallion next to her could shed a bit more light on that mystery.

"And what do you think?" She asked calmly, wanting to hear what he had to say.

Sombra looked at her for a moment, tilting his head slightly as he looked away at the wall, as if it had something interesting to show.

"What do I think?" he murmured slowly. "I always believed that this place has existed forever, only that something or someone modified it to mold it to its liking," he turned to her to see her curious gaze and fixed on him completely, that encouraged him to continue. "And why do I think that? Because I discovered a long time ago that not all the magical energy that is concentrated in the center of this place comes from absorbing the magic of the environment. Somehow there are remnants of an ancient and powerful magic that I could notice, too precise to believe that something simply made it come out of nowhere."

Sombra's answer was enough to get Twilight thinking, relating everything those 'ponies' had told her, how this place had its own rules and how those creatures seemed to have come 'apparently' out of nowhere. It was just too weird.

But Sombra's words, even if it could not be confirmed, perhaps had more importance than it first appeared.

"Maybe it can be possible?" She asked as she left a hoof on her chin.

"Maybe". The stallion shrugged slightly off, picked up some scrolls with his magic and continued with the scan of his analysis. "Obviously we can't be sure of that."

After that, neither of them said anything else and they just continued with their work. Twilight had completely concentrated, and even though all the knowledge she had between her hooves excited her, she was still very aware of what they were looking for specifically. However, all that search seemed like a dead end.

"For all the ponies!" Twilight exclaimed in a loud complaint about everything in front of her, causing the stallion next to her to look at her with a slight raised eyebrow. She quickly turned in his direction. "Again... You said that was some kind of map?"

He simply nodded, but after a moment he let out another sigh as he validated the work that was also costing him. It seemed as if the letters in front of him mocked his effort to find it, even though he remembered seeing him in that section. But what if maybe he had made a mistake?

Sombra looked at the scrolls for a moment. If he had, that meant he had to go back and search the common section... But that was impossible!

Such dangerous knowledge could not be within reach of any pony's hoof.

However, just as he was about to get up to look for him in that place, Twilight's voice stopped him in his attempt. It sounded strange to his ears, as if a growing worry had seeped into it. And it was getting bigger and bigger.

"Eh... Sombra?"

He turned with marked intrigue in her direction.

"What?" Then his eyes hit the parchment that Twilight had in her hooves, the same one that contained a kind of diagram that was slowly beginning to blur. He knew what it was, and he opened his eyes much wider in a look of growing horror at it. "Oh no no no! Shit!"

The map was falling apart too quickly before their eyes, and they could only act without much thought. Twilight cast a spell that prevented its erasure for a few seconds while Sombra took a blank scroll for her to transmit with another spell the partial copy of that knowledge.

The pink magic sparkled and crackled with unleashed power as it did so. A second later the previously blank scroll suddenly rolled up under their noses, the old one simply vanished.

And while that was happening, both ponies could only look at each other with a frown, betraying the growing concern they were beginning to feel. They really hoped that all that journey and all that search had not been in vain.

"Do you think that...?" Twilight gasped wearily as she looked at him, asking in her eyes what she already feared.

"That's what we're going to see right now," Sombra replied, only a bit less excited than Twilight was when he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

They both swallowed slowly and completely opened the parchment where the newly made copy was supposed to be in a hurry. Before them the contours of what appeared to be a map were gradually shown.

The two let out a sigh of relief at this, though then Twilight showed a slight confused look when she didn't see any points marking their target. Sombra took it upon himself to correct this with a small spell that required his dark magic, and soon a dot glowing black was visible almost in the center of the map.

Twilight then thought that such security about all that could not be mere coincidence.

"All this knowledge..." she murmured as she shifted her gaze across the scrolls. "All this... Did they have to keep it safe? Because of those things?"

The answer to his question might have been too obvious, but Sombra still allowed himself to give a slight nod.

"Neither of them, more than rivals, both species were enemies by nature," his gaze became dark and so burlesque for a moment. "A bit ironic since both arose from the same essence, despite the fact that their origins were very different."

His expression began to become nostalgic, almost as if he was remembering something from a long time ago that maybe it was better to leave it that way.

"And yet, in the past they formed a very strange kind of balance, almost like..." His mind suddenly focused and he looked back at Twilight, interrupting whatever he was going to say. "But with all this that you have discovered, you must already deduce that they also dwelt here. After all, this place, this island, was the refuge of my species."

Refuge.

Twilight remembered that word of a memory that already felt far away, as if it had happened in another instant or on another plane that she had no idea about, even though the time from her visit to the cave to the present day wasn't really much.

She certainly couldn't help but frown when she realized something that wasn't quite right.

"What do you mean by that exactly? They were taking refuge from what?" She leaned forward a little as she asked her question. "That is, why they came here if those creatures were also found."

Sombra didn't answer at first, he took a few more seconds to process her question. But then he simply shrugged his shoulders.

"They were safe here, apparently," he glanced sideways. "And they also stayed away from the crystal ponies."

Twilight couldn't help but frown after he said that. She wondered what the crystal ponies had to do with all this.

"What do you mean?"

A few seconds of silence formed between them as Twilight waited. Sombra didn't make her wait too long.

"The story is sometimes not as they tell it... and with them it seemed to be no different." His gaze became slightly dark, enough for her not to notice. "Tell me, doesn't it really seem strange to you that there doesn't seem to be any kind of knowledge about umbrums or about this place?"

Twilight nodded this time and in her mind she couldn't deny that it all had a very strange aura around it. As if no one was worthy of deciphering the mystery that lay behind it all.

"It's simple," Sombra continued, "they both hated each other."

In the stillness of the bright walls of the place, they both changed their position. Now it was Twilight who listened quietly as Sombra continued to say something that must have been important, if it weren't for the fact that his monotonous tone of voice told it as if it were a simple piece of information kept in some lost history book.

"I never knew exactly why, they never told me, but I do know that the tensions between the habitants of the Empire and the village were escalating more and more... Until one day the inevitable happened." His countenance didn't change, not even when he turned to her. "The umbrums were not blameless, but even they did not deserve to be razed to the ground of their entire people. Foals, mares, stallions, old ponies... Only a fraction survived."

The implications of what he was saying gave Twilight everything she needed to begin to understand him. And yet, he still had a lot to say.

"The crystal lily fields were also razed during the attack, before there was not a single umbrum left on the island. The few who were here had left as soon as it happened... but they had no idea that when they arrived they would not find anything. They couldn't even go back", he said with a slight frown, this time without looking at her. "That was the exact moment in which their fate was sealed."

Twilight at that moment didn't know how to feel, about everything and about him, but she definitely felt something start to tighten inside her chest at the memory of everything he was telling her.

Sombra, oblivious to that fact, continued to speak this time in a tone of slight mockery that seeped into his voice.

"But it couldn't stay like that, obviously." His gaze darkened even more, however, what made her shudder was the sudden coldness she could hear in his voice. "The leader decided to seek revenge for it."

Twilight could not have imagined what was going to happen next. And yet, it wasn't entirely unexpected either.

"In a way I was... chosen, sent for that." His expression became a bit nostalgic this time, even though he didn't let go of the hardness that could be seen inside his eyes. "Me, a foal with no parents or memories that the Empire's guards had found in the middle of a fierce storm."

Sombra glanced at Twilight for a moment, fleetingly detailing the drooping expression of her gaze, her ears lowered, and her slightly furrowed brow. He looked away quickly just so he didn't see her that way, then he continued.

"From that moment on, my life in the orphanage there would not be easy, but I knew it never would be," his voice sounded abnormally serious, as if he didn't really care that what he was telling had been part of his life. "It wasn't easy to be the only different pony among hundreds of crystal ponies who aren't afraid to intimidate you just for being one, especially if you were the only pony who had to count on yourself."

Twilight's gaze fell again, revealing the sadness that had crept slowly inside her. What could she say in the face of all that?

"I could only count on the help of a single pony who accepted me, but in the end that didn't matter because she ended up failing me too," he continued with a distant, almost reluctant look, while he was still oblivious to the feeling of the mare next to him. "At that time I never knew why the crystal fairs caused me the greatest pain, as if they wanted to tear my soul apart. I thought that perhaps it was because of that vision that I had had the misfortune to see in the Crystal Heart."

Twilight looked up again, slowly. Then she asked cautiously.

"What vision?"

Sombra looked at her for a moment, realizing now the way she was looking at him, and that's why he let out a sigh. He really felt so tired.

"My destiny," he replied simply. "The monster I was going to become in the future."

Several seconds of a new silence settled between the two after the weight of those words fell like a heavy and ominous blanket. However, it was quickly broken as Sombra continued with a frown.

"I was able to confirm all that years later, the day I ran from that place without looking back, when I found out that the only pony who had been important in my life was leaving me to go study with the princesses." He went on quietly, telling a story he had kept inside him for more than a thousand years. "I knew that she was fulfilling her destiny, but I could never imagine that mine, in the end, would end up finding me."

His gaze reconnected with those big purple eyes that looked at him with a feeling that made him not want to push it away, because it was more comforting than he could have imagined. However, he forced himself to do so.

"It was while I was in the middle of the frozen tundra when they encountered me for the first time."

Then, Twilight was able to fit together the missing pieces of that puzzle. Her gaze went from surprise, then to understanding, and finally to the sorrowful feeling that was seen within her when she realized it.

"Did they tell you everything...?"

Sombra simply nodded to him.

"Yes, they had revealed to me the truth of what I was, the reason why the Crystal Heart harmed me, the reason the crystal ponies rejected my existence, the dark magic that was within me," he replied in a growl as his mind recoiled into that memory. "They said that it was my duty solely and exclusively to avenge the death of all who fell, to avenge them all, and to crush those feeble crystal ponies under my hooves."

Sombra's gaze darkened again as he stared at Twilight, causing a slight chill to run through her immediately.

"And you know what? I had gladly accepted that fate, because in the end it turned out that the 'princess' knew it all along." Sombra looked away and growled, showing his fangs unconsciously as the pent-up anger of it all resurfaced once more inside him. "She had hidden it from me, because she hoped that I would not go down that path."

But he was fully aware that it hadn't been because of that.

"I know that she was just waiting for the exact moment for the heart to do its work with me, after all that's what it was created for," he replied angrily as the memories of that pain came to light. "Like a weapon against my kind."

Sombra looked down again as the harsh reality of it all hit him. He didn't want to meet Twilight's gaze. At that moment he did not want that sad look she had for him. He just didn't want to see her that way.

"And yet, in spite of everything, I can't help but wonder now if it was really worth it," he spoke in a low, tired voice, as if nothing else did. "Everything I did... Where did it end up leading them?"

He knew it, discovering that his efforts had been in vain. Realizing that he had been so consumed by revenge and hatred to realize what was really going on around him.

Then he let out a long, exhausted sigh.

"In the end, none of them could be saved."

Even if she had had all the words in the world available, even then Twilight would not have known what to say at that moment because of all that. All that pain that he had kept for so long, mixed with the anger that was also kept inside him. All that to discover that this pony was much more than what they had always told her.

Twilight swallowed, pulling a hoof toward him.

"I... I don't know what to say."

Sombra looked at her again. The tired expression of his crimson eyes connected with that purple that made him feel something strange inside him. In a way, he could feel the same way she felt. The compassion that was reflected within her.

"You don't need to say anything," he denied slowly, without completely rejecting that feeling. "This is my burden after all."

"You shouldn't have to carry all that alone, but I wish I could do something more, too," Twilight whispered, showing her desire to give her solidarity regardless.

Sombra nodded slowly at this. After all, he didn't want to see her in such a downward way.

"I think that by listening to me you have already done more than I deserve."

However, she really wished she could do more than just that. That being somepony who could only listen wasn't enough.

So after thinking about it for a second, Twilight got up and moved a bit closer until she was in front of him. Her gaze softened, and an instant later, she cracked a small smile and leaned against him, wrapping her hooves around his side as she leaned back on his shoulder and let her wing cover him, adding a part to her embrace.

Sombra let her do it, after all the sigh he ended up letting out was a pleasant relief for all the warmth he suddenly felt inside. It was enough to calm the storm that had broken out for an instant.

"Even if I don't agree with what you've done, that doesn't mean I can't understand. The fact that you said all this tells me a lot about what you may have really questioned," Twilight whispered, looking up into his. "I know that you are much more than what you showed at the beginning."

Sombra saw her bright eyes and realized that she truly believed it. He, on the other hoof, was a different story.

"Are you really sure about that?" He denied for a moment after closing his eyes, leaning against the table. "It's impossible that I could have changed after everything I did."

Twilight parted for a moment while frowning lightly. She only left her wing, unconsciously stroking the stallion's gray coat with her feathers.

"Don't say that, I think every pony or creature has the right to a second chance to redeem their mistakes, to be someone new. You just have to want to be it inside, for yourself." She put a hoof on her chest and smiled when he looked at her sideways again. "Besides, you've already shown me what you're capable of when you set your mind to it."

Perhaps her words were intended to be encouraging, but for Sombra it ended up being something more than that. Only he had yet to fully realize what it really meant. But right at that moment, he didn't want to get into those questions.

"I can't help it, I don't even know if I really regret everything I did," he let out one last exhale while resting a hoof on his forehead. "My mind is too confused a mess right now."

Twilight gave another small smile and nodded regardless. She could understand that it must not be easy for him to question everything that was previously clear in his head. But she was also ready to show him her support in all that that entailed.

"Well, maybe you just need a little more time to clear it up, don't you think?" She said with a calm look, reflecting that same feeling inside.

And it was because of all that, her calm smile, her soft voice, and the gentle look on her face, that had finally caused something to creep into that impenetrable shield he had put around him. Sombra thought he didn't really need it, or so he had thought earlier to try to convince himself of that.

However, Twilight knew that something inside him was beginning to change. Or perhaps it had already changed. For now, she was sure she could continue to believe in it.

Author's Note

Thanks for read.

This is the last chapter I've written so far, so for now there won't be any more for some time. I hope I don't linger too long on that.