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You have changed. You are no longer someone I recognize.
What happened to you, old friend? I remember still the days when you weren't so weary, when your back was proud and straight and your face was bright with contentment. Even when we lost the Well, there was hope about you--a grim, desperate hope, stained with the blood of every comrade we lost to the Scourge, but hope all the same, and it inspired the people you were eventually tasked with protecting and leading while our shattered kingdom was still rebuilding itself around us.
You used to be strong. You used to face the shadows with defiance and laughter. You used to look on the future with eyes that seemed to see far beyond the imminent struggles of our people until your gaze rested on the mighty rebirth we were all promised. They flocked to you, followed you because of it--we all of us did, even when the road turned to sacrifice and we were forced to break away from friends who had fought as bravely as the rest of us for the homeland you exiled them from. We trusted your strength. We believed in your vision. We fought for you because you ever seemed to fight for us.
But now?
That man doesn't stand before me, now. The man standing before me stands straight because he knows he must. He meets our eyes and holds his head high because he knows he will break if he does not. He barks orders like a trained hound because it is preferable to howling at his own imprisonment.
"I will do whatever it takes to protect Quel'Thalas and its people." That is not your voice. Those words are not your own, though they pour like a fetid river from the same mouth that once spat defiance against measures like those you are about to take. For a moment, you disappear from before my very eyes--and the man who stands in your place is bathed in the blood of elves who do not have to die, the tears of families that are already torn asunder.
"Another leader of the Sin'dorei once said something very similar to me." How can you hear the weariness, the sorrow in Rommath's voice and not understand what it means? Don't you realize what he's telling you?
The worst is that Rommath is right--you are not the first of our leaders to make such a bold proclamation. There are very few who believe you are capable of falling to madness and treachery... but then again, no one expected it of Kael'thas, either. If he can fall, who's to say that you cannot?
"We buried him on Quel'Danas."
A corpse. A corpse run through with sin'dorei blades, scorched by sin'dorei magic, buried by sin'dorei warriors... A name, a face, stricken from sin'dorei texts, from monuments, from songs. That is the fate I see before you now. I can already feel the stones in my hand--stones that I will place around and across your body when you are given the same nameless, dishonored burial we gave the prince. Can your far-seeing eye see that same gloomy twilight? Or has that, too, withered away to make room for the steely gaze you turn now upon me?
I know you can still see me, Lor'themar. I know you are still in there, somewhere, buried deep under this grotesque mask you've learned to wear so seamlessly. I know the heart of you is still good, whatever your mouth may say or your hands may bring into being. I will make you remember that day, I swear it by the Sun. But for now...
"What are the regent lord's orders?"