it is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves
What he does remember is the last time he saw his sweet, earth drenched Vineine. Before the mists came, softly stealing everything with silent fingers, there had been hope that one day she would wander back to them, to him. But now, even as new lands have been uncovered, he knows the Jungle is gone, and with it, his Vineine (the one that was never his at all).
It's only fitting that Beqanna rips his children from him as well. How his heart bleeds out without the certainty of seeing them again. How the guilt pulverizes his lungs until he can do nothing but gasp hopelessly, silently, into this wretched new Beqanna.
She would have seen such beauty. She always had, even in the harshest of elements. He had loved that about her. Fiero can't bear to search for that beauty now. He hates it here, and he blames her, though she did not bring the mists. She did not take Fang or Longear away from him as she had Trystane. No matter how she embodied mother earth and all her wild power, Vineine did not do this.
He could have lived completely ignorant to her aching gravity if he had not met his son that day in the Meadow with Magnus - if he had not approached her when he saw her in the dappled forest light in the days that followed. He should have been mad at her then, and the pain he feels now would be nothing. He should have hated instead of loved, and he could have died lonely, but without knowing the difference.
He looks into the hallowed wilderness, new and unmarred by old wars, and he speaks to her, though she is gone.
“All is lost, my love.”