A Voice in the Dark

Quest Giver: Auto-accepted after interacting with the Pulsing Crystal during A Short Fuse

Objective: Investigate the nearby voice in Naz’anak: The Forgotten Depths. Find and speak with Matthias Lehner.

Quick Facts

• Level: 80
• Location: Naz’anak: The Forgotten Depths, beneath Icecrown Citadel [53, 86]
• Chain Position: 5th quest in the Icecrown Citadel/Matthias Lehner chain
• Leads To: Time to Hide

Walkthrough

The Revelation

• After touching the Pulsing Crystal in the previous quest, the quest description reveals what you actually touched: “The object is not a crystal at all, but some form of organ, encased in ice.” Your hand reels in horrible pain, and you feel a phantom wound, as if cut, though there is no visible injury.
• As you collect yourself, you hear a young boy’s voice nearby: “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

Finding Matthias Lehner

• Matthias Lehner is a ghostly, spectral child standing near the edge of the underground lake, close to where you interacted with the crystal. He is visible only to you because of your contact with the organ.
• Speak with him to complete the quest.

Matthias’s Dialogue

• Matthias delivers his first lines of lore: “I saw him get rid of it, you know? He threw it all the way down here. Said he wouldn’t need it anymore. Said it made him weak.”
• The whisper arrives the instant the quest begins, before you have seen anyone: “You shouldn’t have done that! He’s not going to like it.” Only then do you find him.
• These lines establish that “he” (the Lich King, never named directly by Matthias) deliberately discarded the organ, and that by touching it, you have drawn his attention.

Efficiency Tips

• This is a talk-to-NPC quest. Matthias is steps away from the Pulsing Crystal. Total time: under 30 seconds.
• You are still underwater or at the water’s edge during this interaction. Keep an eye on your breath bar if you are submerged. Use underwater breathing abilities or consumables if needed.
• The follow-up quest, Time to Hide, is available immediately from Matthias.

Lore & Secrets

First Meeting with Matthias Lehner

This is one of WotLK’s most important lore moments. Matthias Lehner, whose name is an anagram of Arthas Menethil, is a ghostly child who represents the last remnant of Arthas’s humanity.

He appears as a boy because he embodies the innocent child Arthas once was, before Frostmourne, before Stratholme, before the Frozen Throne.

The “organ encased in ice” is Arthas’s literal heart, which he cut from his own body after defeating Illidan Stormrage and ascending to the Frozen Throne. He discarded it here in Naz’anak because he believed having a human heart made him weak. By touching it, you established a mystical connection to whatever humanity Arthas once had, and that connection is what summons Matthias to you.

Matthias never refers to the Lich King by name throughout the entire chain. He only says “he” or “the prince,” speaking from the perspective of a frightened child who watched his own identity be destroyed.

He got out of the game. Matthias Lehner appears in the Warcraft Trading Card Game, which is a rare thing for an NPC with few lines and no combat.

The Novel Connection

In Christie Golden’s novel Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, an unnamed blond-haired boy exists within Arthas’s mind, urging him to resist Ner’zhul’s influence. This boy was not originally written as Matthias Lehner. A quest designer independently created Matthias based on a similar concept, and the two characters are generally understood to be the same figure despite being created without coordination between the novel team and the quest team.

In the short story Edge of Night, when Sylvanas Windrunner dies and glimpses the afterlife, she sees Arthas as a tormented little blond boy in the Maw, further reinforcing Matthias’s identity as Arthas’s soul fragment.

What Follows

The chain continues with Time to Hide (Matthias warns you to escape before the Lich King finds you), Return to the Surface (portal back to Thassarian), and then branches into the Matthias Lehner vision quests later in the Icecrown zone progression.

These visions include witnessing Arthas kill his own soldiers, the raising of Sindragosa, and the duel between Arthas and Illidan, before culminating in Tirion’s Gambit at the Cathedral of Darkness.

Explore Icecrown’s hidden easter eggs, lore mysteries, and connections across Warcraft history in Vikstone’s Icecrown Chronicles, along with the complete quest storyline.