Illidan creates a new Well atop Mount Hyjal

Full History

The Sundering had destroyed the original Well of Eternity and the empire that depended on it. Many night-elven survivors regarded that destruction as the awful consequence of magic pursued without restraint. Illidan Stormrage, however, had preserved waters from the first Well. In the uncertain aftermath of the war, he brought those waters to a lake on Mount Hyjal, where their power spread through the waters and formed a second Well of Eternity.

Illidan's action exposed the division between his own relationship to arcane magic and the direction chosen by the surviving night elves. Their recent experience had shown that a source of vast magical energy could attract the Burning Legion and provide a way into Azeroth. Illidan instead acted to preserve such power in a new location. Whatever value he placed upon the magic, the consequences for the wider world could not be separated from the disaster just endured.

The other night elves responded with alarm. Illidan was imprisoned for the act, and the new Well required a solution that would not simply repeat Azshara's empire. The planting of Nordrassil, the great World Tree, came to define Mount Hyjal and the guarded relationship between the night elves, the dragonflights, and the natural world. The lake did not become the center of a revived Highborne court.

The second Well remained important long after Illidan's imprisonment. During the Third War the Burning Legion again sought power on Mount Hyjal, and the night elves joined orcs and humans to stop Archimonde at the World Tree. Thus Illidan's decision linked the end of the War of the Ancients to one of Azeroth's later decisive battles. The act cannot be understood simply as the creation of another magical lake: it shaped the place where the world's defenders would next confront the Legion's greatest commander.