The forest changed.
It was no longer just silence — it was suspension.
As if Noctsylva itself were holding its breath, waiting for what would come… or fearing to hear it.
Tharion stood motionless, yet the air around him twisted as if bent by an invisible inferno.
Perched on his branch, Thalen felt his feathers bristle despite himself.
Tharion (voice deep, heavier than shadow):
— I never truly introduced myself… My name is Tharion Lucra?l. I was a hero.
A real one. The kind who did not retreat from monsters — nor from kings.
His breath turned into pale mist, though the air was not cold.
Something in him naturally froze everything around him.
The branches above them groaned.
The trees… were listening.
Tharion:
— I was the Champion of Aelvaron. The “Royal Ranger.” The only one capable of turning entire wars upside down. And one day… the king — the one everyone glorified — declared that I had become too dangerous. A “national threat.”
His own words.
A sharp crack echoed in the air, as if bark itself were splitting under emotion.
Thalen felt Tharion’s resonance tremble, ripple through the entire forest.
Tharion (bitter, broken voice):
— The king wanted me dead… and my companions… I believed they were my family. But they abandoned me. Some waited until my back was turned to strike. Others… looked away, unable to face what I was.
A dry, hollow laugh escaped him, like wind passing through a grave.
Tharion:
— When the bounty was announced… I saw the truth. Some wanted my head. Others trembled before me. And the rest… the rest were only waiting for the right moment to betray me — quietly, in the dark.
A memory burst through his mind, sharp as a blade. Even Thalen felt it, like a freezing cut in the air.
Companion (memory — the voice cracked, trembling, bleeding with hatred):
— Do you want to know what hurt the most, Tharion…?
Silence. Long. Heavy. Sticky.
Then a muffled laugh, breaking almost immediately.
— It’s not that we didn’t love you.
— It’s that we never tried.
The voice wavered, torn between anger and something uglier still: jealousy.
— You walked into a room… and everything became smaller.
Our achievements.
Our oaths.
Our lives.
A ragged breath.
— You shone without meaning to.
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Without asking permission.
And we… we needed you to stop.
Because as long as you were there, we had to remember what we were not.
The voice drew closer, almost pleading… then hardened brutally.
— Your glory suffocated us.
Your light burned our skin.
You called it hope…
We called it a sentence.
A pause. Lower.
— Your companion…
She smiled at you because you were strong.
She loved you because you were useful.
But when she truly looked at you… there was nothing.
Not you.
Only what you could give.
The voice broke for a fraction of a second — then returned, crueler.
— Your eyes…
Those eyes that saw too clearly.
That seemed to read our cowardice before we admitted it ourselves.
A near-desperate whisper:
— You scared us, Tharion.
Because you didn’t know how to stop.
Because you could have become something no one could control.
The anger finally exploded.
— SO YES!!!
WHEN THE KING SPOKE OF ERASING YOU…
NO ONE PROTESTED!!!
A dry breath. Final.
— BECAUSE IT WAS EASIER TO LOSE YOU
THAN TO LIVE IN YOUR SHADOW!!!
One last blow, whispered without mercy:
— YOU WERE NOT A HERO TO US!!!
YOU WERE THE LIVING REMINDER
OF EVERYTHING WE HAD ABANDONED!!!
The forest trembled.
Thalen felt a shock in his chest, as if Tharion’s pain were trying to enter him.
Tharion (low, torn voice):
— I ran. To go home. To find my family.
To hear someone tell me I was still human.
His breath shattered.
Then horror fell like a weapon.
Tharion:
— When I arrived… I found them.
The wind stopped. Literally.
No breath.
No movement.
Tharion:
— My parents… nailed to a stake like trophies. My brother… tied by the wrists, beaten until he no longer looked human. They laughed around him. They used him as… a warning.
As a joke.
Tharion (exploding, voice broken by rage and grief):
— HOW… HOW DARED THEY?!
— HOW DARED THEY TOUCH MY FAMILY?!
The scream did not come only from his throat.
It burst from his chest, his entrails, from everything he had held back too long.
His breath collapsed.
Tharion’s aura exploded.
Not like a wave.
Like a detonation.
The air violently contracted, then was thrown outward.
An invisible shock swept through the forest, tearing leaves from branches, bending ferns to the ground. Trunks groaned, wood cracking under a pressure it was never meant to endure.
The earth vibrated beneath them — not like a natural tremor, but as if the ground itself were retreating.
Stones rolled.
Dust rose in chaotic spirals.
Tharion trembled.
Not from weakness.
From excess.
His fists were clenched so tightly that blood seeped between his fingers. His teeth ground together, every muscle strained as if he were fighting something inside — something trying to escape.
Tharion (panting, torn voice):
— They… they were laughing…
A strangled laugh escaped him, without joy, without air.
— They were laughing while I was looking for them.
— While I believed… I was still too late.
The forest reacted.
The trees leaned slightly, as if bowed beneath a presence too heavy. The shadows stretched unnaturally, twisting around him. Nocturnal creatures, usually drawn to ancient powers, fled in silent panic — no cries, no sound, only instinctive scattering.
Even the wind refused to blow.
Tharion raised his head toward the black sky, his eyes burning.
Tharion (almost a sob strangled by anger):
— I wasn’t there…
— And they paid for it.
His voice finally broke.
— They made my family pay… to reach me.
The aura pulsed a second time. More unstable. More dangerous.
Not directed.
Not controlled.
Just real.
And in that chaos, a certainty imposed itself — heavy and irreversible:
This was not only anger.
It was pain that refused to die.
Thalen (thought, shaken):
— This is not a hero… this is a ruin. A man torn open down to the soul.
His calm is not noble.
It is a lid placed on a volcano.
Tharion finally lifted his head.
His eyes…
They were no longer eyes.
They were two luminous scars, two embers of a fire that refused to go out.
Tharion:
— When I returned to Aelvaron… everyone looked at me like a monster.
Some stepped back. Others whispered that I would bring the kingdom’s end if I remained alive.
The guards… my former brothers-in-arms… shouted that I was a traitor.
A public danger.
An abomination.
The last word echoed for a long time.
Like a hammer striking an open tomb.
And Thalen finally understood.
This was not the story of a fallen hero.
It was the story of a broken man — betrayed, mutilated by those he had saved. A man who no longer walked guided by hope…
but by a desperate, almost inhuman persistence.
Tharion Lucra?l did not move forward despite his ruins.
He moved forward with his ruins.
And that might be what made him the most dangerous being the forest had ever welcomed.
