"Oh... I see now... They’re going to remove the core," he muttered, his tone darkening with each word. His heartbeat slowed, heavy and steady, like a war drum in the distance. "Will this mory show what they did with it? If they didn’t destroy it... if they sealed it away instead... then by theory—" His lips curled into a slow, dangerous smile. "I could recover it."
The wind rustled through the trees, unsettling the silence, stirring the shadows as if the mory itself recoiled at the idea. But Sylvaris remained still, golden eyes gleaming with newfound hunger.
"The power it holds... it’s extraordinary." And now he wanted it back. "If I do... then this world won’t be able to stop . That power rivals even the Demon Lord," he said, the words slipping from his mouth like prophecy, like destiny wrapped in fire. He inhaled deeply, eyes fixed on the scene, "And if I hold it in my palm... heh... no woman will escape my grasp and desires, no man will stand in my way, and no creature will ever dare make rules for again. I’ll be the king of this world. And that power... it will bring to my goal."
There was a glint in his eyes now—not rage, not ambition, but sothing colder. Unforgiving. The kind of look that didn’t just promise vengeance, but declared it already done. It was the look of a man who would betray anyone, kill anyone, sacrifice anyone, so long as the end justified his vision. That was Sylvaris. That was Ryan—the one who had already hated his old world long before death ever touched him.
And now, this world wasn’t a second chance. No... It was a kingdom waiting to be claid. Everything in it had been built for him, whether the world knew it or not.
And he knew it... He was the man who would be king.
Or so the author thinks.
But ?
I’m just the narrator. And in my opinion, he’s a silly man-child with a villain complex. Will he rise and conquer? Or will he throw a tantrum and burn everything down the mont it doesn’t go his way? Perhaps he’ll wear the crown. Or perhaps he’ll shatter it with his own hands, alone, drunk on power and regret. Either way, one thing is certain. The world will rember him as the villain of this tale.
But of course... every story needs a hero. And you, dear reader, might already be wondering—who will rise to challenge Sylvaris? Who will be foolish or brave enough to try and save the world from the hands that crave to own it? Heh... you’ll find out soon enough.
But before the Author fires for leaking spoilers, let’s get back to the story.
"Let’s extract it, that way we can destroy the core inside him, and perhaps... perhaps my son can still be saved," Arathor said, voice smooth and composed, draped in that practiced nobility he always wore when trying to justify the unjustifiable.
But Sylvaris, watching from the sidelines of mory with arms folded across his chest and his golden eyes unreadable, didn’t believe a single fucking word spilling from that man’s mouth, because if Arathor truly thought his son was beyond salvation, if he truly believed the child was already lost, then he would’ve ended it there and then—swift, rciless, and clean, no hesitation, no theater, no hollow monologues dressed as rcy, but instead, he played at politics, wrapping fear in velvet lies and calling it fatherhood, hoping to mask strategy as compassion.
"Heh... could it be," Sylvaris murmured under his breath, the crooked grin that curled across his lips darker than amusent, "that the great Arathor Elyndor was scared of a baby? Pfft... hahaha."
He laughed then, not with joy, not with the kind of sound that lightens a soul, but with that deep, guttural bitterness that only a man forged through betrayal and fire could ever produce, the kind of laughter that had long outgrown any warmth and turned instead into a blade, dulled by overuse but still sharp enough to cut through every illusion, and he didn’t just laugh at Arathor, he laughed at all of them, every coward, every whispering snake standing among those trees pretending this was salvation.
"And how do you want to do that, huh?" Aureve’s voice broke through the rising tension, sharp and cutting, edged with that unfiltered fire she used to carry like a shield. "Look at that little demon. The mont any of us get close, he’ll tear us to pieces like that poor... bear... or whatever’s left of it—shit, I might puke..."
She stood off to the side, arms folded, posture defensive, her tongue still sharp even if her stance betrayed a sliver of fear, and Sylvaris narrowed his eyes on her younger self, studying the tilt of her chin, the stubborn flare in her gaze, the way she carried herself back then like soone who hadn’t yet learned how much regret the future would demand from her.
She was brash, arrogant, loud—and so different from the Aureve who now moaned beneath him in silken sheets, the one who knew how to ride with grace, how to beg with pride, how to scream his na like it was a ritual sacrifice, and though he could still see the shadow of that girl in the woman she’d beco, he felt no desire for vengeance, no need to punish her for sothing buried so far beneath the weight of ti it no longer mattered, not now, not when there was soone else to bla for all of it.
Because there was only one man at the center of this sickness.
His father.
"He’s my child... if any of you even dare to harm him, I... I—!" His mother’s voice cracked as she stepped forward, her tears falling freely down her face, her hands trembling though she made no move to bridge the distance between herself and the boy she once cradled, and though her voice quivered with sothing real—perhaps pain, perhaps fear, perhaps even love—Sylvaris saw the truth beneath it, saw that flicker of guilt she could never quite hide, and it made everything worse, not better, because what hurt more than hate was love that still allowed the blade to fall.
He didn’t know which was more pitiful: the mother who claid to care and still let this happen, or the possibility that she had once loved him and still stood back as they dragged him toward mutilation, and maybe it would have been kinder if she had just given the order to kill him, if she had taken the knife herself and ended him swiftly, cleanly, instead of allowing him to be stripped and broken beneath the false promise of rcy, tortured beneath the polished lie of healing.
"Pathetic," ca a low, cold voice from behind them, the sound layered in venom and age, and though it wasn’t shouted, it carried like a curse carved in steel, laced with decades of disappointnt and sharpened by the weight of a man who had seen far too much rot in the world he once believed in. "All of you... are fucking pathetic."
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