I woke with a gentle sway, and for a mont, I thought I was still trapped in that impossible dream. The movent was soft, almost maternal, cradling my body with a steady rhythm, as if I were lying in a hammock woven from the wind.
But it wasn’t the wind... it was the silent, imposing trot of a Sleipnir.
The warm coat beneath my back, the sll of wet earth and iron, the deep, steady beat of hooves striking the ground... everything told I had returned to the real world.
Except the sky disagreed.
The sun was rising.
The sky, painted in orange and gold, looked as though it had just been brushed by divine hands. Thin clouds glowed coral, and the breeze carried a crisp, clear chill... as if ti itself had restarted.
This... made no sense.
I rembered the fight.
I rembered the forest shattering beneath the fists of that wild ape. The blood, the sll of crushed leaves, and the golden light that revealed the bamboo. Yes, the golden bamboo.
It was still strapped to my back. Its touch felt warr than the air around .
Then the two panthers. Rezon and Shaeleg—mories and events swirling back into my mind like a storm.
And then...
The macaw.
The ancestral macaw.
That being... sothing beyond normal, tangible comprehension.
Its words still pulsed within my soul, echoes unsure whether to die out or beco mory.
After that...
Nothing.
Only darkness.
But now, now the sun was rising again.
The sa light I had seen hours ago. Or what felt like hours in my perception. The sa color, the sa angle on the horizon.
It was as if ti had folded in on itself.
As if we were in the sa mont, but on another line.
I slowly turned my head.
Silas was beside , mounted on another Sleipnir, his hands steady on the reins, his face calm. His purple cloak rippled in the wind, and the bandages around his eyes glimred like silver in the sunlight.
"Good morning, sleepyhead," he said with a faint smile.
"You missed a beautiful sunrise... and a good tea."
I took a while to respond. My throat was dry.
But when I managed:
"Where... where are we?"
"Returning to the capital," he said, turning his face toward . "Chaos awaits us. We’re leaving the valley of the floating waterfalls and going back to what you’d call ordinary life."
"But... what happened to ?"
"Ah," he murmured, almost tenderly.
"Your body simply collapsed. Exhaustion. After the morning hunt, the clash, the contact with AR... all of that, combined with the pressure of power levels around you... it was inevitable. Don’t bla yourself. It’s more common than you think."
I nodded slowly, letting silence linger a while longer.
The lush green forests were now behind us. The ground had turned rocky and cold again, the dry soil cracking slightly beneath the weight of the creatures we rode. Vegetation thinned, and the breeze grew sharper. We were climbing once more.
The scenery was beautiful. Cold, imposing, silent.
"How long was I asleep?"
"A whole day," Silas answered naturally.
"We’ve been riding since then."
I adjusted myself on the Sleipnir’s back, my joints still protesting slightly. The information surprised , even more so in the calm way he said it.
"A day? And you didn’t stop even once?"
Silas just shrugged.
I frowned, turning my face toward him.
"Then why the hell didn’t we do that on the way here? Would’ve saved us ti!"
He chuckled.
"Because I didn’t feel like it."
Just like that.
"Miserable old man."
"I heard that."
"Good. It was ant to be heard."
Silence.
The cold wind once again took over the morning’s soundtrack. There was no lush vegetation anymore, nor the warm mist of the living forest. We were surrounded by uneven rocks, and the thin layer of snow crunching beneath the Sleipnirs’ hooves. The sky, now clearer, opened above us like a celestial mirror, dotted with small brushstrokes of cloud.
The horizon shimred under a veil of vapor, and the newborn sun peeked at the world through the mountains.
I took a deep breath, the icy air filling my lungs.
"Silas..." I called after so ti. "How do you know those three beasts?"
He didn’t answer right away.
He lifted his face, as if searching for a mory among the layers of the sky. The wind blew harder, and for a mont, his expression changed. His wrinkled skin seed younger, pulled back by a distant ti.
He sighed. Long. Deep.
"Boy," he said at last, voice low, "this world is one where the strong devour the weak."
He spoke without anger, without judgnt. Just as soone describing the weather.
"And that holds even truer for the descendants of the twelve families of the demonic empire."
I stayed silent.
"What do you think happens," he continued, "when one of those descendants is born... with so flaw? Blind, for example?" he said, pointing at his bandaged eyes.
I swallowed hard.
"These families shape their heirs from their very first steps. Training, doctrine, mindset. You know exactly how it is. You were born into that mold. You know how routine was imposed. You know how the weight of expectation doesn’t allow failure."
I nodded, staring ahead.
The mories of the old Glenn ca like burning embers. Waking before the sun.
Bloody fists in training. Hours without rest. A father’s sharp words, scornful glances, a mother’s silence. Nothing outside the path of power mattered. Friends, childhood, affection... all were unnecessary. All were weakness.
And even now, with that man buried inside , his scars still echoed in the body and soul that were now mine.
"Yes," I answered softly.
Silas nodded, as if he had expected it.
"It’s the sa everywhere in Atlas. In every race. In every family that intends to keep the bloodline strong."
The wind blew again, softer now, spinning tiny ice crystals through the air.
The sun glinted on the wet stones, painting the scenery in silver hues.
"And so," he said, his voice carrying a new weight, "I lived the small tale of bullying... and the cold love of those closest to ."
He said nothing more.
But the way he said it — as if the wind itself paused for a mont to listen — made it clear that what ca next was not just a story. It was one of the scars he carried.
Silas let the silence stretch for a few more steps of the Sleipnir. The old man seed to choose his words as if they were fragile porcelain pieces, and at the sa ti, it didn’t feel like he was speaking only to , but also to the winds and to the mories that bore him.
"A blind boy..." he began in a low voice, "who couldn’t learn martial arts because he was... blind."
I turned my eyes toward him.
"Nor cultivation. No technique. No school would take . Not even the most decadent ones."
His tone was light, yet there was a latent tension there, a bitterness too well hidden to go unnoticed.
"Now imagine awakening at nearly twenty-five."
The snow under the Sleipnir’s hooves crackled as if nature itself were listening to that story in reverence.
"I thought awakening would bring happiness. That it would solve all my problems. And, maybe, by so divine miracle, that my sight would return..."
A cold breeze descended from the ridges above, and the silhouette of the mountains cast long shadows across the rocky trail.
"But life, Glenn... life is not kind enough for such things to happen."
The tone cut sharp, like a honed blade.
"I beca just another joke to the Ferrox Umbra.
My brothers claid every right to what was once said to be mine by birth. And my parents... well, they never told directly that they were disappointed."
He paused. I could see the muscle in his jaw tightening.
"But you could see it. In their eyes. In the way they turned their gaze away whenever I entered the room. As if the mistake of nature that had appeared among them reminded them every day of a failure they didn’t dare na."
I stayed silent.
It was impossible not to feel the weight in Silas’s voice. And, sohow, I felt as though I were intruding on a sacred place, a hidden chamber of the soul of soone who rarely let anyone in.
He let out a humorless laugh.
"Of course... I did what any young, foolish rebel would do. I ran away."
The wind blew stronger, whistling through the loose stones of the trail as if trying to carry his words away.
"I hid in a caravan of rchants. Jumped off sowhere in the middle of the road, at night. Funny, isn’t it? I was the blind one... but it felt like the world was the one refusing to see ."
A silence fell between us, broken only by the rhythmic steps of the Sleipnirs.
"I don’t know where I got off. Doesn’t matter. It was just so road. I walked the whole night without direction, stumbling over branches, stones, holes."
He drew in a deep breath, as if he could still sll the forest from that distant day.
"I woke up in a place with tropical warmth. Green grass, damp ground, the sll of overripe fruit rotting in the air."
I glanced at him. Silas’s face, always so steady, now bore a heavy shadow beneath his eyes.
"If you, with all your vision, found it difficult to walk in that forest we visited...
Try imagining a blind boy. Lost. Alone. Aimless."
A cloud drifted slowly across the sun, casting the trail in a brief shroud of gray.
"Three days.
Three days of crawling, smashing my face into branches, tearing my skin on thorns, sleeping on damp logs, eating tree bark thinking it was fruit.
Until I found water. Just so stream. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever touched in my life."
He smiled, but sothing broken lingered in that gesture.
"And on the fourth day..."
His voice faltered.
"Well... on the fourth day I tried to end my suffering."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Even the wind seed to hush.
I said nothing. There was nothing to say.
I just breathed deeply, feeling my throat tighten and my skin prickle, as the old elder — the sharp-tongued master who mocked everyone and everything — let fall, there on the road back to Chaos, the fragnts of what he once was.
Slowly, the sun broke through the cloud, casting a golden glow across his shoulder.
And I knew, in that instant, that what would co next was not rely the continuation of a story.
It was a rebirth.
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