I woke with a gentle sway, and for a moment, I thought I was still trapped in that impossible dream. The movement 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 smell of wet earth and iron, the deep, steady beat of hooves striking the ground… everything told me 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 time itself had restarted.
This… made no sense.
I remembered the fight.
I remembered the forest shattering beneath the fists of that wild ape. The blood, the smell 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 warmer than the air around me.
Then the two panthers. Rezon and Shaeleg—memories and events swirling back into my mind like a storm.
And then…
The macaw.
The ancestral macaw.
That being… something beyond normal, tangible comprehension.
Its words still pulsed within my soul, echoes unsure whether to die out or become memory.
After that…
Nothing.
Only darkness.
But now, now the sun was rising again.
The same light I had seen hours ago. Or what felt like hours in my perception. The same color, the same angle on the horizon.
It was as if time had folded in on itself.
As if we were in the same moment, but on another line.
I slowly turned my head.
Silas was beside me, 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 glimmered 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 me. "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 me?"
"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 blame 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 me, 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 time!"
He chuckled.
"Because I didn't feel like it."
Just like that.
"Miserable old man."
"I heard that."
"Good. It was meant 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 shimmered 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 some time. "How do you know those three beasts?"
He didn't answer right away.
He lifted his face, as if searching for a memory among the layers of the sky. The wind blew harder, and for a moment, his expression changed. His wrinkled skin seemed younger, pulled back by a distant time.
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 judgment. Just as someone 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 some 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 memories of the old Glenn came 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 me, 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 same 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 me."
He said nothing more.
But the way he said it — as if the wind itself paused for a moment to listen — made it clear that what came 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 seemed to choose his words as if they were fragile porcelain pieces, and at the same time, it didn't feel like he was speaking only to me, but also to the winds and to the memories 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 me. 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 me happiness. That it would solve all my problems. And, maybe, by some 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 became just another joke to the Ferrox Umbra.
My brothers claimed every right to what was once said to be mine by birth. And my parents… well, they never told me 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 name."
I stayed silent.
It was impossible not to feel the weight in Silas's voice. And, somehow, I felt as though I were intruding on a sacred place, a hidden chamber of the soul of someone 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 merchants. Jumped off somewhere 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 me."
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 some road. I walked the whole night without direction, stumbling over branches, stones, holes."
He drew in a deep breath, as if he could still smell the forest from that distant day.
"I woke up in a place with tropical warmth. Green grass, damp ground, the smell 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 some stream. The most beautiful thing I've ever touched in my life."
He smiled, but something 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 seemed 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 fragments 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 come next was not merely the continuation of a story.
It was a rebirth.