"I was standing at the edge of one of the waterfalls," he continued, his voice now softer, almost as if he were reliving each moment with his feet still damp from memory.
"I felt the cold wind blowing against my face… birds cutting across the sky above. I have no doubt it was a cloudy day. There was a steady drizzle in the air, the kind that doesn't really soak you, but makes your soul feel heavier."
I closed my eyes for a second, trying to picture the scene with the same level of detail he described. It was ironic. He couldn't see it, yet he seemed to perceive more than anyone else ever could.
"I only thought… I prayed, that the fall would be quick. And that the end would be painless."
His voice wavered for just a fraction of a second. But unlike most, Silas didn't avoid his scars—he narrated them. They were part of his flesh.
"But… before I took that final step… something grabbed my right shoulder. A hand, a claw, I don't know. It was warm, light, steady."
He paused. Smiled.
"And then… a voice. A voice as gentle as a mother's, asking me if I was lost."
I frowned. It was impossible not to get lost in that image.
"It was funny, actually," he let out a brief laugh, bitter but honest. "That voice startled me so much I slipped."
I let out a surprised breath. He shrugged.
"Yes. I fell. For real. Slipped like an idiot and dropped… maybe ten meters. In the end, the waterfall I'd chosen was tiny, hahaha!!"
He laughed harder now, almost as if it had happened yesterday.
My throat tightened. I swallowed.
"That voice… was it Ar?"
He slowly turned his face toward me, wearing that enigmatic smile that seemed to have been taught by the gods themselves.
"Yes. The very same. Ar… has many ways of manifesting. Sometimes it's just a breeze, other times a singing tree… or a mother. That day, it was that. And, well… as you can imagine, my pathetic attempt at dying turned into a stumble worthy of a tavern tale. All because a little bird landed on my shoulder and startled me."
I shook my head, unsure whether to laugh or mourn. He went on:
"But… that day, I gained a tutor. No, more than that… I gained a guide."
His tone grew calmer, more reverent.
"As blind as I was. But seeing everything I wished I could see."
There was such a deep truth in that sentence that for a moment the world seemed to stop. Only the breath of the mountains could be heard.
"Ar taught me that losing one sense… is terrible, of course. But having four senses sharpened beyond measure… that's a gift. Sight isn't everything about the world. In fact," he paused, "sight can be treacherous. It deceives the heart, scrambles the mind. To rely purely on vision… is to be blind without knowing it."
I let the words sink in. Then I asked, curious:
"Was that when you learned how to… move around? However it is you do that nowadays?"
Silas let out a dry laugh, dripping with irony.
"Oh, no, no! That only came when I broke through to Master Rank. Until then… I truly lived as a blind man, though with supernatural reflexes. Dependent on others. Dependent on sound, smell, touch, intuition."
He lifted his face to the sky, where the clouds began to part, revealing rays of sunlight cutting through in dramatic streaks.
"But Ar taught me that there are many ways to live. Many ways to fight. To be useful. To transform what you have… into what you can become."
He turned slightly toward me and touched his own nose in a theatrical gesture, but one heavy with meaning.
"And I happen to have talent with this. A sharp nose. Sensitive senses."
He opened his arms as if presenting the answer to some ancient riddle.
"That's why I became an alchemist."
I smiled. A silent, grateful smile.
Because now, at last, I understood.
And there was something deeply magical in realizing that the grumpy, stubborn, sarcastic old man… was, in truth, a survivor of a formless world, who had learned to shape it with what remained to him.
Silas drew in a slow breath through his nose, as if savoring the icy scent of the mountains before speaking. His voice, this time, came lighter. Almost serene.
"I found a world that… honestly, I never thought could exist."
A genuine smile spread across his face, and he gestured with his hands as if sketching memories in the air.
"In natural materials… in potions, in the handling of rare plants… it was as if every aroma, every texture, every living particle of nature whispered secrets that no one else could hear. It was as if it had all just been… waiting for someone blind enough to listen with the heart."
He laughed. A free laugh, filled with truth.
"Funny, isn't it? All the things we came chasing in this reckless adventure… mystical stones, herbs that glow at night, roots that sing, a golden reed—I lived surrounded by all that for years."
He fell into a long pause. As if meditating on what he was about to say.
"And now, here's my advice to you, boy."
I tensed without meaning to, as if preparing for both a punch and an embrace at once.
"After ten years living in the Valley of the Floating Waterfalls… I returned home."
He looked straight ahead, as if glimpsing a past hidden within the mists of the present.
"And as you can imagine… I came back with every fear and doubt possible.
Would they accept me back?
Would they still remember me?
Would I be just another stranger with the same blood?
Would they forgive me? Would I even be able to forgive them?
Would they be ashamed of me?"
The cadence of those 'woulds' sounded like the beat of a funeral drum.
"But… surprisingly…" and his voice trembled slightly, in a beautiful way, "my parents embraced me. And they cried. They cried for a very, very long time."
He smiled with teary eyes. There was no shame in it. Only pride.
"And that's it, Glenn. In the end… value those who truly love you. That makes all the difference. More than power, more than status. More than the approval of others. Genuine love… is both anchor and sail at the same time."
Silence. The wind blew harder.
"Logically," he shifted back into sarcasm, wiping a tear with his fingers, "after all the drama and crying, I had to demand answers, right?
'Why didn't you look for me?
Why didn't anyone from the family come after me?
Why did you leave me alone in that wretched forest?'"
He let out a cynical laugh.
"Poor little me. I heard myself and felt disgusted."
Then his voice dropped lower.
"That's when my father said something that maybe… turned me into who I am today."
He paused for a long moment, then repeated the words with almost ceremonial weight:
'If he doesn't find his own path, no one will ever find it for him.
And a father's role is, many times, to trust that his children are capable of finding that path.'
The silence was absolute.
"He was right. Completely right."
He looked at me with a sober expression, steadier than all the ones before.
"Yes, I went back home. But not as a hero. Not as a failure either. I went back as someone who laid down his own track. I became an alchemist of a secondary branch of the family. Developed my own cultivation techniques. And walked a path that could exist… only for me."
I couldn't speak immediately. Something in that story—in the implied courage, in the pain swallowed dry, in the laughter found at the bottom of the abyss—struck me like a perfect arrow.
Maybe all of us, at some point, are a little like Silas: falling from the waterfall, waiting for the end… only to discover that it was actually the beginning. Or falling from one world into another, inside the body of someone condemned to death and a ruined family, only to become the consort of someone so powerful she could crush me with a single thought.
And then being hunted by everyone who desires that person, and more besides.
Silas adjusted himself in the saddle, stretching his shoulders with a soft crack of the joints. The sky behind us was already painting the clouds in bluish strokes. His voice came calm, almost conspiratorial:
"And of course… I didn't choose the valley we were in by chance."
I turned my head slightly, curious at the tone he used. As if confessing to some decades-old mischief.
"Time passed, Glenn. And like in every family, we had… conflicts. Some big, others inevitable."
He laughed, a dry, low sound, without bitterness—just acceptance.
"In the last of those conflicts, I was 'invited' not to return. Forbidden, actually. For a few good decades."
I frowned.
"But then comes the fun part… Time passed, and that 'invitation' turned out, surprisingly, to be very good."
He shot me a half-smile.
"I missed that wonderful place. That smell of moss and mist, the mystical vibration that only that valley has. And also… knowing how curious my guide is—better known as Ar, the Oracle…"
Silas raised an eyebrow.
"I was absolutely certain that a demon with three affinities, causing destruction and magical chaos across every corner of the valley, would catch her attention."
I let out a faint breath.
"So that's why you told me to… steal all those rare ingredients?"
This time he burst out laughing, the sound echoing against the stones of the trail we were climbing.
"Yes! Of course it was. What kind of alchemist do you think I am? It's been fifty years since I last restocked from that place. You have no idea how hard it is to get good materials like the ones born in that valley, outside of that specific ecosystem."
He shook his head with mock indignation.
"But more important than all of that, boy… I honestly hoped you would learn something from the noise of your own affinities."
He leaned forward slightly in the saddle, eyes fixed on the horizon as if searching for the memory of his own initiation.
"That was the very first thing Ar taught me."
Silence. Only the sound of the sleipnir's hooves on frozen stones and the cold winds rising as we climbed the slope.
"When we carry multiple natures… multiple elements flowing through our veins… it's easy to let the entire world turn into noise. Each affinity screaming, pulling you in a different direction. Each energy demanding attention like a spoiled child. And if you don't learn to listen to that noise… and then, to silence it… you'll end up lost inside yourself."
He pressed two fingers against his chest.
"Controlling energy is easy, Glenn. But quieting the voices inside you? That… is where true mastery lives."