From Chapter 18 (Unknown Past)
A person entered a dirty room full of filth, broken dreams, sadness and pain "Hello another morning young man"
He looked at him with a look that suggested suffering "What do you want from me"
He looked at him with arrogance "I don't want anything from you, boy. You are nothing and you will never be anything. Take this plate and everything in it, or the whole plate itself if you want hahahahaah"
The person left the room, leaving the child inside broken. This child who was filled with happiness and optimism, striving to achieve his dreams, but now he lost all of that inside a dirty room, surrounded by people who may seem good. But inside they are not like that at all.
This child felt that this was enough torment and suffering. His eyes burned with fire. His eyes were saying suffering. His eyes were saying revenge.
His eyes were saying blood... blood.. blood.
He looked at the ceiling of the room and said to himself "I might be the one"
The ceiling above him was cracked, stained with old rain and older screams. But he didn't see it anymore.
Not really.
The boy once known for his laughter, for his questions, for his dreams.... was gone. All that remained was something still wearing his skin. Something watching. Listening. Burning.
"I might be the one," he whispered again, louder this time, as if daring the filth to deny him.
And so he took the plate. the cruel, rusted metal, stained with grease and indifference, and hurled it against the wall. The clatter echoed like chains snapping. Something inside him cracked open with it.
He left the room behind. The people behind. The mask of kindness that always stank of rot. He walked out barefoot into the world, and for the first time, the world blinked.
Years Passed
Vortan wandered. Through storm and frost. Through streets that swallowed boys and spat out ghosts. He learned silence, and how to use it. He learned that not all swords are forged in fire, some are forged in hunger, in memory, in rage sharpened over years.
He became a shadow among shadows. A name whispered by thieves and feared by men who wore crowns.
But still, it wasn't enough.
The pain didn't leave. The fire didn't dim.
Until the night he dreamed of the dragon.
The Dragon
It came to him in a dream that felt too real to be sleep.
A beast the size of a storm. Scales blacker than night, veined with gold that pulsed like a dying heart. Its wings blotted out stars. Its eyes were memories of every scream the world ever made.
When Vortan woke, the ground around him was scorched. Trees bent away from where he lay. Animals had fled.
He knew. It was real.
And so he searched.
He hunted rumors. Followed ash. Traced the twisted lines of scorched earth and broken minds. The dragon left a trail not of bodies, but of silence. Of people who could no longer speak, only weep.
And then… one night, as he reached the edge of the forgotten glade where Elderhollow now stands, he met him.
The Unknown Being
It stepped from the fog. Not a man. Not a beast. Something between. Its face was covered with a mask of white bark, smooth and faceless. Its hands were long and narrow, like branches dipped in ink. Its voice. When it came was not heard with ears, but felt in the bones.
"You burn, child. Like a star. Like a wound that never closes."
Vortan raised his blade without hesitation.
"Are you the dragon?"
A sound like dry leaves turning echoed through the woods. Laughter. Or maybe hunger.
"No. I am the one who owns the stars you aim to kill."
It stepped closer. No footsteps. Just presence.
"You will face the wyrm. You must. But not for justice. Not for revenge. You will do it because I said so."
"Why me?"
"Because I marked you the day you were broken. Because I fed your pain when no one else would. Because you belong to me."
Vortan hesitated. Rage quivered.
"I belong to no one."
The being's voice trembled through the trees.
"We shall see."
And with that, it vanished. Leaving only one word carved into the air:
"Elderhollow."
The Battle
He found the dragon sleeping in the crater of a long-dead mountain, wings curled like broken cathedrals, fire breathing through its dreams. It was ancient. older than war, older than man. And it was waking.
The battle lasted three days and three nights. Sky blackened. Rivers boiled. The sun wept fire.
Vortan fought not like a man, but like a memory trying to rewrite itself.
And in the end, as the dragon bled from a thousand wounds, it spoke.
"You are not the hero… you are the ending."
But Vortan answered with silence.
He cut the beast's throat and burned its bones, burying them in the clearing the creature had haunted for centuries.
He named the land Elderhollow.
He sealed it with a spell made not of magic, but of memory.
And somewhere in the roots, in the silence between screams, the masked figure still watches. Still waits.
Because Vortan may have slain the dragon.
But the creature inside him the one that was born that day in the filthy room... was just waking up.