Where Thomas and Valerian stood, the trees did not merely stand; they watched.
The 'Silent Forest' was not a forest to be entered, but a beast to be fed. Its tangled branches were a thirsting jaw, and its fallen leaves were hungry whispers.
In the depths, where light penetrated only in distorted forms, the shadows moved with a will of their own. They were not mere animals, but extensions of the forest's own wrath—beings of sharp wood and ancient malice. They gnawed on dreams and flesh with equal appetite.
The ground beneath their feet pulsed with a slow, sinister sap, as if the roots themselves were arteries of a vast, dark heart. Every step inward was an invitation to be devoured. Here, even the air was toxic, laden with the dust of fear and the scent of prey.
He sighed and spoke, as if whispering to himself more than addressing his servant:
"Perhaps… we have awakened the forest."
Thomas shuddered involuntarily, as if struck by a small electric charge, then sighed and said, as if trying to convince himself:
"Master, let us go around it. We might reach the capital a day early if we hurry…"
And he sank into a profound silence, while his thoughts spiraled in a dark whirlpool:
"So much has changed… Five years… or ten centuries? Time melts like wax before the fire of solitude. The world turns out there, while I burn here in this awakening."
"Then everyone has abandoned me. Even blood turns to water when hearts run dry."
"None remain but these… simple souls who know nothing but loyalty. How strange that the weak should bear what broke the strong."
"The capital draws near… I will see with my own eyes how the world buries its living dead."
Then he said:
"Very well, let's go…"
The two set off, with Thomas lost in his thoughts, haunted by the horror he had just witnessed. He muttered to himself:
"Has my master truly lost his mind… Damn it, I'm certain I saw him whispering into the emptiness alone. Was he talking to himself? They say the 'Radiant Ones' speak to the trapped spirits of the dead among us. That madwoman only ever spouts such strange talk."
Suddenly, while Thomas was lost in thought, Valerian smiled, his eyes fixed on the road:
"Perhaps she is right. Who knows…"
These dark thoughts wove themselves like a heavy shroud of despair around his shoulders, just as the darkness began to descend like a damp pall over the dirt path. It was broken only by the howls of distant wolves and a silence heavier than a tombstone.
The two gaunt horses ran with all their remaining strength, their breaths labored, as if every step was the last vestige of their souls.
Upon his horse, Thomas writhed from cold and fear, while Valerian's eyes—still damp with the dust of memories—stared into the pitch-black darkness, catching every moving shadow as though it were a dagger aimed at their necks.
As if his thoughts had summoned something from the very heart of the darkness itself…
Suddenly… the horses reared in terror and halted. It was no ordinary stop—the two horses froze in place, then collapsed silently to the ground, as though an invisible fang had pierced both their hearts in the same instant.
This was the brutal answer to Thomas's grim musings—a declaration that something unforeseen had begun.
"By the heavens! What is this, what has happened?!" Thomas cried out in a hoarse voice, bending in panic over the neck of his dead horse, his eyes wide with terror and confusion.
Beneath their feet, the earth shuddered as if awakening from a deep slumber. Dark, rocky masses accumulated from the soil, slowly merging until they formed a colossal structure pulsing with an eerie energy. A massive stone body rose in terrifying silence, like a beast from ancient times reclaiming its life after a long sleep.
The wind whistled through its limbs, and the sounds of the earth cracking echoed like the terrifying heartbeat of something emerging from the depths.
"Ohh My God…" Thomas threw himself sideways, pressing against a mound of earth.
But Valerian remained standing. Fear weighed heavily on him, yet the tattered pride within him refused to let him fall.
"Master! The smoke! Use the smoke!" Thomas shouted from the ground.
Then, the unexpected happened.
Thomas began to tremble strangely, then started muttering ancient words forgotten by memory. He pulled out a rusty knife he used for cutting bread.
"I remember… I remember something…" he said, shaking. "My blood… the blood of the ancestors…"
Blood began to drip from his hand onto the rusty knife, and suddenly, the blade glowed with a faint light. It was not an offensive force, but the memory of his blacksmith ancestors.
The knife began to form small, shimmering blades from the iron in the earth, hovering around him like angry wasps.
"Come closer, Master! I can feel it… it feels the heat!" Thomas shouted, brandishing his frail iron blades.
Valerian whispered to himself:
"Damn it, what are you doing, you fool…"
The Gargoyle raised its hands high. Valerian stood frozen, feeling the air suddenly grow heavy, as if something were being torn from the very heart of the earth.
Dust particles scattered at first, then gathered before his eyes into the palms of his foe, coalescing and hardening until they formed a solid mass resembling a hammer.
He couldn't even blink; the hammer struck the ground with a single blow, and the soil beneath his feet shook violently, as if the world itself sought to expel him.
Sudden terror gnawed at his heart.
What he saw was not merely a weapon in the hands of an enemy, but a stark declaration: this creature forged the very earth to obey its will.
He nearly choked, his chest tightening. For a moment, he closed his eyes, sharply inhaling the cold air, searching for any thread to counter that stone tyranny.
A strange energy surged within him, making his heart pound violently, as if pushing him to the brink of explosion.
From the suppressed pressure, smoke erupted around him, twisting in the air before condensing before him into a hazy, mist-like replica of himself, weaving through the rocks with fleeting lightness.
His very being trembled as he watched it move with his steps, stealing his heartbeat and deceiving his eyes as if it had carved out a piece of his consciousness.
He knew it was an illusion, but an illusion that carried something of his heart.
And when it vanished like a mirage, it left behind a heavy void within him, tasting of ashes and a suffocating heat.
The Gargoyle suddenly halted, its eyes blazing red. It directed its blows toward the apparition, the ground shaking with each strike—rocks scattering and stones shattering.
But the illusion kept dissolving into the darkness.
Behind the haze, Valerian felt a fear mingled with a faint thrill; the beast was striking at emptiness, furious and bewildered.
He moved with calculated lightness, each step weighed with anxiety, his eyes keenly observing every tremor in his foe's movements, as if the Gargoyle's raging fury laid it bare before him.
Suddenly, the red glow in its eyes faded, replaced by a cold, green radiance, as if its gaze was no longer fixed on Valerian but had shifted toward the shadows of the forest.
Its limbs froze for a moment, bewildered by this perplexing change.
He saw the beast grow tense, its shoulders lowering slightly, its breath quickening—a massive creature that suddenly seemed like one anticipating an impending hunt.
Only then did true cold seep into Valerian's bones; what he saw was not a creature that had emerged to hunt him, but one fleeing from something else… something deeper than the forest's darkness, and far heavier than any terror this encounter had brought.
With a voice like the rumble of the earth, it uttered a single word that shook the night:
"Hungry…"
It turned slowly and began to walk away, dissolving into the forest's darkness like an unseen shadow.
Valerian remained standing, breathing heavily, smoke still partially enveloping his body. He looked at Thomas, who was bleeding from his hand, his glowing blades melting away one by one.
Valerian whispered into the darkness:
"What is it… that hungers?"
He, too, was hungry—hungry for glory, power, and revenge.
But that stone beast hungered for something far beyond the flesh: a deep, dark energy, an ancient desire rooted in the very depths of the earth, a need that blood and violent victories could never satisfy.
The battle was not a victory, but an answer to a question he hadn't realized he was asking:
The new world had not merely abandoned him—it was hungry for ones like him.
And his memory slipped back to that day when he first understood the true meaning of "hunger."
Not a hunger for food, but a hunger for acceptance, for freedom…
In the opulent study of the palace, where ancient books whispered the secrets of ages, his father sat in his massive leather chair, gripping the family scepter—a symbol of the weight of generations.
His eyes measured Valerian as if they were iron shackles binding the soul.
His voice emerged like a decisive echo in the realm of possibilities:
"Tell me, Valerian, do you believe the past is a choice? Do you think our legacy is merely a memo that can be erased?
What we carry is not a burden—it is the very essence of life.
It is the blood flowing in our veins, the story we inscribe upon the walls of time."
Valerian sighed, as if the words touched the deepest wound in his being, and said quietly, laden with doubt and questioning:
"And is freedom not deeper than that story?
Can the soul be imprisoned in a past it did not choose?
I do not reject our legacy—I refuse to be its slave.
I want to breathe, to forge my own destiny."
His father's voice rose, not just in anger, but with the conviction of one who sees the facets of the soul crumbling:
"Freedom? Is freedom without roots anything but emptiness?
Can a person be born without a past to weigh down their wings?
You gaze toward the sky, but forget the very earth you walk on.
Your refusal means our death—the death of ancestral promises and the hopes of children yet unborn."
Valerian paused briefly, his eyes shimmering with confusion and turmoil, then spoke in a voice that nearly shattered the room's silence:
"Perhaps this hunger between us… is also a hunger to understand ourselves.
I am hungry to be different—hungry for my inner self to be more than just a shadow sketched on the wall of fate."
Silence enveloped the room, like a shared breath between two souls in conflict.
Then the father whispered, in a tone that carried only the harsh judgment of time:
"Perhaps you are hungry because you have lost your way, Valerian…
But remember, those who reject their legacy do not escape—they drown in an endless current of wandering."
He snapped back to the present, as if the verbal slap from his father still echoed in his ears.
The cold night air burned in his lungs.
The stone beast's hunger was tangible, but his own hunger felt like a ghost from that day—a specter of rejection and rage that would never fade.