Chapter 5 – The Goblin's Vow
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Mist clung to the mouth of the cave when Altair stirred awake. His shoulder still throbbed from the wolf's claws, and each breath was a knife scraping his ribs. Pain gnawed at him, but it was nothing compared to the agony in his heart.
He looked down at his hands—small, green, ugly. Hands that once gripped a holy sword now clutched only dirt and stone. The hero who had once slain the Demon King had become the weakest of creatures.
Laughter echoed in his mind—Alice's cold smile, Luthien's treacherous arrow, Thror's mocking laugh, Mugnash's growl, Cheka's claws. Their betrayal cut deeper than any wound.
Altair dug his claws into the soil. "If I surrender now, then my vow dies with me. If I perish as nothing but a goblin, then truly, I was nothing."
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Around him, the goblins slept in heaps. They snored loudly, some drooling, some gnawing on rotting bones. Altair studied them in silence.
"They are filth. Yet… from filth, I will build power."
He forced his battered body upright, staggering toward the cave's mouth. The cold night air rushed against his skin. Mist rolled low across the earth, silvered by moonlight. The forest whispered with distant howls and rustling leaves.
Altair stood beneath the pale moon, his wounds aching, but his eyes ablaze.
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"I am Altair," he rasped, his voice hoarse but sharp.
"Once, I was humanity's hero. Now, I am nothing but a pitiful goblin. But hear me, world—I will not stop here."
His eyes gleamed with a savage green light.
"With this small body, with these filthy hands, I will rise again. I will dominate this forest, this land, this world. I will make the name of goblins feared to the ends of the heavens."
He raised his clawed hand toward the moon, as though grasping it.
"I swear it, even with this wretched body—I will become calamity itself. Alice, Luthien, Thror, Mugnash, Cheka—your day of reckoning will come."
His words rolled into the night, carried by the wind through the ancient trees of the Forbidden Forest.
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Altair stood in silence afterward, chest heaving, legs trembling. But in his heart, something had changed.
It was no longer only hatred that fueled him. It was resolve.
The path ahead would be long. This body was weak, frail, fragile. But as long as he lived, his oath would grow stronger.
That night, beneath the pale moon, a new vow was carved into the fabric of fate. The vow that would turn a wretched goblin into a king—and eventually, into a disaster that would shake the world.
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