Chapter 2
Holding the lifeless body of the only person who had ever treated him like family, Auron wept.
The snow around them was stained dark, the crimson blood already freezing into black patches, the white ground turned into a graveyard canvas.
Godfrey's chest, once a wall of unshakable strength, now lay still and broken.
His face creased, scarred, weathered by a thousand battles looked soft for the first time, like death had finally stolen the hardness that life had demanded of him.
"Why?" The word ripped out of Auron's throat, raw. His breath tore through the cold air in harsh bursts, echos of his voice vanished as quickly as his hope for a better future.
"Why? Why was heaven so mad at me?"
He screamed again, a sound not quite human part sob, part growl, part something darker that even he did not recognize.
Auron remembered the day Godfrey had found him.
He had been a child without a name, discarded at birth in a region where the snow bit the deepest.
sitting alone beneath the low branches of a pine, frost biting his lashes, his skin cracking, his eyes were empty like the abyss. A hollow little thing, waiting for the cold to finish his rather painful and torturous life.
Godfrey Adler had found him by accident maybe by a cruel trick of fate. A heavily scarred knight, a man who had seen more deaths than most grave-diggers.
His beard was the color of steel. His hands, gnarled and thick they looked like they could squeeze life from the world itself.
He had been a survivor of cruelty of this world, nothing more, nothing less.
"You little bastard," Godfrey had rasped with that voice of heaviness and authority. godfrey was a person who used harsh words but he was never unkind to auron. "So you were hiding in here."
The wind had howled that day, and yet Godfrey's hand had been steady when he offered it to auron.
The child had taken it, slowly, while his hand been trembling due to the cold he was also half-afraid that it was only a dream. That hand had pulled him from certain death and given him a name: Auron Andler.
That name had provided auron with warmth, he finally felt like someone finally acknowledged his existence.
During their time together, godfrey had taught Auron how to hold a blade, how to move silently like a shadow, how to listen to the forest's movement.
" listen boy, the world will not excuse weakness it doesn't matter if you are young or frail it simply does not care. Kindness is a rare coin to come across" Godfrey had imparted these words to auron while roasting some wild game he had caught
"The world will break you," Godfrey had told him once by the fire. The snow had fallen softly that night, sparks rising into the dark. "Unless you make yourself harder than it."
Auron had carried those words into his bones.
Only two weeks ago, when auron had just met malvolio, Godfrey had spoken of how this was their final journey. "This'll be the last of the wandering, boy. After this, we'll settle in a house which has a roof that doesn't leak. You'll enter the knight academy, like you've always wanted."
For the first time in his life, Auron had dared to believe in something beyond cold roads and darkness. A home. A future. A family of his own.
Now that dream was laying broken, carved open and gutted.
"WHY ME?" Auron's scream tore through the forest, so violent that crows burst from the trees in a flurry of black wings. His chest burned. His throat cracked. He fell to his knees, sobbing until his breath was nothing but shallow gasps.
Then came silence. A silence that was worse than the screams.
he got up and start walking towards the butchered remains of the man who had attacked godfrey.
His hands shook as he searched the corpses of the men Godfrey had slain. His mentor's killers were unknown to him.
Yet he knew no, he was certain that Godfrey had recognized them. This had not been random incident of banditry.
And then he saw it: a pauldron(shoulder arm), broken and blood-soaked which was marked with an emblem. A serpent biting its own tail.
Auron's blood ran hot. His fingers dug into the emblem until it cut his palm.
"This is it," he whispered through clenched teeth. "This is the mark… the bastards who took him."
His eyes burned red with hate. He pressed the emblem to his forehead, pressing until it hurt, as if carving the symbol into his very soul.
"They will feel my pain. They will pay. Even if I must search heaven and earth… even if I must become the devil himself."
His voice was no longer carried the softness of a boy's. He had discarded that softness, he had embraced the flames of vengeance.
He staggered back to Godfrey's body. The tears came again, hot and heavy, carving rivers down his frozen cheeks. He brushed snow from the old man's beard, whispering words that broke with every syllable.
"I'm sorry, grandfather. I wasn't strong enough. I couldn't save you."
His eyes fell upon Godfrey's wrist. A bracelet with a lion emblem engraved in it, shined faintly beneath blood and frost. it radiated the feeling of pride and the spirit of a warrior
Auron remembered his words:
"You see this bracelet, boy? This is our heirloom. They say our founding father was bestowed this by our clan's guardian dragon. One day, when you're a knight, I'll give this to you."
Auron's fingers trembled as he unclasped it. "I'm sorry, grandfather. I'll take this. Not because I've earned it… but because I can never forget. The day they took you away from me. The day they killed my only family."
before wearing the bracelet, he buried his grandfather so his corpse could not be disrespected by wild beasts.
Then
The bracelet slid onto his wrist. The metal burned against his skin, auron almost screamed from the pain, as if it rejected him before finally accepting him. A warmth spread from it, crawling through his veins like fire, searing into his very heart.
Auron gasped. For a moment, the world went silent. Then.....