Eryndor' POV
The judgment in the central square changed things.
Over the next weeks, more people came to the warehouse. Not just the curious or the desperate, but people who had heard about what I said to Marcus and wanted to understand more. They asked harder questions than before, pushing me to explain exactly what freedom meant and where its limits were.
I did my best to answer, always trying to turn their questions back on themselves, making them think instead of just accepting my words. It was exhausting work, but it felt right. This was what a god should do, I thought. Not give orders, but help mortals find their own wisdom.
But not everyone agreed with my approach.
The temples began preaching against me openly. They called me the God of Chaos, warning that my teachings would lead to the collapse of order. They pointed to Marcus as proof that freedom without control was dangerous.
Some people listened to them. Some of my followers left, frightened by the temples' warnings. But others stayed, and new people kept coming. The movement was growing despite the temples' efforts to stop it.
The forgotten ones were finding their own paths too. Kael had become something of a teacher, showing young mortals how to hunt and track animals in the wild lands outside the city. He did not call himself a god anymore, just a guide. And the mortals who learned from him gave him respect freely, which meant more to him than forced worship ever had.
Nira had gathered a small group who came to the streams with her. They did not pray to her, but they sat with her in silence, learning to listen to the water, to find peace in the natural world. She seemed content in a way I had never seen in the Forgotten Realm.
But Thorn grew more bitter each day. He wandered the city, looking at the mortals with disgust, angry that they did not recognize his power or his importance. He came to me one evening, his face dark with rage.
"This is not what you promised," he said. "You said we would return to purpose. You said mortals would need us. But they barely acknowledge we exist."
"They need you," I said. "They just do not need you to be what you were before. You have to adapt. Find new ways to be useful."
"I am a god," Thorn said. "I should not have to be useful. I should be worshipped."
"Why?" I asked. "What have you done to earn worship?"
He stared at me. "I exist. That is enough."
"No," I said quietly. "It is not. Not anymore. The old ways are gone, Thorn. You can either accept that and find a new way to matter, or you can keep being angry until you fade again. The choice is yours."
He turned and left without another word. I watched him go and worried about what he might do with his anger.
My worry was justified.
Three days later, Thorn went to the northern district of Aethermere, to a place where ancient trees still stood. They were remnants of the forests that had once covered this land before the cities were built. The temples maintained them as historical monuments, carefully trimmed and controlled.
Thorn called the trees to grow wild.
He used what power he had left, reaching deep into the earth, awakening the old roots that had been dormant for centuries. The trees surged upward, breaking through the carefully maintained gardens, tearing up stone paths, growing in hours what should have taken years.
It was beautiful and terrifying. The trees twisted into shapes that defied order, branches reaching toward the sky like grasping hands. Mortals fled, screaming about the angry god who was destroying their district.
I felt it happen through my connection to the city. The surge of wild growth, the chaos spreading. I ran toward the northern district, Lyra and several others following me.
When we arrived, we found Thorn standing at the center of the growing forest, his arms raised, his face triumphant.
"This is what I am," he shouted. "This is my purpose. I am the god of wild places, and I will not be tamed or controlled or forgotten."
"Thorn, stop," I called out. "You are hurting people."
"Good," he said. "Let them feel what it is like to have their world destroyed. Let them know what it is like to be cast aside and forgotten."
The trees continued to grow, their roots tearing through buildings now. People were trapped inside their homes, calling for help. This was exactly the kind of chaos the temples had warned about. This was exactly what Celestara had feared I would cause.
I had to stop him.
But how? If I used force, I would be controlling him, making decisions for him, taking away his freedom. But if I did nothing, innocent people would suffer for his anger.
This was the impossible choice Mira had warned me about.
"Thorn," I said, walking closer. "I understand your anger. I understand feeling powerless and forgotten. But this is not the answer. You are not proving your worth. You are proving that the high gods were right to fear us."
"I do not care what they think," Thorn said. "I am tired of being nothing. If I cannot be worshipped, then I will be feared."
"Fear is not respect," I said. "Fear is just another kind of control. Is that really what you want? To be the thing mortals run from instead of the thing they come to?"
He faltered slightly, his arms lowering an inch.
"Look at them," I said, gesturing to the mortals fleeing the growing forest. "They are terrified. You are not showing them your power. You are showing them that you do not care about their suffering. That makes you no different from the gods who controlled them before."
"Then what should I do?" Thorn asked. His voice broke. "How do I matter if no one needs me?"
"You find a new way to need yourself first," I said. "You stop trying to force mortals to fill the emptiness inside you. You discover who you are when no one is watching. And maybe, when you stop demanding attention, people will give it freely."
Thorn stood there, trembling. Then, slowly, he lowered his arms. The trees stopped growing. The wild surge of power settled.
He fell to his knees, and I realized he was crying.
I walked to him and knelt beside him. "I know it is hard. Being forgotten hurts more than anything. But you cannot hurt others just because you are hurting."
"What do I do now?" he whispered.
"You help me repair the damage you caused," I said. "You face the consequences of your choice. And you try to be better tomorrow than you were today. That is all any of us can do."
We spent the next hours carefully guiding the trees back, making them grow downward instead of upward, encouraging their roots to settle without destroying more buildings. It was delicate work, and Thorn had to use all his power to undo what he had done.
By the time we finished, he was exhausted, barely able to stand. But the district was saved, and no one had been seriously hurt.
The temple priests arrived just as we were finishing. Thalia looked at the damaged buildings and the wild trees, and her face was cold with anger.
"You see?" she said to the gathered crowd. "This is what the forgotten god brings. Chaos. Destruction. Proof that the high gods were right to seal them away."
"No," Lyra said, stepping forward. "This is proof that even gods make mistakes. Thorn did wrong. He knows it. And he is working to fix it. That is more than your high gods have ever done. They act like they are perfect, like they never make mistakes. But they do. They just hide their mistakes instead of facing them."
Thalia's eyes narrowed. "Careful, girl. You speak dangerously."
"I speak truthfully," Lyra said. "And I am tired of being afraid of the truth."
Others stepped forward, standing with Lyra. Not everyone, but enough. The group of followers was growing, becoming bolder.
Thalia looked at them, then at me, then turned and left without another word. But I could feel her anger, could sense that this was not over.
That night, we gathered in the warehouse. Thorn sat apart from the others, his head down, his spirit broken.
"I am sorry," he said to the room. "I endangered you all with my selfishness."
"Yes, you did," I said. "But you also stopped. That matters. You could have kept going, could have destroyed more just to prove a point. But you listened. You chose to stop. That is growth, Thorn."
He looked up at me, his eyes wet. "I do not know how to be anything other than what I was."
"None of us do," I said. "We are all learning. Making mistakes. Trying again. That is what freedom looks like. It is messy and uncertain and sometimes painful. But it is real. And that makes it better than the perfect cage we escaped from."
The room was quiet. Then Kael spoke. "If Thorn can change, maybe any of us can."
"Maybe," I said. "If we keep trying."
Over the next days, something unexpected happened. Mortals began coming to the northern district to see the wild trees. They were not supposed to, but they came anyway, curious about the chaos that had almost destroyed their homes.
And some of them found it beautiful.
They stood among the twisted branches and uneven roots and felt something they had never felt before. Wildness. Unpredictability. A reminder that not everything could be controlled and ordered.
Thorn noticed them. He started talking to them, not as a god demanding worship, but as someone who understood the wild. He taught them about the trees, about how forests grow and change and live according to their own rules.
And slowly, people began to respect him.
Not because he forced them to. Not because he demanded it. But because he offered them something real, something that connected them to a part of the world that the high gods had tried to eliminate.
One evening, as I watched Thorn teaching a group of mortals about tree growth, Mira appeared beside me.
"He is learning," she said.
"Yes," I agreed. "We all are."
"Even you?" she asked.
"Especially me," I said. "Every day I realize how little I actually know about what it means to respect freedom. But I keep trying."
Mira was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "The high gods are watching closely. What happened with Thorn frightened them. They are debating what to do about you."
"I know," I said. "I can feel their attention. But I am not giving them a reason to seal me. I am keeping my promise."
"Are you?" Mira asked. "Or are you simply telling yourself that while slowly building an army of followers who will do what you want?"
Her words hit me hard. Was she right? Was I actually respecting mortal freedom, or was I just a better manipulator than before?
I did not have an answer.
Mira faded, leaving me alone with my doubts.
But I could not stop now. Too many people were counting on me. Too many mortals were finding hope in the idea that they could choose their own paths.
I just had to make sure I was truly offering them freedom and not another cage with prettier bars.
The question was whether I could tell the difference.