After that night full of stories of failed loves and macabre memories, I noticed something in common between all of them. None of them had someone who really took care of their education since childhood. Either he was an absent father, closed only in his own family – or in his own navel – or a father who preferred work and drink to spending time at home.
They never had a brake. No one to say (That's wrong) Not that it justified the choices they made, but in a way, it explained the twisted path each one followed. Unlike them, I had Benta and my father. Someone who corrected me when I needed it, who gave me attention. And that's why I started to value my family even more in my heart. They could have all the faults in the world, but they tried. And, in the end, they were better than many houses out there.
Those who stood before me never had any friends, except the twins, who at least possessed each other. The rest have always been alone in their own way. All carried scars from abuse. Their childhood shaped the people they have become today.
They were forced to learn how to fight. Then, to kill. And they ended up finding pleasure in it.
The twins... From the age of six they were sexually abused by their own father. The repressed anger ended up overflowing, contaminating everything around.
Hircine... She had her face dipped in acid as a child. He lost his skin, his hair, his beauty — everything. All because of her father's jealousy, who couldn't stand the idea of what other men would think when they looked at her.
Number 01... Since he was a child, he suffered at the hands of his own instructor. At the orphanage, he was trained as a war machine, placed in solitary confinement so that he would never develop feelings or emotions. Physical and psychological torture, a life made only of pain. Today, all he knows is to kill. Nothing more than that.
Orisis... raped by his own mother. When he tried to ask his father for help, he was mocked, humiliated, as if his pain was nothing. Years of abuse have transformed him from the inside. He developed a phobia for women and hatred for men. And he demonstrates this in the worst possible way.
Anker... a slave to his own parents. He was deeply brainwashed, the kind that only blind religion can provoke. He grew up believing in dogmas that chained him, that shaped every step of his life. To this day he follows them, as if handcuffed to invisible chains.
Hasis... She was born into a good family. It had what many of us never dreamed of having. But the corruption of the empire destroyed everything. Guards attacked his house, killed his family. She reacted, and that reaction sent her into a snowball of destruction. An endless personal war. Until, unexpectedly, the local ruler fell into his hands... and this was the fuse of a crisis within the Dawn Empire itself.
The truth was bitter: everyone there could have been different people, if they had been born into balanced families, in homes where love was not an unattainable luxury. None of them were born cruel... They have been shaped that way, forced by the world itself to become what they are. Created, from the beginning, to carry scars.
I reflected on this. The massacre I witnessed among the goblins had already shown me an uncomfortable truth: in the end, it will always be the strongest who dictates the rules. It does not matter whether this strongest is a simple peasant or a nobleman, a rapist or a protector of the law. Force does not distinguish morality.
In the end, the fittest survives, and the unfit is consumed. It has always been like this. Still, I hid behind a flimsy veil of justice and morality... because I feared what I might become when I finally accepted that the world is not made of roses.
There are choices, of course. But these choices always belong to the strongest. The weak... they have no choices, they just obey. They are shaped by the hands of those who have the power to crush them.
Looking at those broken people, corrupted to the core, I realized something uncomfortable: I was no different from them. Deep down, no one is. The difference is only how much each one has been distorted by the weight of the world.
I didn't care if they changed or not—it's none of my business. But I also didn't feel entitled to criticize them. The choices each one made were theirs alone, and imposing my morals or my point of view was not something I should do.
I didn't fully understand these people. Each one had its own uniqueness, each look carried different stories, each trigger could unleash unpredictable violence. Interacting with them required extreme care, constant attention... And even so, I felt lost.
My current situation was confusing. My plans had been turned upside down. Even my cultivation as an apprentice seemed more difficult to understand and accept. And when I closed my eyes, the image that flowed into my mind didn't help: symbols of power I couldn't decipher, unknown stories, hidden meanings. What did it all represent? Why did these symbols have so much force? What story did they carry?
There were so many gaps... so many unanswered questions... And all I could do was follow my plan mechanically, hoping that someday I would understand.
Each uncertainty only increased my insecurity. I didn't know what the future held for me. There was still a chance to retreat, to give up... but it would be wasting something unique. And I couldn't throw that away: the chance to become a magician, to protect my family, to satiate my own curiosity and thirst for knowledge.
It was something instinctive, an ambition that I always sought, something that I always longed for. And that's what kept me going.
After that night, the interaction between everyone began to become smoother. The trip became more stable. We were able to go out hunting in pairs without anyone trying to poison their partner's flesh or provoking fights for any reason. We could follow each other during training to find flaws and weaknesses, or just observe. Somehow, a stability emerged.
As we advanced through the forest, the marks of time became more evident on the road and in the signs of intelligent life. Goblins appeared more frequently, forming tribes of their own in caves, abandoned human residences, or any kind of den imaginable.
They ate everything, but their reproduction was cruel. There was the asexual method, which produced one goblin at a time alone, and the sexual method, in which the partner always died while nurturing the goblin tadpoles. It was scary, but it was part of their natural order.
I studied them thoroughly.
They developed a simple language and a writing made by symbols. His intelligence was inferior to that of a human, but still powerful enough to create tools and devise basic strategies.
Goblins have three stages of growth: larval, embryonic, and mature. The most curious thing about this species is that they build something like cradles for their embryos — I recorded them in my notes as 'bone cradles'.
In a way, they practiced a kind of wild magic. They placed bones in precise patterns inside altars. After a sacrificial ritual, these runes activated and produced that green liquid that nourishes their embryos.
Each altar was gigantic, and its construction took years, requiring many sacrifices. Wild animals were used, but they showed a preference for humans and hybrid creatures—I still couldn't understand the exact reason.