The ancient hollow of the Chandelier Tree fell silent. The only sound was the soft, perpetual rustle of the green, healing leaves draped over Gracia and Flexo. Elios, Titan, and Skylara (the apprentice) waited, their gazes fixed on the old man, Eliosa Laston.
Eliosa had broken off his terrible account just as he was about to reveal the "real tragedy"—the final piece of the forty-year puzzle that connected his old world to this cursed island.
Eliosa took a deep, shuddering breath, his aged hands gripping his staff. The air around him seemed thick with the dust of forgotten years and unabsolved guilt.
"That was forty years ago," Eliosa finally resumed, his voice barely a rasp. "The trauma of my isolation began with a single act of cowardice—the decision to leave my son, my brother, and my wife alone."
THE PILGRIMAGE OF PENANCE
He spoke of his immediate quest, a journey that was less a search for medicine and more a pilgrimage of penance.
He traveled across vast, turbulent seas and strange, unmapped continents. But the world offered no rational answers. He found no folklore, no ancient science, and no remedy for the supernatural wound inflicted upon his family. The Mysterious Symbol was an absolute anomaly outside of Mynthara—a curse without a lexicon.
As the years blurred, the sheer weight of his abandonment became a physical burden, his shadow stretching long and thin behind him.
Then, the letter arrived.
It came from his wife, crossing oceans and deserts, guided by the persistent hope of a woman whose love hadn't fully faded. The letter delivered a blow that was both inevitable and crushing: his brother, Deliosa Laston, had died a painful, agonizing death in the hospital. The torment that had begun in his heart had finally consumed his body.
Eliosa crumpled. The weight of his original sin—his inability to choose integrity over fear—crushed him. He felt the phantom pain of his brother's final, ruthless death.
"My brother died believing I had failed him," Eliosa recounted, the pain raw even after decades. He wept not just for Deliosa, but for the loss of his own moral coherence.
The letter was also a plea: his wife desperately wanted him back in the Laston Village.
But Eliosa refused. He was paralyzed by survivor's guilt.
"Why should I return?" he asked, his voice ringing with self-reproach. "What good is a leader who could not save his own blood? My failure was a contagion. A brother who couldn't save his brother wouldn't be able to save his village either."
He chose isolation, convinced that his presence was a vector for the curse. He roamed for more years, a philosophical fugitive, until chance and the faint, persistent trail of the Mysterious Symbol finally led him to the shores of Old Mynthara—an island then untouched by the full terror of the Savior.
MYNTHARA: A FALSE PEACE
The Mynthara he discovered was a vibrant land ruled by strange, supernatural powers—a world of elemental magic that was entirely foreign to his own mundane physics. Yet, despite the strange energies, the people were kind and welcoming.
"Mynthara," Eliosa explained, "was a fascinating paradox. Its people possessed powers that could dismantle mountains, yet their internal societal structure was deeply rooted in communal peace. Rivalries existed, but the clans were united by a strange, mutual respect for the source of their power. It was a functioning, if precarious, equilibrium."
Eliosa, stripped of his clan leadership and any discernible powers in this new reality, found a measure of quiet acceptance. He studied the local healers, attempting to transpose their knowledge of Myntharan medicine back into a framework that might explain the curse that destroyed his brother.
Then, everything changed.
A man arrived. He called himself Savior.
Savior's powers and origins were shrouded in terrifying secrecy, his clans unknown and hidden in shadow. Yet, his political motive was chillingly clear and broadcast everywhere: "ONE NATION, ONE LEADER." It was a totalitarian vision, a complete dismantling of Mynthara's fragile communal order.
"I understood instantly," Eliosa said, his eyes narrowing, reflecting the first surge of focused rage he had felt in decades. "The name Savior was a deliberate act of Socratic irony. He was the cure who brought the plague. He became my ultimate enemy—the specter who had taken my brother's life without ever revealing his true face. I realized then that my personal tragedy was merely the microscopic preview of his continental agenda."
Savior was a coward for not showing his true identity, yet his actions were brutally visible. Eliosa tried to connect, to reason, to expose the tyrant, but the time for diplomacy was over.
Savior showed his true power, and the massacre began. His unseen forces—the progenitors of the Black Stones—descended upon the clans, killing nearly three-fourths of the Myntharan populace and leaving behind a radioactive scar. From that devastation, Savior built his permanent political monument: the Royal Gate, a wall constructed of dark, contaminated stone.
THE POWER AND THE TEMPORAL DEBT
Faced with an enemy whose power was limitless destruction, Eliosa realized his quest for a cure was moot; he needed a weapon.
"It took me twenty years of intense study—two decades of my life simply observing the ebb and flow of the Myntharan magic—to obtain the power of Temporal Healing," Eliosa stated. He spoke of the process not as a gift, but as a transaction with existence itself.
Temporal Healing was subtle: the ability to borrow minutes, hours, or days from the victim's timeline and use that energy to rapidly repair their physical form. "It might not be a very aggressive power, but it was my answer to the Savior's absolute destruction. I sought to negate his chaos with structural integrity."
However, the power came with a devastating temporal debt.
"The power required collateral," Eliosa explained, holding up his withered, age-spotted hands. "The energy I used to heal was subtracted directly from my own life's span. If I healed many, my physical self would age rapidly, my looks becoming instantly ancient, my immunity and stamina plunging. Each act of mercy accelerated my personal extinction."
This was Eliosa's Karmic Burden: every life he saved cost him a portion of his own.
Realizing he could not stand alone against Savior, Eliosa took on a discipleship. He taught his life-costly healing strategy to many worthy Myntharan healers, creating a network of compassionate care to mitigate Savior's constant attacks.
TYBER'S SCAR: THE ECHO OF DELIOSA
It was during this time that he met the warrior who brought him the closest to true paternal pride since his departure from the Laston Village: Tyber Rubberon, Flexo's elder brother.
"Tyber was my favorite," Eliosa admitted, a shadow crossing his face. "He possessed a rare blend of moral fortitude and formidable skill. He was my student, my protégé, and he became the spiritual heir to the healing code I established." Tyber grew strong, guided by Eliosa's teaching and the Laston philosophy of selfless service.
When Rubble Rubberon, Flexo's father, started gathering forces for the great rebellion against the Royal Gate, he sought Eliosa's blessing. Eliosa, consumed by decades of accumulated anger against the man who caused his brother's death, was the first to endorse the war.
"I marched with them," Eliosa declared, his voice regaining its former strength. "With a mind full of thirty years of accumulated rage against the faceless, cowardly Savior, I was fighting my own, personal war." The entire united Myntharan army—including the leader of the Emberion (Fire) Clan—marched toward the ultimate symbol of tyranny.
But soon enough, the radiation—the invisible, corrosive power of the Black Stones—attacked the front lines. The first victim to fall, tragically and inevitably, was the best among them: Eliosa's favorite kid, Tyber Rubberon.
Eliosa rushed to his side. He tried to heal him, pouring vast reserves of his own lifespan into the young warrior. But the radiation was too potent, too ruthless. It was an anti-healing force; it caused tissue to decay faster than Eliosa could restore it.
The description was horrifying: Tyber's eyes began to swell and protrude, his teeth instantly dissolving, all within a few minutes.
Eliosa screamed, a sound that was less noise and more the physical manifestation of his psychological collapse. He thought to sacrifice everything—his entire remaining lifespan—for the sake of Tyber Rubberon, unwilling to see another beloved person die in front of him, consumed by the same guilt that plagued him over Deliosa.
"I tried hard and hard, Elios," he choked out, his eyes wet with ancient tears. "I gave him years of my life. But I couldn't save him."
The rebellion scattered in terror. Only Flexo's father, Rubble Rubberon, stood firm. He saved the lives of many others and preserved the future of the Rubberon Clan.
Eliosa paused, the decades of memory suddenly collapsing into the present. He stared at Elios, the boy who carried the same Laston bloodline.
"That," Eliosa whispered, his voice dry with forty years of sorrow, "is how I got here."
He leaned forward, his ancient eyes locking onto Elios's. He had said enough.
The ultimate secret was reserved for the boy who bore the mark of the cursed lineage.