That night was longer than any in Nivara.
Sain Lucien sat in the corner of his narrow room,
his eyes fixed on the dark wall, his ears tuned to the moaning wind creeping through the cracks in the roof.
His mother had fallen asleep at her sewing, the needle still between her fingers,
and his father had coughed himself into silence.
Everything around him spoke of weakness —
everything but the fire burning inside his chest;
a fire not quenched by pain, but fed by it.
When dawn began to slip through a broken window, Sain rose quietly.
He looked at his sleeping parents, then at the old hammer resting beside the hearth,
and gripped it as though it were a part of his own soul.
He whispered softly,
"When the world wakes tomorrow, I'll be gone…
I will not live under a hand that strikes me to teach me how to bow."
He opened the door slowly and stepped onto the dirt road.
The ground was damp with the night's dew,
and each step he took seemed to pull him farther away from the boy he had been yesterday.
He walked in silence, yet within him he burned.
It was as if his spirit spoke to him:
> "You've been beaten enough to know the shape of pain,
and trapped enough to understand the taste of freedom.
Now… there's no turning back.
The fire that didn't kill you — made you its own."
He looked up at the gray sky breathing above the village and thought to himself,
in a voice no one could hear:
> "I once thought fire was my enemy.
But it was the only teacher that ever treated me fairly.
Every spark that seared my skin was forging me anew.
Every strike of Bron's hammer carved something in my heart I only understand now:
pain doesn't raise us — it reveals who we are."
He kept walking until he passed the last house in the village,
and stopped at the crossroads between the fields.
Behind him, a home slowly crumbling; ahead, a road whose end he did not know.
He lifted the hammer onto his shoulder and said quietly,
"Farewell, Nivara… you took all my weakness. Keep it."
Then he walked on, without looking back.
---
The forest wasn't far,
yet it felt like another world —
its air colder, its sounds stranger,
the wind threading through the trees as if whispering secrets older than stone.
He spent two nights there — eating bitter fruit, drinking murky water,
sleeping on the earth with fear for a pillow,
and yet, deep inside, he felt a strange peace he had never known before.
On the second night, as the small fire before him swayed like a whispering spirit, he spoke softly:
> "I wanted a simple life — one without shouting, without fear.
A life like the river — flowing quietly toward the sea.
But peace, it seems, is not given to those born in the flame.
We are forged by pain —
not to dwell in it, but to rise beyond it.
And when we finally laugh… our laughter will be heavier than iron, and truer than fire."
---
At dawn on the third day,
as he walked along the forest's edge, he heard a distant rumble —
the pounding of hooves, the grinding of great wheels.
Through the mist emerged a grand carriage drawn by four black horses,
bearing golden banners emblazoned with the kingdom's sigil:
a sword piercing a winged crown — the emblem of the Kingdom of Avirion.
Soldiers in gray uniforms and shining armor surrounded it,
their eyes sweeping the road, searching for something — or someone.
Sain froze in place.
He had seen the kingdom's soldiers only on faded coins and torn posters in the market,
but now they were real — right before his eyes.
The carriage slowed.
One of the soldiers turned his head toward him.
Their gazes met — only for an instant,
but long enough to ignite in him a feeling that wasn't fear.
It was as if the same hammer that had forged his fate yesterday
was being lifted again —
but this time, by a greater hand,
ready to shape a new destiny.
Sain smiled faintly, the spark in his eyes unyielding.
He knew — without knowing how —
that what awaited him was no accident,
but the beginning of a fire that would never die.