Date: October 27, 542 years since the Fall of Zanra the Dishonorable.
He was five. Maybe six. He didn't remember exactly—those years had merged into a single, gray lump of pain and fear.
The house they lived in stood on the outskirts of a small village. Wooden, dilapidated, with a leaky roof and windows covered with rags instead of glass. Inside smelled of sour cabbage, old ashes, and hopelessness.
His father left when Rosh was very young. He remembered him vaguely—tall, slender, with silver hair that glowed in the moonlight. A Sylvan. A pureblood Sylvan who had come down from the mountains to… what? Rosh never found out. Maybe seeking adventure. Maybe running from something. Or maybe just wanting to feel alive.
His father met his mother—young, beautiful, with black hair and a laugh that, the neighbors said, could melt any heart. They fell in love. For a short time. Then his father left. Didn't say goodbye. Didn't explain. Just vanished one morning, leaving an empty purse on the table and a pregnant wife.
Rosh was born seven months later. His mother never spoke of his father. But she looked at her son as if she saw in him the one who had betrayed her.
"Your eyes," she would whisper when she was drunk. "Your cursed eyes. Just like his. Mismatched. Disgusting."
She didn't beat him often. More when her mood was bad, when the money ran out, when one of the neighbors said something about the "half-breed" who brought misfortune. She beat him with whatever was at hand—a wet rag, a wooden spoon, once a poker. Rosh didn't cry. He learned not to cry before he learned to speak.
"Don't you dare whine," she would say. "You're a man. You have to be strong."
He was strong. He endured. He learned to survive.
---
At seven, he ran away for the first time. He made it to the next village, asked a market woman for food. She gave him a heel of bread and a mug of milk, then asked where his parents were. Rosh didn't answer. Just turned and went back.
His mother was waiting on the doorstep. Her eyes were red—she had been drinking again.
"You think I don't know where you went?" she screamed. "You think they'll accept you? A half-breed? A worthless bastard?"
She hit him across the face. Rosh fell, but didn't cry.
"No one will ever accept you," she hissed. "Never. You're a stranger everywhere. With humans and with Sylvans. Remember that for the rest of your life."
He remembered.
---
At ten, he left for good. Didn't run—left. Packed his belongings—an old jacket, worn boots, a knife he found in the woods—and headed west. Where, according to rumor, the Sylvans lived. Maybe they would accept him. Maybe his father would show up.
They didn't accept him. And his father didn't show up.
The Sylvans looked at him with contempt. A half-breed. Dirty. Unworthy. The son of a man who had disgraced their race.
"Get out," said the elder. "You have no place here."
Rosh left. And never tried to find his father again.
He wandered the world for several years. Slept in forests, in abandoned houses, sometimes in shelters if he was lucky. He learned to steal to keep from starving. Learned to fight so he wouldn't be killed. Learned to trust no one.
His Spirit awakened by accident. When he was about to be killed for stealing bread. Four grown men attacked him, but Rosh, not understanding how, thrust out his hands—and the vectors worked. The attackers flew back, and he, using the confusion, escaped into an alley.
From that day, he began to train. Alone. Without a teacher, without a mentor. He learned to control his vectors, learned to survive, learned to be strong.
*"No one will ever accept you,"* he remembered his mother's words.
He wasn't looking for acceptance.
---
Rosh opened his eyes. The white world still stretched before him—silent, cold, indifferent. Sand, rocks, sky. Nothing had changed.
But inside him, something had changed. He felt it—the dull, aching pain that had been building for years was slowly easing. Not gone, no. Just less sharp.
He remembered Ulvia smiling at him before he left. Datuk slapping him on the shoulder. Sobra nudging him with his nose. They had accepted him. Despite his past, despite his coldness, despite him being a half-breed.
They had become his family.
Rosh clenched his fist, and vectors—thin, almost invisible—flickered around his fingers. The energy control technique was now part of him.
*I will return,* he thought. *With leaves. And we will go on. Together.*
Rosh didn't smile. He rarely smiled. But in his chest, where there had only been emptiness before, a small, barely perceptible warmth began to glow.