The Song of the Shadows

Kaelen woke the next day with the sun filtering through the treetops, its rays cold and indifferent to the carnage of the night. His body ached, every muscle protesting from the effort and brutality of his first night as a true survivor. But the physical pain was a relief, a distraction from the torment boiling in his mind.

He sat up, leaning against the trunk of an ancient oak. The blood of the bandits, dry and dark, still stained his hands. He didn't feel nausea this time, only a cold numbness. He had killed. He had taken what he needed. And he would do it again. The indifference that cloaked him was armor, a layer of ice over the chaos of his pain.

The whispers hadn't vanished. They had transformed. They were no longer the desperate wails of his broken mind, but a dark, mocking chorus that whispered cruel truths.

"Weak. Useless. Like them."

The voices laughed at his old morality, at Master Elías's ideals.

"Lígia would have stopped you. She would have gotten you killed."

Each phrase was a hammer smashing the last fragments of his humanity.

He stood up, picking up the hand axe from one of the bandits. It was heavy and dented, but it felt strangely right in his hand. A weapon. A survival tool. He gripped it more firmly than a plow.

---

His first goal was to find food and water. The bandits had some dry rations and a water skin, but he knew they wouldn't last. He moved cautiously, his amethyst eyes now more vigilant and hardened, scanning every shadow, every sound. The forest, once a place of games and fairy tales, was now a deadly maze.

He soon found the trail of a small animal, maybe a rabbit. The old Kaelen, the Kaelen from the Valley of Sereno, would have hesitated to hunt. Master Elías had taught him to respect life. But that Kaelen no longer existed. The voices laughed:

"Hunt! Or be hunted!"

He followed the trail with intense focus. He wasn't skilled, but his new agility, a kind of cold fury that gave him a near-predatory focus, helped. Finally, he found the rabbit. Without thinking twice, he threw the axe.

He missed.

The rabbit fled. Frustration struck him, and the voices returned, this time with irritation.

"Useless! Weak!"

Kaelen growled, clenching his fists. It felt like his mind was splitting in two: one part, the old one, tormented by the memory of Lígia and Master Elías; the other, the new one, pushing him toward brutal efficiency. The latter, fed by the whispers, was the one in control now.

---

He spent the next hours hunting, failing, learning. Each failure was a stab from the voices. Each small success, like finding edible berries (with the knowledge his father had taught and that Lígia remembered from her grandmother), was a sigh of relief in his fragmented mind.

By midday, he had managed to trap a couple of small birds with an improvised snare. He wasn't an expert hunter, but he was a survivor.

While cooking the birds over a small fire (taking every precaution not to be discovered), Kaelen looked at his hands.

The silver-white of his hair, such a distinctive trait in the valley, now felt like a mark.

His amethyst eyes, which once reflected light, now seemed to absorb it, leaving a darkness that wasn't just exhaustion.

He was starting to look different, thinner, with a perpetual shadow under his eyes. His reflection in the water was no longer that of young Kaelen, but of a stranger who had already seen too much.

---

The whispers became more defined. Sometimes, they sounded like Lígia's voice, twisted and cruel.

"You shouldn't have survived, Kaelen. I hate you. Why me and not you?"

Other times, they were inhuman voices, deep and resonant, offering him power in exchange for his soul.

"Become what you fear most. Only then will you survive."

They weren't complete hallucinations, but a persistent sensation, a constant pressure in his mind that distorted his perception of reality. Strong emotions, like fear or anger, amplified these voices until they became a deafening roar.

---

He began to move south. He didn't know why south, only that he felt an urgency.

The world beyond the Valley of Sereno was unknown. Master Elías had spoken of fortified cities, of human kingdoms that fought among themselves, and of wild territories dominated by the other races.

By the evening of the second day, Kaelen came across the remains of a camp. It wasn't old; the wood still smelled of recent burning. There was blood. And tracks of something large and heavy.

An Oni.

Pure, primal fear overtook him.

The voices exploded, whispering about the Oni's overwhelming strength, about how pathetic his axe was.

Kaelen froze.

But then, a cold thought pierced through the terror:

Why did they run?

If an Oni had been there, why was the camp abandoned, not destroyed?

With a caution that didn't feel like his own, Kaelen followed the trail.

---

It didn't take long to see the bodies.

They were two men, dressed in traveler's clothes, stabbed, not smashed.

And they weren't alone.

Hovering over them, with terrifying elegance, was a figure.

It was a Vampire.

His pale skin shimmered faintly in the moonlight, and his ruby-red eyes were fixed on the bodies, as if savoring their misery.

The Vampire moved with supernatural grace, whispering something in an ancient tongue Kaelen didn't understand, but that chilled his blood.

This was not a wild predator like the Oni; this was a torturer.

---

Kaelen hid behind a cluster of rocks, his heart pounding.

The voices screamed at him to run, that he didn't stand a chance.

But a new voice, cold and calculating, emerged from among the whispers.

"Watch. Learn. They are not you."

Master Elías had always told him that observation was the key to wisdom.

Now, pragmatic Kaelen used it for survival.

---

The Vampire fed.

It wasn't a quick act; it was slow, deliberate, as if he enjoyed every moment.

Kaelen saw the terror in the victims' eyes, even in death.

This was his blood baptism in the new order of the world.

An order where there was no room for mercy.

---

When the Vampire finished and vanished into the night, Kaelen waited.

He waited until the silence was absolute.

Then, he approached the bodies. He searched them without hesitation, looking for anything useful.

He found a few coins, a small knife, and a rudimentary map showing trade routes and possible settlements.

He didn't hesitate to take them.

---

The experience left him with a new scar, not on his skin, but on his soul.

The massacre in the Valley of Sereno had been a whirlwind of terror.

This was a cold and calculated lesson.

A lesson in how predators operated.

A lesson that he, Kaelen, now needed to learn to become one of them—or at least, someone who could survive among them.

---

He looked at the map, his finger tracing a fortified city several days away.

It was called Grisel.

Most small towns were easy prey.

The big cities, not so much.

They weren't refuges of kindness, but of organized brutality.

---

The song of the shadows in his mind became clearer, more seductive.

It was no longer just a voice of torment, but a guide, a path toward power and survival.

He had lost his innocence, his home, and his loved ones.

But he had gained something else: an iron will, brutal pragmatism, and a mind that, though broken, saw the world with cold and ruthless clarity.

And Kaelen, now, was ready to use it.

---