Chapter 1555: Betrayed
The voices of the broken and dying trees echoed throughout the forest. They cried out in pain as their trunks split and their roots were torn from the earth.
Their screams mixed with curses and desperate pleas that filled every corner of Sylven’s mind.
He was the only one who could hear all of them because of the connection he shared with plants. If there were another being who happened to stand nearby and lacked that connection, the sounds would have been just groaning of breaking wood and the crashing of falling trees.
To Sylven, however, every sound carried a voice and every voice carried pain.
He could hear the fear in them as they realized that their destruction was approaching. He could hear their hatred as they cursed him for what he was doing.
The killing continued. Sylven kept pouring his Magic into the forest and used his connection with plants to force the trees apart and crush them beneath their own weight.
Their roots twisted violently while their trunks bent until the wood finally snapped.
Some of the trees screamed at him while others shouted curses through voices that trembled with anger.
They accused him of betraying his own kind. They called him a traitor and demanded to know why he was killing them.
Some even told him that he had betrayed the very nature that had given him his power.
Sylven heard every word, but he did not answer. He just continued his attack and watched the forest collapse around him.
Those accusations struck deeper than he wanted to admit. A sharp pang of pain entered his chest whenever they called him a traitor because those words touched something that mattered to him.
These were plants. They were supposed to be his kind. For as long as he could remember, Sylven had felt more comfortable among trees and flowers than he had around other people.
He had trusted plants because he believed they possessed a simple nature. They could defend themselves when threatened and become dangerous when their lives were in danger, but he had never believed that they could possess the kind of bloodlust he had witnessed.
Now the forest had shown him different things. The trees had deliberately manipulated living creatures into killing one another just because they wanted to feed on their bodies.
Sylven searched for some sign that the forest had been corrupted, some strange force that had twisted the plants into what they had become.
He found nothing.
There was no foreign presence inside them and no obvious corruption that could explain their behavior. They simply wanted to kill. They simply wanted to feed.
That realization hurt him more than if they had been corrupted because it meant their actions came from the desire that always existed within them.
Sylven wondered whether every plant carried the potential to become this savage if given the right circumstances.
He clenched his fists and forced himself to continue. He no longer wanted to think of these trees as part of him. Whatever connection he had shared with them before felt distant now.
Their voices still reached him, but he no longer listened to them as though they were the voices of family. He heard them as the voices of creatures he had decided to leave behind.
Yet even as he tried to separate himself from them, their words continued to hurt. Somewhere inside him, a part of Sylven still wanted to believe that the plants were different. He didn’t know anymore if he could believe that again.
He did not know how much time passed after that. Sylven continued destroying the forest while the voices followed him from every direction.
The trees cursed him, screamed at him. Some called him a traitor while others begged him to stop. Their voices gradually weakened as their bodies were destroyed, but Sylven kept hearing them until even the last cries began to fade.
Eventually, silence settled over the forest.
Sylven stood among the remains and slowly looked around.
The forests that had once appeared endless and peaceful were reduced to a vast field of destruction. Trees were torn apart until only piles of splintered wood and shattered bark remained across the ground.
Broken roots lay exposed among the dirt and countless leaves covered the earth.
There were no more voices, curses, or screams. Sylven could no longer feel the presence of the plants around him.
He stood there without moving. The anger that had driven him forward had disappeared, leaving behind empty feelings.
Sylven felt numb. He was expecting satisfaction after destroying the forest, but there was none.
He did not feel victorious or relieved. He only felt exhausted and strangely hollow, as if he had destroyed something inside himself along with the trees.
He looked at his hands and then at the ruined forest around him, but he no longer knew what he was supposed to do next.
Then he noticed movement among the ruins.
Sylven slowly raised his head and saw a figure emerging from behind the remains of the trees and walked toward him through the debris.
At first, Sylven could not understand what he was seeing. His mind refused to accept the shape standing before him.
It was his mother.
The woman who had once been the most important person in his life had returned from the memory that had haunted him for years. She was the person Sylven had killed. She was the source of the Black Rage that had consumed him and the wound that left lasting suffering within his soul.
Now she stood before him.
Sylven’s body trembled.
He wanted to tell himself that she was only another illusion, just like everything else he had encountered inside the Trial. He knew that she could not truly be standing there.
He knew his mother was dead. But knowing that did not stop the grief that suddenly rose inside him.
His mother looked at him with a sorrowful expression.
"You betrayed your own kind," she said.
Sylven’s breath caught in his throat.
"Just like you betrayed me."
Sylven trembled harder.
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