Anthesis of Sadness

I, who had always wandered endlessly, driven by a brutal instinct, hunting relentlessly to survive, killing to subsist, losing myself aimlessly in the darkness of this merciless world.

I, who had known only the hunger that devours, the solitude that oppresses, and the fear that gnaws at the soul.

I, who had been reduced to a mere existence of survival, without hope, without a future, until all of that shattered.

I, who had been made a slave. A thing to be traded, a worthless object, a broken body, promised to the Lord of Kharz’Gorath as a mere tribute, a sacrifice to a power greater than me, greater than anything I had ever known.

I had become a tool, a pawn in a game I had never wanted to play.

And yet... on the road, something had changed.

A being had appeared, emerging from the void, as suddenly and silently as a shadow taking form in the night.

There had been no warning, no sign, just a presence that manifested there, in the heart of the vastness.

This being belonged to no race I had ever known, nor to any group or creature I could have identified.

It seemed alien to all reality, like a living dissonance in the natural order of things, a rupture in the very fabric of the world.

Its presence, as silent as it was imposing, destabilized everything I believed to be true, everything I had been taught.