Chapter 112 - A Lamb Before Slaughter

It was there, in the stillness that followed the old man's roar, in the quiet space where no one dared to speak and even the trees seemed to hold their breath, that Sylvaris realized he still remembered what it felt like to admire someone without shame, to belong not to a lineage or a title, but to a single soul who had chosen him, who had stood for him without condition, without hesitation, without fear. That memory, buried so deep it had become almost myth, surged back into focus—not carved in monuments or etched into lineage scrolls, but burned into memory, into the fibers of his being, the kind of moment that doesn't fade with time but only grows sharper the more the world tries to bury it.