The western wood thinned and grew denser as Vaen of Dravidian—Su Vaen former ventured deeper into its inner realms.
The well-known trails were lost in a labyrinth of primeval woods and thorny thickets, the smell lingering in the air with damp earth and natural decay.
Every step was the burden of his recent struggle, and every wheeze the reminder of pain which now seared its way through his battered form.
He limped with a stubborn, crippled will, driven by a nauseating need to flee the storming ash and the bitter memories that it carried.
The wounded soldier faded away where he would not be noticed—a tacky, deserted corner of the forest where time itself stood still.
After hours of fighting through the twisting thickets of the wild, Vaen selected a concealed, vine-shrouded path to a secluded meadow.
A happy accident—a gap in the dense growth to a small clearing, enclosed by weathered, moss-covered stone walls and encircled by crooked trees.
The glen appeared to emanate a peace, an almost magical quiet.
Here, the brutal chaos of his recent battle receded into a gentle whisper, as if the forest itself were giving him relief.
He collapsed onto a bed of ferns, his body vibrating with pain and fatigue.
In that quiet moment, the edges of awareness began to blur.
A darkness, not of night but of fatigue, crept in.
As sight kept retreating, a lost warmth seeped into the deepest recesses of his heart—a memory bright as it was tender.
Through the flickering embers of his expiring mind, he saw it—a peaceful, loving smile.
It was his mother's smile, warm and serene, like the dawn breaking on an interminable night after a raging storm.
Her smile did not judge, but not sorrowfully so, but instead a reassuring solace and unreserved love.
It had felt like, in that instant before succumbing to unconsciousness, she had come forward to soothe him—a being spirit speaking words of hope and of a day on which kindness had been the mode of his kin.
The memory came flooding back over him like balm of healing, stinging from pain of betrayal and pain of loss.
For an instant, the pain and the killing, the savagery of his people and the wickedness of vengeance, were set aside.
There remained the gentle touch of his mother's gentle kindness—a beam of light in the stifling gloom.
Vaen of Dravidian's heart seethed, and his mind grasped the image, with nostalgia for a recollection of something he scarcely remembered.
Her smile was his last hold on the heat of another time, a time when honor and mercy were not sacrificed on the altar of ambition.
The soft sweep of her mouth, the flash of her eyes, the quietness of strength in her regard—it was all a promise that perhaps, in this tarnished heritage, something remained pure.
And as the chill darkness of forgetfulness beckoned, his last clear moment was a wordless vow. Deep in the darkest corner of the lonely glade, wrapped in nature's ageless embrace, he would mend.
He would learn to regain an inheritance that prized the remembrance of his mother.
Although his body might endure the bruising and his heart strained to breaking point, the gentle smile of his mother reassured him that each end was merely a beginning to something else—a life to rebuild, purify, and flee the bloodied umbilical silences of the Su Clan.
And then it appeared, lured by some unseen current, Vaen of Dravidian's mind broke apart, his form crumpling lifeless among the ferns.
In that liminal state of wakefulness and sleep, the memory of his mother's smile endured—the transitory comfort and a spark of hope in the boundless darkness.