Ryan...
The boy who grew up cradled in solitude, spending his life searching for something he could never name.
He was born in a small village called Arindale, nestled between forests and mountains—far from the noise of cities, close to the realm of legends.
The grandmothers would say the land here was unlike any other. That the trees could hear, and the wind carried stories.
But Ryan, even as a child, had no need for tales. He carried one within him—unwritten, waiting.
He lost his mother at the age of five. Some said she fell ill, others whispered the forest took her...
No one ever spoke of the details. Her death felt like a secret too dangerous to uncover.
As for his father, he vanished months later—without a trace, without goodbye.
They said he left the village, but Ryan never believed that.
He was raised by his aunt Marissa—a stern woman, kind at heart, but convinced that emotions were a weakness, and dreams, a sin.
She taught him how to read, how to work with wood, instilled in him a love for the earth and the virtue of discipline... yet she never understood his loneliness.
He was different.
Quiet by nature, he loved to gaze into still water, and sit beneath the ancient oak at the forest's edge.
He often felt the forest calling him, though the villagers had warned him time and again:
"Don't go near the woods, Ryan... they're cursed," the priest once murmured.
And added in a hushed voice, "Your father was the last to enter them..."
But he said no more.
Ryan had learned that in Arindale, there were questions better left unasked, and secrets better left buried.
To seek too deeply was to risk losing everything.
He grew older, and with him, his silence deepened.
And in the nights when the village slept, he would hear a whisper-like voice... coming from the forest. But he told no one.
Even in his dreams, there was always a girl—with emerald eyes—waving to him from afar, before vanishing into the mist...
Yet these dreams brought him no fear. If anything, they made him feel... less alone.
One evening, as light rain tapped against the wooden windowpanes, Ryan sat by the fire, flipping through an old book he had found in a chest beneath his aunt's bed.
Its cover was torn, the pages smelling faintly of time.
But the pages weren't ordinary. They were filled with strange symbols and illustrations of creatures unlike any he had ever studied.
As he turned the pages, a loose parchment slipped out—yellowed, as if purposefully forgotten.
It was written in a peculiar hand, yet he could make out a single phrase:
"The last heir of the blended blood... shall restore balance, or awaken the shadows."
His heart stopped—not because he understood it, but because something deep inside him resonated with the words, as if they'd been etched into his very being.
That night, he couldn't sleep. He sat, staring at the flickering firelight, the phrase echoing in his mind.
And in that space between dreaming and waking, he saw the emerald-eyed girl again. This time... she came closer.
She touched his forehead and whispered, like wind through leaves:
"The time is near, Ryan... watch for the signs."
He awoke with a start, heart pounding, her voice still ringing in his ears.
He sat in the darkness, eyes fixed on the ceiling, unable to separate dream from reality.
And from that night onward, the dreams returned—again and again.
Each time, the girl drew nearer, her words more distinct.
Each time, he awoke with a chill running down his spine, as if the forest itself had brushed against him.
Then the signs began to appear…
A black bird perched atop the old oak tree, never leaving.
The taste of the well water—suddenly strange.
And footsteps echoing in the night—heard only from his room.
Bit by bit, Ryan felt the world around him begin to shift.
Or perhaps... it was he who had begun to see what was always there.
The story had begun.