That night, under the crackling firelight, the air grew thick with a different kind of tension than the forest's usual oppressive silence. Lucien had spent days in the cave, his sanity tethered by the green warding stone, his body slowly knitting itself back together. But the secrets he carried, the searing injustice of his banishment, had begun to burn within him, heavier than any wound. He looked at Vaerin, the enigmatic, masked figure who had saved him. This man had seen the ravages of the Hollowshade, had experienced its unique brand of torment, and yet, he offered a strange, unsettling clarity. It was time for the truth.
"You don't know who I am," Lucien said quietly, his voice a low rumble, raw with unspoken pain. The words felt strange, almost alien on his tongue after so long. He watched Vaerin, waiting for a reaction. "But you should."
Vaerin, who had been meticulously sharpening a long, curved blade with a practiced, rhythmic scrape, paused. The sound of steel on stone ceased, leaving only the soft hiss of the fire. His head, still adorned with the cracked porcelain mask, tilted slightly, and his blind eyes, though empty of light, seemed to pierce the darkness and settle on Lucien. "Speak," Vaerin commanded, his voice flat, allowing no hint of surprise or judgment, only a stark invitation.
Taking a deep breath, Lucien leaned forward, the fire casting dancing shadows across his weary face. "My name is Lucien Halricson. Firstborn of Valdara."
The words hung in the air, charged with forgotten history and profound betrayal. The forest seemed to hush around them, the subtle whispers and rustling of the Hollowshade falling silent, as if even the cursed woods held their breath to listen.
Lucien began to tell his story, each word a painful step through his shattered past. He spoke of his mother, gentle and noble, who had given birth to him and then faded like a whisper, dying in childbirth. He recounted the years that followed, the arrival of Seraphine, his father's second queen – beautiful, clever, and ambitious. He spoke of Renard, the younger brother born of different blood, yet raised by the same father. The public brotherhood, the private rivalry, the growing tension that had settled over the court as Seraphine's influence deepened, her manipulations like poison ivy choking the truth.
He described the insidious whispers planted by Seraphine – accusations of his "recklessness," his "unsuitable temperament" for rule. He recounted the king's slow decline, his increasing susceptibility to Seraphine's cunning. Then came the cold autumn evening, the annual harvest feast, and the devastating accusation of unthinkable crimes – rape and theft – fabricated with perfect precision, supported by bribed guards and twisted truths. He spoke of the court turning against him in an instant, their loyalty crumbling like dust.
The hardest part to voice was his father, King Halric. "The King, old and weary, didn't question the charges," Lucien admitted, his voice cracking with a fresh wave of pain. "Perhaps he feared scandal. Perhaps he feared the queen. But he ordered his firstborn to be imprisoned, stripping him of title and dignity." The raw wound of that betrayal, the silence of his father, still bled within him. He relived the desperate fight against the palace guards, bloodied and utterly betrayed, his furious resistance as he escaped the castle grounds and vanished into the night. The desperate, harried flight for days, hunted like a beast, until he finally crossed the unmarked border into the Hollowshade Wilds.
He looked up, his eyes meeting Vaerin's masked face, searching for any flicker of understanding. "That was the day the prince died," he concluded, the words a stark declaration of the identity he believed he had lost. The pampered, naive prince of Valdara was gone, replaced by a wounded, haunted survivor.
Vaerin remained motionless, the blade still in his hand, a silent, unreadable sentinel. He offered no pity, no comforting words, only a stark, undeniable truth that echoed with the hard-won wisdom of the wild. His voice, when he finally spoke, was measured, deliberate. "No," Vaerin stated, cutting through Lucien's self-pity with the precision of his blade. "That was the day you were born."
Lucien blinked, startled by the unexpected assertion, the cold logic of it. It was a radical shift in perspective, a brutal rebirth. Vaerin continued, his tone a challenge. "You're still breathing. That means you're still a weapon waiting to be forged. This forest breaks the weak. But it tempers those with purpose."
The words resonated deeply within Lucien. The Hollowshade, which had threatened to consume his mind and body, was not merely a prison, but a crucible. It was a place of agonizing trials, designed to shatter the fragile, but to harden and sharpen those with an enduring will. The "prince" may have died, but a new, unyielding entity was emerging from the ashes of his past, forged in the very suffering he had just endured. Vaerin's words were not a comfort, but a call to arms, a brutal acknowledgement of the path that now lay before him.