He could no longer bear the cities, the temples, the lies that hung in the air like a sweet, suffocating miasma. He fled into the Whispering Woods, a vast, ancient forest that bordered the heartlands, a place of deep shadows and older magic. Here, surrounded by the silent, judgmental trees, the last of his composure shattered.
The cognitive dissonance was a physical, screaming pain in his skull. He was Arden Valen, the hero who had sacrificed everything for a better world! And he was a nameless, Abyss-touched wretch, a monster in the story his brother had written. He clutched his head, his fingers digging into his scalp, a low, animal moan escaping his lips. The two truths warred in him, a civil war in his soul, tearing his sanity apart. The golden light of his faith sputtered, and the violet void, fed by his anguish, swelled to meet it.
"WHY?!" he screamed, the word a raw, guttural thing that tore from his throat and echoed through the silent, ancient woods, startling birds from their roosts. "WHY DID YOU DO IT?!"
In response, the pain and fury within him found a conduit. The violet energy, no longer content to be a passive passenger, answered his scream. It was not a flicker or a streak. It was a wave, a silent, expanding sphere of negation that pulsed out from his body in a perfect circle.
It did not make a sound. That was the most terrifying part.
Where the wave touched, life simply ceased to be. The vibrant, emerald-green moss on the forest floor turned to a fine, grey ash. The sturdy, centuries-old oaks groaned, their bark cracking like gunshots, their sap boiling away, their leaves withering from vibrant green to brittle brown to nothingness in the space of a single, horrifying breath. The very color was leeched from the world, leaving a perfect circle of desolation thirty paces wide, with Arden kneeling at its center. The air within the circle was still and dead, devoid of scent or sound.
The silence that followed was more deafening than his scream had been.
He fell forward, catching himself on his hands, staring in utter horror at the circle of absolute death he had created. He had not meant to do it. He had not even willed it. It had been a purely emotional reaction. The horror of the act, the sheer, effortless, silent annihilation, finally broke through the last of his delusions. This was not a power he could control. It was a part of him. It was his grief, his rage, his betrayal, given form.
He was changing. The part of him that was Nergath was not a shard; it was a new organ in his soul, a second heart beating in time with his own pain. And it was hungry.