The forest was dead.
Not silent — dead.
Silence still held breath… still waited for life to return.
But this place had already given up.
Ash drifted endlessly through the air like pale winter snow, covering the blackened earth in a shroud of forgotten memories.
Once, sunlight had danced between emerald leaves here.
Crystal streams had whispered ancient lullabies.
Laughter — light and eternal — had echoed beneath silver branches.
Now only the wind remained.
It screamed through the broken trees like a grieving spirit that refused to move on.
At the heart of this ruined world stood a single tree.
Tall. Ancient. Unwilling to fall.
Its trunk glowed faintly with fading silver veins, pulsing like the last heartbeat of a dying civilization.
All around it lay destruction — collapsed halls of white stone, shattered statues, and the scattered remains of a people erased from time.
Beneath the final tree sat a girl.
She did not move.
Long silver-white hair flowed down her back like frozen moonlight, stirring slightly each time the wind passed through the graveyard of the forest.
Ash clung to her dark green cloak, to her pale skin, to the quiet sadness carved into her delicate features.
Her emerald eyes stared into the distance.
Not searching.
Not hoping.
Simply existing.
Aerin Solwyn had been sitting there for days.
Or years.
Or perhaps centuries.
Time had long ago lost meaning.
Around her lay bones — countless bones.
Warriors who had once sworn to protect their homeland.
Scholars who had sung to the stars.
Children who had never understood why the sky had turned red.
Her people.
The High Elves.
Gone.
All of them.
Aerin drew a slow breath that barely disturbed the dust around her.
"I am still here…"
The whisper felt foreign on her tongue.
She had spoken so little that words themselves seemed like relics of another life.
Memories flickered behind her eyes.
Golden forests glowing beneath eternal twilight.
Festivals of floating lights.
Her mother's gentle laughter.
Her father's proud gaze as he placed a bow in her small hands for the first time.
Then came the fire.
Screams.
Steel.
Dark shapes moving through the flames like living nightmares.
Aerin remembered fighting until her arms trembled.
Remembered watching friends fall one by one.
Remembered the moment her own heart had stopped beating.
She had welcomed the darkness.
Welcomed the end.
But the end had rejected her.
Her fingers tightened against the cold soil.
Immortality was not a blessing.
It was a prison without walls.
A sudden crack echoed through the dead forest.
Aerin's eyes sharpened instantly.
Life.
Something was alive.
The realization alone was enough to stir a faint, forgotten instinct within her chest.
Slowly she rose to her feet.
Her movements were graceful yet unnaturally still, like a blade being drawn from an ancient sheath.
Ash slid from her cloak and scattered across the wind.
Another sound followed.
Low. Hungry. Growing closer.
From between the burned trees emerged shapes with glowing eyes and skeletal frames.
Wolves — twisted by starvation and the lingering poison of war.
They circled her cautiously.
Predators sensing danger… yet driven beyond reason by the promise of flesh.
Once, creatures of the forest had bowed to her kind.
Now they saw only prey.
The first wolf lunged.
Fangs tore into her shoulder.
Warm blood stained the pale ash beneath her feet.
Aerin did not scream.
More bodies crashed into her, dragging her down into the dust.
Claws ripped. Teeth crushed bone.
Pain surged like a storm tearing through her fading consciousness.
For a fleeting moment, she felt relief.
Maybe this time…
Darkness swallowed her.
The wolves fed until nothing remained but scattered crimson stains beneath the final tree.
Hours passed.
The wind shifted.
The sky grew darker.
And then… silver light began to gather.
Soft at first.
Like the glow of distant stars.
From the center of that radiance, a form slowly took shape.
Unmarked skin.
Moonlit hair.
Emerald eyes opening once more to a world that refused to release her.
Aerin inhaled sharply.
Alive.
Again.
Her trembling hand touched her chest, as if hoping to feel a wound that no longer existed.
"…Why?"
The forest gave no answer.
Far beyond the ruins, thunder rolled across the empty horizon.
Somewhere in that endless world, destiny waited — patient and cruel.
Aerin looked toward the distant unknown.
Then, for the first time since her people had fallen…
She took a step forward.
The journey had begun.