Chapter 1556: The Voices

Sylven remained frozen in place. His face was pale and his mind was completely blank, as though every thought had been driven out of it.

He could barely process what stood before him. His mother had returned from the dead and was now looking at him with the same sorrowful expression that he remembered so well.

She was accusing him of abandoning her. She was accusing him of abandoning the plants as well, the very beings that had been his friends and companions for most of his life and the living essence through which he had always understood and wielded his power.

"Mother..." Sylven wanted to say something more. He wanted to explain himself. He wanted to tell her that he had never meant to betray her, but his mind could not find the words. All that escaped his lips was the name he had not spoken in years.

"You betrayed us, Sylven." His mother’s voice struck him with tremendous force.

Sylven flinched as though the words themselves had physically hit him. His shoulders trembled and his breathing became uneven as he stared at her with wide, trembling eyes.

"I didn’t mean to do that," Sylven said with a trembling voice.

"What do you mean?" his mother asked with a sad voice, that also filled with contempt. "You killed me after turning me into a monster."

Sylven’s eyes immediately filled with tears. He lowered his head as his vision became blurred.

"I didn’t mean to do that. I only wanted to make you live longer with me. You were the only person who ever loved me. I didn’t want to lose you."

His mother stared at him with the same sorrowful expression. "So you punished me with that?" she asked. "Because you loved me?"

"No..." The word barely escaped Sylven’s mouth.

His legs gave way and he fell onto his knees. A broken sob escaped him as he lowered his head, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

His face didn’t look like that of a powerful Dragonborn anymore. He looked like what he truly was beneath all that power, a young boy who had been forced to carry more pain than he should ever have known.

Tears rolled down his cheeks as he struggled to breathe through his sobbing.

His mother slowly approached him.

"You said you loved me," she continued. "But when I became something you feared, you were the one who ended my life."

Sylven shook his head desperately. "No... That was not what happened."

"You couldn’t accept what I had become. You couldn’t save me. You couldn’t even stay beside me!" his mother’s voice started to rise.

"Stop..."

"You killed the person who loved you most."

Sylven covered his ears, but her voice continued to reach him.

"You told yourself that you were saving me. Perhaps that made it easier for you to live with what you did. But you still killed me, Sylven."

"Stop it!" His voice broke as he cried out.

But his mother did not stop.

"And now you have done the same thing to the plants. They trusted you because you were one of them. They accepted you as their kind. But when they became something you could no longer accept, you destroyed them."

Sylven’s hands slowly dropped from his ears. His breathing became heavier now.

"You betrayed me," his mother said softly. "And now you have betrayed them."

The words sank into Sylven’s heart one after another. He wanted to deny them, but every denial felt weaker than the last.

He remembered the trees calling him a traitor. He remembered their screams as he destroyed them.

He remembered how he had once spoken to plants as though they were family and how easily that connection had turned into hatred when he saw what they were capable of.

Then the voices returned.

They came from the ruined forest around him.

Even though the trees had been destroyed, the Trial still carried their voices into his mind.

"Traitor!"

Sylven’s body stiffened.

"You killed us!"

"You abandoned your own kind!"

"You were supposed to protect us!"

"You were one of us!"

The voices overlapped until he could barely distinguish one from another.

"You destroyed your own family."

"You called us monsters."

"You became the monster!"

Sylven’s fingers dug into the dirt beneath him.

"Enough..." he whispered.

But the voices continued.

"You betrayed us. You betrayed your mother."

"You betrayed everything you were meant to protect."

Sylven squeezed his eyes shut and closed his ears, but the voices did not disappear. His mother’s words continued echoing alongside them until he could no longer tell which pain belonged to the past and which belonged to the Trial.

His chest tightened as sorrow, anger, guilt, and helplessness collided inside him.

He wanted to scream at them. He wanted to fight back. He wanted to tear the entire Trial apart, but he could no longer find the strength to move.

His anger slowly turned inward. Sylven no longer hated the forest. He hated himself.

His tears continued falling as he stared at the ground. The thought came quietly at first, almost like a whisper buried beneath all the other voices.

If he had never existed, his mother would never have suffered because of him.

If he had never become a Plant Dragon, he would never have betrayed the plants. If he simply disappeared, perhaps all of this pain would finally end.

Sylven’s hands trembled violently.

The thought frightened him, yet another part of him clung to it because he could no longer see any other way out of his suffering.

He felt trapped between grief and guilt with nowhere left to run. His mother’s disappointed face still could be seen before him while the voices of the destroyed forest surrounded him.

He lowered his head further and sobbed.

For one terrible moment, Sylven wanted everything to stop, even if the only way he could imagine ending the pain was by killing himself.

Yet he remained on his knees, trembling beneath the weight of it all, unable to move, alone, and unable to decide what to do next.

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