"If history is written by those who win, then Aeras'Thal has never truly had a victor. Only old wounds written into history."
That was the sentence recorded in one of the old chronicles preserved within the ruins of a royal library long since collapsed, no one knew who wrote it, there was no signature, no royal seal.
Only faded ink and fragile paper, nearly destroyed by the passage of time.
The world of Aeras'Thal itself was a world filled with remnants of the past. In the few surviving ancient maps, the world was divided into five great continents, each carrying its own paths of magic, blood, and prayer.
Some regions were filled with churches that worshipped ancient gods, some kingdoms believed power flowed through bloodlines, others those branded as heretics sought strength through rituals so forbidden that even the heavens themselves might refuse to witness them.
The old maps were scattered with towers and ancient ruins, some were broken fortresses, some were forgotten temples, and some were the remains of ancient cities long swallowed by forests, their stones buried beneath roots and moss.
They were relics of different eras.
Different civilizations.
Different wars.
This world was filled with history, and almost all of that history was written in blood.
Yet even in a world covered in maps, borders, territories, and trade routes...
There were still many places that had never truly been mapped properly. Places with no labels, places that no one fully understood. And one of them was an ancient forest located on the edge of the continent of Cerythralis.
The Forest of Irinthal.
Many people called it a cursed forest, not because demons lived there, also not because spirits haunted its trees, but for a far simpler reason.
People who entered that forest...
Often never returned.
The trees there grew too close together, their trunks dark as if they had been burned by time itself. Thin mist always lingered among the branches, and the deeper one traveled into the forest, the thicker the fog became.
Birds rarely sang within Irinthal, even the wind seemed reluctant to pass through it.
And within that forest...
Someone lived there.
A man who lived alone.
His hair was black, his body was large and solid, built from years of survival rather than training.
His face looked pale.
His eyes carried the dull exhaustion of someone who had grown tired of the world.
Scars covered much of his body.
Long claw marks stretched across his shoulders, chest, and back marks left behind by something far larger than any ordinary beast.
No healer had ever treated those wounds.
They had closed only because time allowed them to.
His name was Noc Valeir. Or at least...
That was the only name he had ever answered when someone asked.
Every morning, he did not wake to the sunlight.
He woke to something else.
The sound of water dripping from leaves and falling to the ground.
Tuk.
Tuk.
Tuk.
A slow, repetitive sound.
Monotonous, yet strangely alive.
Noc slowly opened his eyes.
The roof of the wooden hut above him was full of small cracks that allowed thin lines of morning light to slip through.
He exhaled quietly.
"Still alive… huh."
No one answered.
Of course no one answered.
He lived alone.
After waking up, his routine was always the same.
He grabbed the knife and the small axe resting on a rough wooden table.
As his fingers closed around the knife.
The blade shifted slightly.
A small mistake.
A careless angle.
It was enough.
A thin line of red appeared across his palm.
"…Tch."
The pain came a moment later.
Sharp.
Clean.
Not deep, but not shallow either.
Blood slowly welled from the cut, gathering along the line before slipping down between his fingers.
Noc stared at it in silence.
"…Sloppy."
His voice was low, flat. Not annoyed just stating a fact.
For a brief moment.
The forest felt… different.
The dripping of water from the leaves stopped.
The faint rustling of branches faded.
Even the air seemed to pause.
A drop of blood fell.
Tuk.
It landed on the wooden floor.
And spread.
Too slowly.
Too deliberately.
Noc narrowed his eyes slightly.
"…What?"
He flexed his hand once.
The pain should have been familiar.
Normal.
Insignificant.
And yet...
Something about it felt… wrong.
Not the wound.
But the feeling.
As if something beneath the surface of his skin had stirred.
Watching.
Waiting.
"…Don't start imagining things."
He exhaled quietly, more to dismiss the thought than calm himself.
Wiping the blood against his clothing, he added under his breath.
"Just a scratch."
The forest returned to normal.
The distant dripping resumed.
The air moved again.
As if nothing had happened.
Noc glanced once more at his palm.
"…Yeah."
And without giving it another thought.
He stepped outside to check his traps.
Then he went out to check the animal traps he had set the night before.
Some traps were empty.
Some were not.
That morning, a small rabbit hung from one of the snares.
And a wild boar had been caught in a heavier trap, its leg pinned tightly.
Noc stared at the animal for a moment.
"Hm… not bad."
He lifted his axe and struck the boar's head with the blunt side.
The animal collapsed unconscious.
"Just in case you wake up sooner than expected."
He tied the boar's legs securely.
After that, he slung the wild boar over his shoulder and grabbed the rabbit by its ears.
Carrying both, he walked back toward his hut.
Near the small cabin stood a circle of stones used as a fire pit.
He calmly lit the fire.
Dry wood cracked as the flames spread.
Krek.
Krek.
Thin smoke rose slowly into the air before disappearing between the dark branches of Irinthal.
Sometimes, when he sat quietly like this...
The forest felt like it was watching him.
From somewhere unseen.
From something unknown.
But Noc never paid much attention to it.
He had lived with silence for far too long to be bothered by such feelings.
He simply stared into the fire.
And spoke softly to himself.
"I died..."
He paused.
"Five years ago."
Five years ago, Noc Valeir was not a hermit living deep within a forest.
He had simply been a porter.
A low-ranking member of a secret expedition sent by the Kingdom of Solvenhart.
Their mission was to explore the northern regions of the continent of Cerythralis. The kingdom wanted new maps, new routes, new knowledge.
But they were careful to avoid provoking the elven nation located in the southern part of the continent.
The expedition consisted of twenty people.
Explorers, knights, a royal mage, and several laborers like Noc.
They traveled across the sea using a merchant vessel to disguise their journey.
For weeks, the voyage had been uneventful. But everything changed on the twenty-third day after they reached the continent—the fourteenth day since they ventured into the forest.
The mist descended far too quickly that day, the forest grew silent, and from within the fog...
Something appeared.
A tiger.
But not an ordinary one.
It was enormous.
Its fangs were long enough to pierce armor.
Its eyes glowed yellow like molten gold burning within darkness.
And its body had no stripes.
It was a Thalgrim.
A predator so dangerous that even trained knights struggled to kill one.
The attack happened too quickly.
Screams.
Blood.
Claws tearing through flesh.
Noc still remembered everything.
He remembered being thrown to the ground.
He remembered the tiger's fangs sinking into his shoulder.
He remembered someone shouting.
"Run!"
But the thing he remembered most clearly...
Was laughter.
People were laughing.
One of the expedition members spoke casually.
"Just leave him as bait. We don't have time."
"He's only a porter."
Footsteps faded away.
And Noc was left behind.
Half dead.
When he finally regained consciousness...
The thick fog had already faded.
The expedition was gone.
But something was strange.
"W-why... why am I still alive?"
"Why... didn't the tiger eat me?"
Noc crawled forward through the dirt.
His body was covered in wounds, and he had lost far too much blood.
"Damn it…"
Not far from where he had fallen...
He saw something else.
The people who abandoned him were dead.
Their bodies were scattered across the forest, some were torn apart.
And the tiger...
Was gone.
"Hahh… what… actually happened here…"
Even now, Noc had never truly understood why the tiger left him alive.
Or why he was the only one who survived.
But he understood one thing clearly.
If he returned to the kingdom...
He would not be welcomed as a survivor.
He would become a scapegoat.
Someone to blame for the expedition's failure.
So he never went back.
Instead, he chose to remain here, in the Forest of Irinthal.
A place everyone else feared.
Not far from that forest stood a small village called Oryn.
It was a quiet fishing village, simple wooden houses lined the edge of a narrow river, fishing nets hung from bamboo poles, swaying gently in the evening wind.
One night, several fishermen sat beside a campfire.
One of them pointed toward the distant forest.
"Do you see that?"
A thin line of smoke rose above the far treetops.
"That's coming from Irinthal Forest…"
An old fisherman frowned.
"That forest has never had smoke before."
A young hunter spoke quietly.
"Maybe the fog's thinner these days."
"But I've seen someone there."
"Someone?"
"Yes."
"What did he look like?"
The hunter hesitated before answering.
"Big body."
"And covered in scars."
A child who overheard the conversation whispered nervously.
"Father… is he a monster?"
His father chuckled softly.
"No."
He looked toward the dark forest in the distance.
"If he were a monster… this village would've been destroyed long ago."
A woman sitting near them spoke quietly.
"Maybe he's a guardian."
"A guardian?"
"Yes."
"A guardian of that forest."
The words spread quickly.
Children began whispering a new name.
The Scarred Guardian of the Forest.
"Maybe he's protecting something."
"Maybe he's a knight who abandoned the world."
"Maybe he isn't human."
The campfire crackled softly, the conversation continued.
And like every story born in a small village...
The words spread like candlelight through the night.
To the people of Oryn, he became something simple.
A strong man.
A mysterious protector.
And far within the depths of Irinthal Forest...
A man named Noc Valeir sat quietly beside his small fire.
Completely unaware of the stories spreading beyond the trees.
He stared at the flames.
And murmured to himself.
"Sometimes belief is far more dangerous than reality."