Chapter 2: Why Did He Stop?

Armored Dragon Calendar Year 410 – One Week After the Awakening

—

[Sylphiette POV]

‘Every morning was the same prayer. Please let them not find me today.’ It never worked.

I lay in bed watching pale light creep through our small window, listening to my parents’ quiet movements in the next room. Mother was humming something soft while preparing breakfast. Father’s heavier footsteps moved toward the door, probably heading out to check the livestock. These sounds should have been comforting. They were the sounds of home, of safety, of people who loved me.

But the moment I stepped outside, that safety would vanish.

My emerald hair spilled across the pillow like a curse made visible. I gathered it up and twisted it into a tight braid, tucking the ends beneath my collar. Maybe if I hid it well enough, they wouldn’t notice. Maybe today would be different.

‘The same hope I had every morning. The same disappointment that always followed.’

I caught my reflection in the small mirror by my bed. A pale face stared back at me, too thin from the meals I couldn’t finish because my stomach was always in knots. Dark circles under my eyes from the nights I spent dreading tomorrow. And of course, the hair. Always the hair.

Green like the mages of legend, Mother had told me once, trying to make it seem special. Green like poison, the village children had corrected. Green like a demon. Green like something those supardians…

The smell of fresh bread drifted from the kitchen, warm and comforting. I should have been hungry, but my stomach was already knotting itself in anticipation of what waited outside. The same thing that waited every day. The same cruel faces, the same mocking words, the same mud and pebbles and tears.

At the table, Father studied me over his bowl of porridge. My father had broad shoulders and callused hands, the kind of person who solved problems with his fists when words failed. But he couldn’t solve this. He couldn’t make my hair a different color. He couldn’t make the other children forget that I was different.

I had seen him try, once. Had watched from a distance as he confronted Claude’s father about the bullying. Roland had apologized, had promised to speak with his son. Nothing had changed. The next day, Claude had thrown mud at my face and called me a demon’s child.

“I could walk you to the Greyrat house,” he offered, the same offer he made every morning. His voice carried a gruffness that I knew hid concern.

“I’m fine, Father.”

“Sylphy…”

“I’m fine.”

The words came out sharper than I intended. I saw the hurt flicker across his face before he masked it with a gruff nod. He was only trying to help. But having my father escort me like a baby would only make things worse. The boys would find new things to say. New ways to remind me that I didn’t belong. They would call me weak, call my father names for defending a demon child.

Sometimes I wondered if it would be easier if I didn’t have green hair at all. If I was just… normal. Would Claude and his friends have found something else to hate about me? Or would I have friends of my own, children who played with me instead of running away?

I would never know. The green hair was part of me, as unchangeable as my heartbeat.

I ate quickly, barely tasting the food, then slipped out the door before either parent could say more.

The morning air was cool against my skin, carrying the familiar scents of wood smoke and damp earth. Buena Village was waking around me. A dog barked in the distance. Someone’s cart rumbled along the main road, wheels creaking over packed dirt. Normal sounds of a normal day.

Normal for everyone except me.

I kept to the edges of the path, ready to dart into the trees if I heard their voices. My heart beat faster with each step toward the village center. Any moment now. Any moment they would appear around a corner, armed with their cruel words and crueler hands.

Every shadow seemed threatening. Every distant laugh made me flinch. I had learned to read the village like a map of danger zones. The well was usually safe in the early morning, but dangerous after noon when the boys gathered to show off for each other. The market square was unpredictable. The path behind the smithy was where Claude liked to wait.

But the path remained empty.

I spotted Claude before he saw me. He was walking alone near the well, his dark catching the early light. My feet stopped moving of their own accord. Every muscle in my body screamed at me to run, to hide, to find cover before he noticed my green hair gleaming in the sun.

‘Too late. He was too close. If I ran now, he would chase. He always chased.’

Then he looked up.

Our eyes met across the dusty path.

I braced myself for the cruel smile, for the mocking words, for mud or pebbles or whatever he had decided to throw today. My hands curled into fists at my sides, nails digging into my palms.

But Claude’s expression twisted. Not anger. Not cruelty. Was that… fear? He flinched when he saw my hair—actually flinched—like the color had hit him.

His face went pale. For a moment, I thought he might cry.

Then he looked away and walked past without a word.

I stood frozen, unable to process what had just happened. My legs trembled beneath me. I realized I had been holding my breath and let it out in a shaky exhale.

He didn’t throw anything. He didn’t say anything. He just… walked away.

My heart was racing, but not from fear anymore. From confusion. From a hope so fragile I was afraid to acknowledge it.

Was this some kind of trick? A new game? Was he waiting for me to let my guard down so the ambush would hurt more?

I looked around for his friends, the other boys who usually accompanied him on his hunts. But the path was empty. Claude walked alone, his shoulders hunched, his steps heavy with something that looked almost like exhaustion.

—

For three days, it continued like this. I would see Claude in the village, sometimes alone, sometimes with the adults. Each time our eyes met, he would look away first. Each time I braced for cruelty, I received only silence.

It made no sense. People didn’t change overnight. Especially not people like Claude, who had tormented me for as long as I could remember.

I started watching him.

Not obviously. I was good at not being noticed. Years of practice had taught me how to fade into backgrounds, how to observe without being observed. The other children had given me that skill, ironically. When you spend your life being hunted, you learn to become invisible.

So I watched Claude train with Paul Greyrat behind the guard captain’s house.

He was different.

He moved with an intensity I had never seen before, throwing himself at the training with a desperation that seemed almost painful to witness. Paul would demonstrate a stance or a swing, and Claude would copy it with far more precision than any child his age should possess. His movements were sharp, controlled, almost professional.

But his movements were wrong too. Sometimes his body would shift into positions that looked practiced—honed over years—and then a heartbeat later he’d stumble like he’d forgotten how he got there. Two people fighting for the same limbs.

He muttered to himself sometimes. I was too far away to hear the words, but I could see his lips moving, see him shake his head as though arguing with an opponent only he could perceive. Once, I saw him press his fingers to his temple and grimace, as though in pain.

His eyes looked older. That part unsettled me most. When he thought no one was watching, his eyes would go distant. Hollow. The eyes of someone who’d lived decades, not years.

I had seen old men with eyes like that. Men who had been to war, who had watched friends die, who carried memories too heavy for their shoulders.

But never children.

“That Claude boy,” I overheard a village woman say to her neighbor by the baker’s stall. “Something’s not right with him. Too quiet now. You’d think he saw a demon.”

“Serves him right,” the neighbor replied, adjusting her basket of bread. “Always was a troublemaker. Maybe Paul’s finally knocking some sense into him.”

They laughed, and I slipped away before they could notice me listening.

But I didn’t think Paul was knocking sense into him. I had watched Paul teach. He was strict but fair, demanding but not cruel. Whatever had changed Claude, it wasn’t training.

On the second day, I saw Claude standing at the edge of the forest, staring at the trees with an expression I couldn’t read. He stood there for nearly an hour, motionless, barely breathing. When he finally turned away, there were tears on his cheeks.

‘Boys didn’t cry. Especially not boys like Claude.’

On the third day, I watched him sit alone by the river, writing something in the mud with a stick. When he left, I crept closer to see what he had written.

Names. Dozens of names, most of them unfamiliar. Some were crossed out. Others had marks beside them that I didn’t understand.

My name was there, near the top. Sylphiette. And next to it, a single word: Sorry.

I stared at that word until the current washed it away.

—

On the fourth evening, I went back to the forest clearing.

It was my place. My sanctuary. The one spot in the village where I could be myself without fear of judgment or cruelty. The ancient oak spread its protective branches overhead, and wildflowers dotted the grass with splashes of color. Here, I could forget about my green hair. Here, I could pretend I was just a normal girl with normal problems.

Here, I had woven countless flower crowns, the petals and stems my only friends.

But someone was already there.

Claude sat beneath my oak tree, staring at the trunk as though it held answers to questions I couldn’t imagine. His shoulders were slumped, and even from a distance, I could see the tension coiled in his small frame. He looked smaller than usual. Younger and older at the same time.

I should have left. Every instinct screamed at me to turn around and run. This boy had thrown mud at my face. He had called me names. He had made me cry more times than I could count.

But my feet carried me forward.

A twig snapped beneath my shoe. Claude’s head whipped around. His face went through three expressions in half a second—fear, then guilt, then something raw that I didn’t have a name for.

I froze, waiting for the inevitable.

“I’m sorry.”

The words were so quiet I almost missed them. Claude wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was fixed on the ground between us, and his hands were shaking. Not with anger. With grief. It looked like grief.

“I’m sorry, Sylph.”

My breath caught. No one called me that. Not my parents, not Rudeus—no one. A nickname I’d never heard before, spoken like he’d said it a thousand times. Like breathing.

“Why…” I found my voice, though it trembled. “Why do you call me that?.”

Claude was quiet. His jaw worked, fighting words that wouldn’t come. When he finally looked up, his expression was cracked open. Broken. Despite everything, I wanted to help him.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “It just… felt right.”

We stared at each other across the clearing. Sun through leaves. Wind in the flowers. Birds that didn’t care what was happening between two children who used to be enemies.

“I can’t explain what happened to me,” Claude continued. His voice was steadier now, but tired. So tired. “I woke up a few days ago and I was… different. I remembered things that didn’t make sense. Felt things I shouldn’t feel.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “But one thing was clear. What I did to you was wrong. What I was going to do was worse. And I won’t… I can’t…”

He trailed off, shaking his head.

“I won’t hurt you again. I promise.”

I should have laughed. I should have told him that promises from bullies meant nothing. I should have reminded him of every pebble, every mudball, every cruel word. Of the time he had chased me through the village until I fell and scraped my knees. Of the names he had called me, names that still echoed in my nightmares.

But his eyes made me believe him. Not kindness—pain. Like he’d already seen the worst thing imaginable, and it had cracked him down the middle.

“Why did you stop?” I asked.

Claude’s jaw tightened. For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer. The silence stretched between us, filled with the rustle of leaves and the distant song of birds.

Then he let out a breath that seemed to carry years of exhaustion.

“Because I remember what happens if I don’t.”

The words made no sense. How could he remember something that hadn’t happened? How could anyone remember the future?

But the certainty in his voice was absolute, and I found myself nodding as though I understood. As though his impossible words carried a truth I couldn’t quite grasp.

“Okay,” I said quietly.

“Okay?”

“I believe you.”

Surprise. Then his shoulders dropped, and his hands finally stopped shaking.

He pushed himself to his feet, brushing dirt from his clothes. He was still small for his age, still the same boy who had tormented me. But somehow, standing there in the dappled sunlight, he seemed different. Changed in ways I couldn’t articulate.

“I should go,” he said. “But… if you want… we don’t have to be enemies. Not anymore.”

He didn’t wait for my response. He walked past me toward the village, leaving me alone in the clearing with the oak tree and the wildflowers and questions I didn’t know how to ask.

I stood there until the sun began to sink toward the horizon, casting long shadows across the grass. The clearing grew darker, cooler, but I barely noticed. My mind was too full.

Then, slowly, I walked to where my flower crown had fallen days ago. The petals had wilted, the stems gone brown and brittle. A casualty of neglect, of days spent hiding from a boy who no longer wanted to hunt me.

I began making a new one.

As my fingers wove the stems together, I thought about the boy who had tormented me and the stranger who had apologized. They wore the same face, but they weren’t the same person. Something had changed Claude, something profound and painful. Something that had aged his eyes and filled them with shadows that belonged to someone much older.

What kind of memory could do that to a child?

What kind of future had he seen?

I didn’t understand it. Wasn’t sure I wanted to. Some truths are too big. Maybe not knowing was better.

But for the first time in my life, I didn’t dread tomorrow.

—

When I finally walked home, the first stars were appearing in the darkening sky. The air had grown cool, carrying the scent of evening fires and cooking dinners. My parents looked up with matching expressions of relief when I came through the door.

“Where have you been?” Father demanded, though his gruff tone couldn’t hide his worry. He was on his feet before I had finished closing the door, his large hands reaching for my shoulders as though to check for injuries.

“The forest clearing,” I said. “Just… thinking.”

I thought about Claude’s apology, his shaking hands, the pain in his eyes when he looked at my hair, as though the color itself carried memories he couldn’t bear. The way he had said my name—Sylph—as though he had known me for years.

“Claude apologized to me,” I said. “He said he won’t hurt me anymore.”

Father’s expression hardened with suspicion. “Boys like that don’t just change, Sylphy. Be careful.”

“People can surprise us,” Mother said softly, placing a hand on Father’s arm. “Maybe something happened to him.”

I nodded, though I wasn’t really listening. My thoughts were still in the clearing, still trying to understand the stranger who wore my bully’s face.

“He looked at my hair,” I said quietly, more to myself than to them. “And he was scared. But not of me.”

Dinner was quiet. I ate mechanically, tasting nothing, my mind a thousand miles away. Father tried to make conversation about his work, about the neighbor’s new horse, about the weather.

Later, lying in my narrow bed with the covers pulled up to my chin, I stared at the ceiling and thought about what Claude had said.

I remember what happens if I don’t.

The words echoed in my mind, strange and impossible and somehow true. He had spoken them with the conviction of someone describing a memory, not a fear. As though he had seen a future where he kept hurting me, and that future had been terrible enough to change him completely.

But that was ridiculous. Nobody could remember the future.

Could they?

I turned over, pressing my face into the pillow. The fabric smelled of home and safety, familiar scents that usually soothed me into sleep.

Tonight, they weren’t enough.

I didn’t trust him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

But I believed him when he said he wouldn’t hurt me again.

And for now, that was enough.

I closed my eyes and waited for sleep, dreaming of flower crowns and oak trees and a boy who remembered things that hadn’t happened yet.

Tomorrow would come. And for the first time in years, I wasn’t afraid of it.