These rough, hard-bitten men had walked paths full of thorns themselves. They knew better than anyone the importance of keeping both feet firmly on the ground.
What they couldn’t stand wasn’t the young ones having dreams—it was the kind of airy restlessness that floated among the clouds but refused to look down at the actual road.
The heated complaints, clinking mugs, and dissatisfied sighs rolled on for a good while, like a sudden summer downpour—fierce when it came, gone just as quickly.
When the last hunter muttered “spoiled rotten” and raised his mug only to find it empty, the tavern abruptly fell quiet.
Only the occasional crackle of logs splitting in the hearth and the faint, steady rasp of Old Barnaby’s file on wood behind the bar remained.
That sudden silence felt heavier than all the earlier noise combined.
Hunters stared down at the blurred, weary reflections of their own faces in the dregs of their ale, or gazed blankly into the fire. The air carried the faint emptiness that follows any release of pent-up feeling, along with a deeper, unspoken confusion about how to guide the next generation.
The lively clamor receded, leaving behind the cold, exposed mudflats of reality—and a group of silent guardians who grumbled but could never truly set down their responsibility.
The heavy, understanding silence about the young reserves’ impatience was broken by the sound of ale sliding down a throat.
Beside Brog sat a man with a gleaming bald head and a vicious scar slashing from his left temple down across his right jaw—“Scarface Vorn.” He set his rough clay mug down, rough fingertips unconsciously tracing a crack in the rim. His gaze drifted unfocused toward the dancing flames in the hearth. His voice came out low and hoarse, carrying the weight of old wounds best left buried:
“Such a damn shame… Our village was supposed to produce the brightest star of them all. What a fucking waste.”
That sigh landed like a cold stone dropped into still water—not a ripple, but a deep, suppressed swell that stirred everything beneath the surface.
Brog’s hand paused on his mug. Pride and raw, aching regret flared in his eyes almost instantly.
“Yeah… Rune, that kid…” His voice tightened with sudden emotion. “Smart in a way that doesn’t even seem fair—not flashy cleverness, but the quiet, clear kind, like spring water deep in the old forest. Never panics when things go sideways. Steadier than any boy his age has any right to be—ten times steadier. He’s got every quality a real hunter, a real warrior, needs baked in from birth: observation, patience, cold calculation, decisive action in the clutch. And more than anything, he’s grounded. Never drifts. One solid step after another. Not to mention…”
Brog’s voice rose here, thick with genuine pride. “He awakened as a mage! One of the strongest transcendent professions there is!”
But the light flickered like a candle in the wind—bright for a moment, then dimming fast.
He slammed the mug back, draining the last of the ale in one fierce swallow as though trying to douse the smothered rage inside. The empty cup hit the thick wood table with a thud that made nearby mugs jump; golden droplets splashed out, gleaming like unwilling tears under the lamplight.
“But what the hell is this?!” Brog’s tightly leashed anger finally broke through. His teeth ground audibly; veins stood out on his neck as he forced the words through clenched jaws. “Those bastard gods… are they playing a sick joke with this kid’s life?! They crack open a door to the sky, then brick it shut with the cheapest mud, leaving only a crack a rat couldn’t squeeze through! A Fireball… a Fireball?! That’s what they call a mage? That’s a damn parlor trick! That’s… mockery! Pure, vicious mockery!”
His ragged breathing cut through the sudden, pin-drop silence of the tavern—anger laced with helpless pain.
“If you ask me,” the brown-haired, brown-bearded hunter who’d complained earlier about the young ones’ impatience suddenly lifted his head from the shadows near the door. His face looked darker in the firelight. He spoke fast and sharp, resentment spilling over like he’d finally found an outlet. “That little brat just wasn’t sincere enough! Not enough reverence for the gods! Otherwise—how do you explain it? The whole damn village scraped together everything we had—sold pots, traded medicine money, dug out hoarded magic crystals and beast cores, even brought out Grandpa’s old enchanted silver heirloom—just to give him the most proper awakening ritual possible. We piled it into a damn mountain to beg for the best guidance! And what did we get? A Fireball! Ha! Wasted it all! Wasted that ‘mage’ title even more!”
His voice rose, shaking with agitation, as though every grievance he’d swallowed outside was finally pouring out—aimed, unfairly, at the quiet boy.
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“You know what I heard yesterday at the Adventurer’s Rest?” Mance’s tone cracked with humiliation and fury. He glared around the room. “I went to pick up fresh news, see what the outside world’s saying. Instead of intel, I got cornered by a pack of shiny-armored, nose-in-the-air bastards who wouldn’t shut up about our village’s ‘world-famous Fireball Mage’! Rune? Ha! His name’s louder now than Blackoak Village’s position on the edge of the Black Forest! Became their favorite drinking joke! ‘Oh, that village that pooled everything to raise a fire-trick performer?’ ‘Heard they thought they’d get an Archmage God? Turns out it’s a kid who can barely light a cigarette?’ I… I fucking…”
Mance’s face turned liver-red; his knuckles whitened around the mug as though he were strangling the mocking faces he remembered.
“Every time I see one of those outsiders now, my face burns. Can’t even lift my head! He’s… he’s a damn curse!”
The last two words came out like spit.
Dead silence gripped the tavern.
Only the hearth’s occasional pop and the faint, relentless rasp of Old Barnaby’s file on wood behind the bar.
The hunters’ expressions varied, but most darkened into something heavy and troubled.
Mance’s words were harsh, unfair, even despicable in shifting external pressure onto a boy—but they struck an undeniable truth. For weeks now, every hunter here had felt—openly or subtly—the sidelong glances, the whispers, the changed atmosphere whenever “Blackoak Village’s Fireball Mage” came up.
The collective pride they’d once felt when Rune awakened as a mage had soured, through one veiled or outright jab after another, into something unspoken and suffocating: embarrassment, resentment, and a faint, reluctant thread of blame.
They had buried it under sympathy for Rune and loyalty to the village—until Mance, fueled by drink and his own humiliation, ripped the scab wide open.
No one echoed Mance’s venomous accusation.
But no one immediately refuted it either.
A thick, suffocating quiet settled over the Oak Mug Tavern, as though the very air had soaked up malt and bitterness that couldn’t be washed away.
Firelight danced across angular faces now etched with complex emotion, deepening the lines of their silence. Regret for Rune’s wasted potential, fury at fate’s cruelty, humiliation under outside scorn, and—buried deepest, barely acknowledged—a faint, unwilling aversion toward the “source of the trouble”…
All of it churned slowly beneath the ice of their quiet like thick, muddy water.
“Mr. Mance, if my existence has caused you trouble, then I apologize.”
Just as the echo of Mance’s resentful tirade still hung in the heavy air, a calm voice—devoid of any heat—spoke from the tavern door, which had not yet fully closed.
Every head snapped around.
A young figure stood framed in the threshold, half in the dim yellow light, half in the deeper shadow of the room.
It was Rune.
He had clearly overheard everything.
He stood quietly on the boundary between lamplight and gloom, expression showing neither anger nor hurt—only a near-transparent calm born of careful thought.
He stepped inside. Each footfall was measured and even as he walked straight to Mance—the red-faced, still-breathing-hard uncle who had once been a genuine elder in his eyes.
Every gaze in the tavern locked on him. Even Old Barnaby’s file paused for half a heartbeat.
Rune stopped. He looked directly at the man who had watched him grow from a toddler into the tall youth he was now—the man he had once sincerely respected.
He drew a small breath and spoke, voice clear, pace even, as though stating a neutral theorem:
“First, Mr. Mance.”
He deliberately omitted the familiar, affectionate “Uncle”—a small but cutting omission that chilled the surrounding air like a needle.
“Because of my situation, you’ve been embarrassed in front of outsiders and subjected to ridicule. For that, I offer my apology. It was never my intention, nor something I could control.”
He paused. His eyes remained clear, unflinching. “But I must clarify: the current state of affairs is in no way something I desired or chose. I am confident that during the awakening ritual, I offered the gods every ounce of sincerity and focus I possessed. Whether my faith was pure is something only I—and the gods—know. I myself do not understand why the result was ‘a Fireball.’ That outcome is not what I wanted for my future either.”
His tone sharpened almost imperceptibly—carrying the subtle edge of youth coming into its own: “Therefore, if you intend to lay the blame for all of this at my feet… I’m sorry, but I cannot accept it. This was not my choice, nor my fault.”
He leaned forward slightly. His voice dropped, yet carried perfectly to Mance—and to every hunter straining to listen: “Second, Mr. Mance. My parents died when I was very young. From the time I can remember, I’ve regarded you—and many of the uncles and elders in this tavern—as my closest family. I never imagined that one day, people I considered kin would take the defect fate forced upon me and turn it into a weapon to mock me… or even stand on the side of strangers who delight in kicking the weak, pointing fingers and laying blame at my feet.”
Rune shook his head. For the first time, a deep, almost disillusioned disappointment flickered in his eyes: “Frankly, your behavior makes me question whether you truly deserve the respect I once held for you. I’m sorry—I overestimated certain bonds and misjudged someone. Mr. Mance.”
He repeated the formal title—cold, distant, deliberate.
The words were structured, logical, devoid of hysterical accusation—only calm statement and clean severance.
They cut like a precise, icy scalpel, exposing every unreasonable and shameful layer beneath Mance’s displaced anger.
Mance’s flushed face drained to ashen shame, then surged back to embarrassed purple. His lips trembled; he opened his mouth several times like a beached fish, but no meaningful sound emerged.
Yes…
Only now did it hit him like ice water—he snapped awake.
No matter how outsiders mocked, Rune was first and foremost a child of Blackoak Village—the boy Mance had watched stumble, then walk, then grow tall and steady.
The kid had been dealt an unjust hand, turned into the village “joke,” and Mance knew perfectly well that Rune himself bore the heaviest burden—far greater than any external laughter: pressure, confusion, isolation.
As an elder, his role should have been shelter, guidance—telling the boy that even the smallest spark could still light the way forward.
Instead, because he’d taken a few hits to his pride outside and felt humiliated, he’d dumped that frustration onto the very child who should have been protected—cutting deeper into an already cruel wound with crueler words.
This wasn’t just unreasonable.
It was… contemptible.
