According to the map Vide picked up from the wreckage of his former home, the fastest way to reach Flowerlight would be to cut straight through the Enti forest. Despite living there for the last ten years of his life, Vide had rarely gone further than five miles away from his home at any given time, it was just too dangerous. His parents had warned him time and time again, not to wander off on his own. They told him that dangerous beasts lived deep within the heart of the forest. Beasts who could kill him with a simple swipe of their claw, so the idea of cutting straight through the forest terrified him. However, he knew that the path ahead of him would be perilous, and it was likely he would die long before he got his revenge, but he could not shy away. If he stopped here, it would kill the momentum he had been gathering the past few days. If he ran away from this, there was no way in hell he could kill Kaya.
So, with a gleam of courage in his eye, he set off through the forest.
The first day was uneventful, he didn't run into anything other than the common woodland creature. He was constantly on guard and his head was always on a swivel, but there was nothing. That was almost more terrifying than being ambushed. The constant need to stay on guard was destroying his nerves, but he pressed on. Despite it being the middle of the day, no birds were singing in the trees above. The silence left Vide trapped in his own thoughts. He often thought back to what he had had to do. Burying his own brother was one of the hardest things he had ever had to do, he knew he would always carry this burden with him. The act of burying his brother wasn't the only thing that plagued him, it was running away. He never wanted to do that again. He never wanted to be that weak again.
He almost wished something would appear from the shadows of the forest. the silence was driving him mad. Lost in his own thoughts he didn't notice the shadow twenty feet behind him that was slowly creeping closer. Even though he kept his head on a swivel, his eyes were glazed over, he wasn't truly comprehending what he was looking at. Vide continued to be stalked for five minutes before the shadow struck.
Vide was shaken out of his stupor. After all of the silence he had almost expected something to show up.
It was a wolf. It was bone-thin and was clearly starving. Patches of fur were singed and black. Considering it was alone and the burn marks, Vide assumed it was the only one of it's pack to survive the onslaught of Kaya. A trace of sympathy rose up in Vide's eyes.
'It's just like me. It's family was taken by that bastard.'
It took a grand total of one second for that trace of sympathy to die. This beast was trying to kill him, and that was more than enough reason for it to die. It doesn't matter if they were similar, neither of them could live if the other didn't die. By this time the wolf was in the air jumping towards him.
Vide reacted faster than he thought he would, his muscles tensed up and he dove to the side, like a rubber band that had been pulled back. He scrambled to his feet and squatted a little, trying to find a better position. He braced himself and waited, trying to see what the wolf would do. The wolf, clearly shocked that his first attack didn't work, was doing the same, slowly walking around him, watching.
The wolf was the first to move, rushing towards him, contrary to the wolf expectations, Vide didn't run nor did he dodge. He too charged at the wolf. The wolf was clearly surprised at his course of action, and his charge lost a bit of power. Vide took advantage of that small opening and reached out with his hand towards the wolf's maw. Vide remembered what had happened earlier with his horn and was taking a big gamble. He grabbed the maw of the wolf and squeezed. With his other hand he pulled his arm back and slammed his thumb into the eye of the wolf.
The wolf was instantly enraged, it had gone days without eating and was on the verge of death, when it had finally ran into what he thought was an easy meal, just for this to happen. The wolf clenched down and tried to tear off Vide's fingers. The wolf's teeth were sharp, but due to it's current weak state, it lacked the power to completely sever Vide's fingers. It took Vide everything he had to hold on while he continued to stab deeper and deeper into the wolf's eye.
It was a very tense few moments, one man and one wolf locked in combat. They stood there holding on to each other. Their eyes both shined with the desperate desire to live. The few moments felt like years as they stood there. Finally, the wolf collapsed as his finger penetrated deep into the wolf's brain. Vide could at last extract his hand from the jaws of the beast and examine what he had done, and whether his gamble would pay off. If it worked Vide knew he could act much more recklessly in the future, if it didn't then he would be crippled and would never be able to enact his revenge.
The waiting was excruciating and the adrenaline was beginning to wear off. The intense pain felt like his hand was being sliced into pieces repeatedly, but Vide didn't let that show on his face. He stood there intently looking at his hand, when suddenly the reacting Vide was looking for happened. Almost the entirety of Vide's hand ignited in a bright green flame. Like before the flame gave off no heat and lowered the temperature around it by several degrees. Vide watched as the flame caused the flesh around the bloody wound to stitch together and heal itself. There was no pain, and after the flame finished, there was no blood either. It was like he had never been wounded in the first place.
With this, Vide finally had confirmation. Whenever he was injured a green flame would appear and stitch his injuries back together. For the first time in several days, Vide smiled. He knew that this was his chance, his trump card.
All at once the exhaustion hit him. He knew he couldn't fall asleep here or else he would be at risk of being killed by any animal that passed by. He forced himself up a tree and fell asleep on the biggest branch he could find.
As soon as he fell asleep, the eyes on the tattoo started to glow with a spectral light. The corpse that Vide had previously left alone started to emit a blood-red mist that floated up towards Vide. It started to fuse with the tattoo, and the leftmost horn on the tattoo's head started to glow red. Around five percent of the total horn was red. Just as quickly as it had started, the blood mist vanished and so did the glowing. The only thing that remained was the red strip on the bottom of the leftmost horn.