With the Mytikas's insidious influence exposed and their intricate network dismantled, Nyx, the once-vengeful warrior, found himself at a crossroads. He realized, with a sharpness he had lacked all these years, that only by not just destroying unsavory structures, and only by not just fighting off outsiders, could there be true and lasting peace. This required a fundamental conceptual change, a teleological upheaval in how humans have realised the world and in their relationships with each other as a community. And he knew that the war there was as significant as the war outside, outside (his body) as if.
He's swallowed up a wealth of information from his tireless efforts to study the Mytikas, the fine details of how society functioned, the subtle pressures that drove human actions and the great interconnectedness of all of nature. He discovered that the "omnipotence" that he so avidly coveted before, and the control that he believed he could exert over the world, was illusory. He learned that, true power lay there, deep down, in mastering it entirely, in breaking it down, in seeing the subtle equilibrium that underwrote it.
He made initial attempts to bridge across these warring and fragmenting cultures and powers that have been tearing them apart for millennia. He promoted open discussion, mediated grievances equitably, and advocated for education rather than as a means to indoctrinate, as a way to mould people to think precisely, to challenge the status quo, and to engage in the conscious choice about how their own lives should be lived. He refused to instill his own convictions or opinions, since deep wisdom is not based on the consensus of the parties, but on the analysis of the differing or related one another issues and by the growth of independent reasoning.
He understood that real power did not come from exercising control, but from enabling and equipping others so that they could create their own destiny. He shared the knowledge he gained not as a point of mock authority reducing the enlightened into equally foolish pupils, but as a map suggesting and leading the others on their own way of experience. He played an active part in the development of institutions with the purpose of teaching, research, and open information sharing, which made it possible for knowledge to flow freely in and between cultures and political frontiers. He created a world where the information was not something to be mastered, but rather something to use.just to be used up and shared around.
This period marked a profound transformation for Nyx. The burning desire for vengeance that had fueled him for so long, the consuming rage that had driven him to the brink of darkness, began to fade, replaced by a deep sense of responsibility, a genuine desire to heal the world's deep wounds. He no longer thought of the world as a binary between good and evil in terms of enemy and friend and instead believed the world to be a compressed, interconnected web of lives, each with its own individual, originally singular point of view, inherent value, and the capability to do either good or evil.
However, his talent in the practice of shadow magic on the surface has also appeared changed. It was not a tool of destruction or manipulation any more, it was not a means of terror or coercion. It became a tool for understanding, for connection, a means of bridging the gaps between individuals and communities. He would be able to use it to sense the subtlest energies that permeated the world, to sense the emotions and the thoughts of others, to interpret reactions, to interpret motivation, to interpret fear and to interpret hope. He could use it to bridge the gap between a great distances in the movement of information, to weave the fragmented parts of the human narrative, to illuminate the transcending common humanity between them. Shadows, forever pixelated image of invisibility and the mysterious, served us now as a pass to empathy and as a lever to build a communication bridge between ourselves and others. The hunter had become the healer.