Role

Chapter 2

For Oroas was not hewn from the bedrock of Dagdan's legacy, he was an entity
unto himself, as mercurial as the zephyrs that caressed the ancient stones of
the town. His thirst for knowledge, for the forbidden fruits of arcane
wisdom, was insatiable. It was a silent accord of mutual, albeit grudging,
respect that bound father and son, each a mirror to the other's antithesis.

In the throes of youthful defiance and driven by the tempest of his ambition,
Oroas did what all creatures of wild spirit must, he cast off the chains of
his heritage and fled into the embrace of the unknown. Barely more than a
child in years, yet ancient in dreams, he embarked on a quest to master the
esoteric art of shapeshiftinga journey that would lead him into the maw of
worlds untold, to commune with the very essence of metamorphosis that might
strip away not only his form but the very fibers of his humanity.

The specter of his father's influence loomed large in the tapestry of
Oroass destiny, a warp thread of iron amidst the weft of his own
aspirations. Under this unyielding tutelage, even in absence, he honed his
craft, his essence flowing into forms both majestic and mighty. As a
shapeshifter, his prowess grew, his being could swell to embody the ferocity
of the direst creatures, and in these guises, he found kinship amongst those
who sought what he did. His discipline, an inheritance he once resented, now
fueled his ascent to realms of power.

Yet, with the burgeoning of his abilities, there came a darknessa creeping
malaise that spilled over from the realm of slumber into his waking world.
Nightmares began to stalk him, as if some malevolent force had taken an
unsettling interest in his spirit. Shadowy tendrils invaded his dreams,
weaving tapestries of anguish and echoes of torment that left him trembling
in the cold sweat of fear.

These were no mere dreams he would come to know, they were visions of
otherness that defied comprehension, a parade of horrors that whispered of
places far beyond the pastoral familiarity of Thera. Within these night
terrors, his home, his father, every familiar touchstone was twisted into
grotesqueries that mocked his deepest fears. The dreamscape became a theater
of the macabre, where the boundaries between the known and the unknowable
were blurred by a perspective alien to his mind.

Each night, Oroas gazed through eyes not his own, as if some cosmic voyeur
orchestrated his torment, forcing him to witness a reality where the very
fabric of existence was saturated with malevolence. These were not the dreams
of a man, but the prophetic plagues of a mind brushing against the outer
dark, where the rules of nature crumbled and the insidious infinity of the
cosmos bared its teeth in the guise of his deepest, most ineffable fears.