✦ Chapter One – *Before Sylvion* ✦
Before he was Sylvion, he was Tarn.
A name that tasted like iron and left the mouth dry.
He didn’t hate it. But he never sang it.
Tarn Vellin was born in a lean year in a leaner village—cracked dirt, judgmental stares, and kindness rationed like clean water. His mother had red hair and restless hands. She left the world before he could ask why she never sang to him.
The townsfolk said it was the devil in him that broke her bones and shortened her smile. Tieflings weren’t welcome, not really. They were tolerated the way people tolerate wolves near sheep—so long as they didn’t bite.
Tarn learned early that performance was the only kind of power no one could steal. If he played a mournful tune, even drunkards wept. If he spun a tale, even the priest’s daughter leaned in. He could carve space with a story.
So he left.
No one stopped him.
He figured that meant it was time.
He wandered. From village to village. Tavern to tavern.
Collected songs. Scars. A few regrets that still hummed behind his ribs.
The name Tarn wore thin—too sharp, too soaked in things he wanted to forget. So he smoothed it into something new. Something that glittered when whispered by candlelight.
Sylvion.
A name made to be remembered.
A name that belonged on playbills and lips.
He sang in backrooms, in courts, in places where laughter had teeth and applause came with purses full of lies. He laughed louder than his doubts. Kissed poets and thieves. Stole hearts and sometimes wallets. But no matter how bright the stage, something always faded.
The applause. The attention. The feeling.
He’d been dreaming, lately.
Not of fame, not of fire.
Of things that felt older than both. A forest that breathed. A name he didn’t know but nearly spoke aloud upon waking. A voice like wind chimes in the rain, always just beyond reach.
One night, halfway through a melody he'd played a thousand times, he forgot a note.
Just one.
It didn’t sound wrong—only different.
Like someone else had been tuning the world when he wasn’t looking.
And lately, when he looked at people too long, he saw… threads.
Lines of thought, intention, memory. Wounds that hadn’t bled yet.
He called it instinct. He never said what he really thought: that he was beginning to see people like stories. And stories didn’t always want to be seen.
So when a party of strangers wandered into a half-dead tavern on a rain-thick evening, Sylvion felt something spark. Not curiosity. Not lust.
Plot.
He met them in a place called The Broken Cart—a tavern that smelled like cheap mead and forgotten bets. The floors were sticky. The barkeep looked like he’d fought a war with dairy and lost. But Sylvion knew a truth most never learned:
Even the dingiest room becomes holy when someone listens.
He was halfway through a song about a banshee’s broken heart when they entered—mud-streaked, armor-slung, and humming with unfinished business.
He didn’t stop playing. But he watched.
The dwarf led.
A slab of beard and principle. Brungrin Stoneborn. Paladin of a god whose name sounded like a cough and whose judgments hit like hammers. He looked like he’d never once hesitated. Sylvion envied that.
Then the rogue. Half-elf. All problem.
Seressa didn’t walk—she slid between shadows and attention. Every motion deliberate. Every word sharpened. Sylvion couldn’t tell if she was about to steal his heart or his coin.
Calder came next—human, too young to look that old. Wore his robes like armor. Wore his trauma like a sigil. His eyes glowed when he thought too hard. Sylvion liked him immediately.
And at the back—Naiya. Firbolg. Quiet as tree roots. The kind of girl who smelled like bark and prophecy. She didn’t flinch at anything. Sylvion bowed when he caught her eye. She blinked once. Then went to sit alone.
They didn’t clap.
But they didn’t leave.
That was enough.
After the set, Sylvion did what Sylvion did best: made the rounds, drink in hand, smile practiced to the note. Played the fool, like a mask he could wear until it didn’t hurt.
Then Brungrin asked, “You any good in a fight?”
Sylvion sipped. “Define good.”
“Alive afterward.”
Another sip. “Then yes.”
The offer came like all good stories do—between ale and the hush between songs. A caravan. A missing map. A few bandits who needed convincing.
He didn’t care. Not really.
It wasn’t the gold. It wasn’t even the danger.
It was the shape of them. The way they moved. The way their silences didn’t collapse into noise. They had the look. The kind of look people get when the gods thread fate into their shadows.
They weren’t a company.
Not yet.
But they were a story waiting to be told.
And Sylvion? Sylvion knew a good opening when he heard one.
Because some names are masks.
Some songs are spells.
And some stories are doors you walk through without ever meaning to.
And once you do?
You’re never just a bard again.
You’re the song the world can’t forget.