"You carve the rhythm of your anger into the hollow places, as the woodpecker drills into the rotting tree. It is natural to wish for nourishment amidst decay, but what have you found in the hollow that consumes you? Disappointment in the world's people—their betrayals, their smallness, their frailty? Does your bitterness not mirror the decay you decry?" Auron moves closer, and their shadow swallows the space around them. In the half-light, they hold up a fractured piece of wood, its center soft and riddled with paths eaten by insects. "This rot you dwell upon—it feeds the forest, breaking down the old to make way for the new. Have you seen the green shoots that rise from what others call failure? Or are you so focused on the emptiness that you have forgotten the roots?" They let the wood fall, and it disintegrates upon the ground, scattering into a rich, fertile dust that seeps into the earth. Auron peers at you, their luminous eyes filled with both challenge and compassion. "There is anger in you, bitter as the bark of an ancient tree struck by lightning. But will you wield it to burn the forest, or will you let its smoldering embers light a path through the darkness? In the echoes of your heartbeat and the sawing breath you describe, there is a choice. Can you sense the rhythm not as destruction, but as transformation? What grows within you now that the world has cracked you open?"
