Yegor Sokolov

Yegor Sokolov was born in the dusk-shadowed village of Velkoryn, a place nestled too close to the ancient woods for comfort. The villagers kept iron above their doors and left offerings of bread and salt on the stumps, but it was not enough. One spring, the trees crept closer—roots cracking wells, branches reaching into chimneys—and by summer, the forest had taken the village back. Yegor was a young man then, sharp-eyed and quiet, known more for watching than speaking. When he vanished into the woods one mist-drenched morning, no one expected him to return.   Three days passed. And then, on the dawn of the fourth, he emerged from the treeline, older by years, bearing a hunter’s gaze and a silence that settled deep in the bones. His eyes, once a warm brown, now were amber like a predataor's eyes, and his skin carried the scent of pine and loam. He never spoke of what he saw, only that “the leshy let me go.” He carried a wooden talisman shaped like a wolf’s tooth, grown—not carved—into the grain. Whatever bargain was made, it left him changed, and it left him watching the woods with a reverence that bordered on fear.   Yegor became a ranger and forester, walking the borderlands between the Thrice-Nine Kingdom and the wilds that do not know kings. He knows the paths that disappear in fog, the glades that bloom out of season, the rivers that change direction when no one is looking. He is a quiet servant of the realm, though not wholly of it—the crown calls him retainer, but the trees whisper otherwise. His loyalty is earned, not owed, and he honors the line between civilization and wild with blade and word alike.   To the court, Yegor is a curious ally: gruff, humble, unnerving. He wears his sword like a warning and his silence like armor. He speaks rarely and acts swiftly. Those who ask too much of him find their requests refused with a look that says: I have seen what lies deeper in the green. And when asked why he remains in service to the kingdom, his only reply is:   “Better I walk the edge than let it grow unchecked.”   In the festivals of the Thrice-Nine, he is an outsider—but always invited. For though he speaks little, the forest listens to him, and when Yegor Sokolov walks the wooded paths, even the leshy leave him be.