Illidan's Private Journal - The Shape of Correction
(Fragment, penned in Illidan's hand.)
I hate being wrong.
Worse, I hate being corrected. Every elder at the temple, every tutor with their cold hands and colder eyes—when they found fault, it was not to guide, but to wound. To remind me that my place was to follow, never to lead.
And yet—today.
She laughed when I stumbled. Not cruelly, not to make me small. She laughed like the world had tilted in her favor, like she had uncovered some secret joy in besting me. I should have bristled. I should have turned sharp, cut her with words. Instead, I found myself… wanting to laugh with her.
Then her father. Lucien Elias Ariakan—LEA, whose hand I thought belonged to a dead scholar. He corrected me without malice. Ael'the-ran, not ael'thuran. He marked the pause as breath, not wall. He spoke the truth as if it were an invitation, not a condemnation. And when I listened, he gave me more. Respect, measured but real.
How long has it been since a man looked at me and saw a student instead of a failure? How long since correction felt like a gift, not a wound?
I will not admit it aloud—not yet. But I find myself replaying her smile when she said, let's go ask my father. I hear his voice when he said, you learn quickly when you stop arguing. And I find myself wondering if this is what it feels like to belong at a table, to be worth teaching, to be seen.
Perhaps being wrong, in her presence, is not defeat.
Perhaps it is another way of being chosen.
And perhaps, years from now, when all others have turned their backs, I will remember that Lucien Ariakan did not. That he saw me, corrected me, and still called me worth the lesson.