Orphyn tumbled through endless void, feeling the particles of his body scatter like torn pages from an ancient book. He could no longer distinguish up from down, past from present. In that moment when he seemed destined to disappear forever, he heard Lyx's voice whispering in his depths: "This is how forgotten memories feel."
Pain suddenly exploded in his head, a flood of fragmented images flashing before his eyes. He saw a child crying before a closed door, a sword of light piercing his chest, and hands resembling his own writing in a massive ledger using a strange language of dots and flames. Each image burned away as soon as it appeared, leaving behind a bitter, ashen taste in his mouth.
Abruptly, he found himself kneeling in an endless library. Infinite shelves of burned books stretched in every direction. The air hung heavy with the scent of charred leather and spoiled ink. On the floor, circular diagrams were drawn in bone powder, and at their center stood the little girl from the previous room, playing with black tears dripping from her headless doll's eye sockets.
"Welcome to the Forgotten Archive," the girl said in a soft voice that belied her previous ferocity. "Every book here is a stolen memory, every page a life extinguished."
He tried to rise, but something held him down. Looking at his hands, he discovered his skin was turning into vellum pages, strange words erupting across his forearms like pox marks.
The tattooed man materialized behind him, holding a book from the shelves. "This is you," he said, opening pages that showed drawings of events Orphyn had never experienced - scenes from cities he'd never seen, faces of people he'd never met, crimes he'd never committed.
"These aren't my memories!" Orphyn protested, but his voice sounded feeble in the vast emptiness.
The girl laughed as the black tears formed a pool at her feet. "Memory is betrayal, forgetting is mercy. But you... you're different. You remember what should be forgotten."
Suddenly, the words on his arms began glowing gold. Intense heat spread through his body, as if something deep within was awakening. The entire library trembled, books cascading from shelves, the floor diagrams spinning wildly.
"No!" the tattooed man shouted, "He's reclaiming them!"
Through the chaos, Lyx suddenly appeared, her red hair glowing in the half-dark. "Orphyn, you need to wake up!" she screamed as the library collapsed around them.
Before he could respond, everything exploded in a flash of white light. The last things he saw were Lyx's face melting like wax and the girl's mad laughter turning into a scream.
Then... darkness.
Orphyn awoke gasping, seated on the floor of a small stone chamber. On the wall before him, a message was written in dried blood:
"Find the broken mirror. There you'll discover the truth that will destroy you."
He shook his head, trying to clear the dizziness. One thing he knew for certain - he was finally beginning to remember. And worse, something deep within was remembering him too.