The first thing he remembered was the cold.
It wasn't the kind that made you shiver. It was deeper than that, quieter. It settled inside his bones like a question that had never been answered. A silence so absolute it swallowed sound before it could exist.
He opened his eyes and saw nothing.
Not black. Not gray. Not even light. Just a fog so dense it felt like he had woken up inside someone's forgotten breath. And maybe that wasn't far from the truth. Maybe he was the breath. The thing left behind after the scream.
He didn't know his name.
He didn't know where he was, or why every part of his body felt like it had fallen apart and then been stitched back together in a way that didn't quite make sense. His limbs moved, but they didn't feel like his. His heartbeat was too slow, too distant, as if it belonged to someone watching from the other side of a wall.
Something dripped beside him. Thick. Slow. It didn't splash.
He sat up.
The air felt heavy. Breathing wasn't natural here. It was like dragging smoke into your lungs, and even that smoke tasted old. Tired. Worn from too many memories.
He blinked.
No change.
The fog didn't move. The silence didn't break. But something... shifted.
A sound.
No, a whisper. Barely. Like wind moving through the hollows of a dead forest.
"You don't belong here."
The voice didn't echo. It didn't come from in front of him or behind. It was inside his head. No, not his head. His blood. Like it had always been there, just waiting for him to notice.
He tried to stand, and the ground responded like wet ash, sinking a little under his weight. Each step forward felt like walking through memory. Old memory. Someone else's.
Shapes began to form in the mist. Not clear. Not whole. Just the suggestion of something ruined. A wall, broken in half. Stone twisted in angles that shouldn't exist. And then, an altar.
He didn't know how he knew it was an altar. He had never seen one before. But the moment his gaze fell on it, he felt it.
The grief.
The kind of sorrow that had teeth. That tore through bone and left you with silence so sharp it hurt to breathe.
He walked closer.
The altar was cracked in the middle, a line like a wound splitting it open. Faint markings clung to its surface, barely visible under layers of dust and age.
His fingers reached out before his mind could stop them.
They brushed against the stone. Cold surged through his arm, but he didn't pull back. The markings pulsed.
Letters.
Faint. Faded.
But one word remained.
One name.
Elyndra.
It meant nothing to him.
And yet his knees buckled. His breath caught. His eyes stung, and he didn't know why. It was like hearing a lullaby in a language he didn't understand, but still knowing it was sung for him.
The whisper returned, softer now.
"You were not meant to survive."
This time, he didn't flinch.
He looked back at the fog. And though he couldn't see anything, he knew something was watching. Something ancient. Something afraid.
And for the first time, he whispered back.
"Then why am I still here?"
***
The world did not move.
But something was definitely there.
He didn't know how long he had stood before the altar. Could've been minutes. Could've been hours. Time felt like a dead thing here. It didn't flow. It waited. It clung.
The name carved into the stone, Elyndra, burned softly behind his eyes. Not like fire. Like... memory. Like an ache. It echoed inside him, quiet and gentle, but persistent. The way a child's whisper might cling to the corners of an empty house.
He stepped back. The altar didn't react. The name didn't change.
But something else did.
The mist around him thickened, like lungs exhaling from all directions at once. From within that breath came movement. Subtle at first. Then scraping. Wet dragging. Dozens of voices whispering over each other like threads of torn cloth.
His muscles tensed on instinct. The air vibrated.
From the left, a shadow detached from the wall of mist. Then another. And another.
They did not have form. Just outlines. Glitches of presence. As if the world had forgotten how to shape them. But he could hear them. Not their footsteps, not their breath... but their thoughts.
Who are you? Why are you? Why did you wake it?
He took one step back, and the altar lit up faintly with pale, blue-white cracks.
The shadows flinched.
His eyes flicked downward. Beneath his feet, the ground had begun to change. The soft ash turned to bone-colored tiles, ancient and etched with spiral runes. A memory of a forgotten temple.
The shadows hissed louder.
One of them rushed at him.
He didn't think. He raised his hand.
There was no power in it. No spell. No weapon.
But the moment the shadow touched his fingers, it vanished. Dispersed like it had never been real.
The others stopped moving.
That was when he noticed... they weren't trying to hurt him.
They were afraid.
A gust of cold wind broke the tension. It didn't come from the shadows. It came from within the altar itself. From the crack in the stone, a faint purple glow flickered. Rhythmic. Like a heartbeat.
The altar was alive.
No. Not alive.
Awake.
He stepped closer again. Not sure why. Not sure what pulled him. But every part of him... muscle, bone, even breath... knew he had to.
And then he heard it again.
The voice.
This time not as whisper. Not as warning. But as song.
Not words. Not lyrics. Just the hum of something ancient. Maternal. Laced with longing and loss. The sound made his throat tighten. His hands trembled.
Tears formed, and he didn't understand why.
He placed his palm on the altar again.
And the world shattered.
Not physically. Not entirely.
But in his mind, something broke open. Light flooded in. And memory... no, not memory, something before memory... rushed through him.
A woman's arms.
A lullaby.
A voice saying "Forgive me."
Then cold again.
He gasped and staggered back, knees hitting the tile. The altar's glow dimmed. The song ended. The mist began to pull away, as if retreating from something greater than him.
He breathed in.
And this time, he tasted something new.
Ash.
And blood.
From far ahead in the fog, something growled.
Something alive.
And very, very hungry.
***
The growl rose from the fog like it had always been there.
Low. Wet. Breathing.
Not just sound. Weight.
It rolled across the tiles and pressed against his skin like fingers testing for weakness.
He stood.
Whatever had sung through the altar was gone now. Only a faint pulse remained beneath the stone, and even that was fading. The shadows that had once surrounded him were gone too scattered like prey sensing a predator.
And this time, he knew he was not the predator.
A shape moved through the mist.
Large.
Slow.
Wrong.
Its legs didn't walk. They dragged. Its arms, too long to be natural, hung in reverse angles, knuckles scraping the bone-tile floor. The sound they made was not of bone or metal, but of memory, scraped raw.
He took a step back.
The thing stopped.
A single eye opened in the dark.
But it wasn't an eye. Not really.
It was a mouth. Round, jagged, and twitching.
It opened wider.
He heard his name.
Not the name he knew. Not the name anyone had given him.
But a name spoken by the world itself.
It meant nothing.
And everything.
His chest tightened.
The creature spoke again.
"You should not have heard her. Not yet. Not this soon."
It wasn't speaking with words. It was using every sound that had ever made him afraid. Cries he had never heard. Screams from dreams he didn't remember. He wanted to run.
But something stopped him.
He looked at his hand. The one that had touched the altar. It was glowing faintly a thread of violet light coiling up his wrist like smoke. The mark had not gone.
He clenched his fist.
The creature lunged.
It was fast. Faster than anything that size should be. It moved like a nightmare collapsing into form. But just before it reached him, something else moved.
The mist cracked.
A ring of symbols erupted beneath his feet. Not summoned. Not cast. Awakened.
His body moved on its own.
He sidestepped the charge, barely, and the creature's massive limb struck the altar behind him. The impact sent a wave of dust and light into the air. The altar didn't break.
The creature roared. Not in pain. In confusion.
It looked at him now, really looked. And for the first time, it hesitated.
He used that moment.
Dashing forward, he placed both hands on the creature's chest. His fingers sank into flesh that wasn't flesh. Cold and hot at the same time. Like touching forgotten hatred.
He didn't know what he was doing.
But the glow from his hands knew.
Symbols formed in the air, twisted and unstable, language of something older than speech. His body shook as if his bones rejected what his blood embraced.
A pulse burst from his hands.
Not light.
Not shadow.
Something in-between.
The creature screamed... a sound that didn't come from a mouth but from every crack in the world, and then collapsed. Not into ash. Not into blood.
Into silence.
He dropped to his knees again, breath ragged.
Around him, the mist had stopped moving. Watching.
Waiting.
And then, from deep within the ground, came another whisper.
This one wasn't from the altar. Or the shadows. Or even the creature.
This one was from below.
And it said only one word.
"Run."
***
He ran.
Not because he understood the warning.
Not because he knew where to go.
But because something in that voice bypassed thought entirely. It commanded him. Not with force, with instinct.
Every broken tile he stepped on seemed to shiver under his feet. The world had shifted. The creature he defeated was only a door. And something much older had just opened it.
The mist changed as he ran. It no longer felt like fog. It clung, twisted, and pulsed with every breath he took. It tasted like copper now. Like old blood. Like memory bleeding out of a cracked skull.
Ahead of him, he saw stone archways bent into unnatural curves. The shapes didn't belong to this realm. They curved inward too far, as if the structure itself was trying to fold in on itself.
A ruin.
Half buried in the dust of time.
He stumbled through it.
And the moment he passed beneath the arch, the air dropped. Not temperature, pressure. Like something was watching. Judging.
He slowed. Then stopped.
What lay before him was not a room.
It was a hole in the world.
The floor ended in a perfect circle, carved as if someone had scooped out the world with their hand. At the bottom... water. Still. Unmoving. But not quiet. Beneath its surface, he could feel motion. Not current. Not fish. Thoughts.
A lake of mind.
He stepped closer to the edge. His reflection stared back at him. Except it wasn't his.
The face in the water was clean. Unscarred. Eyes full of light instead of void.
And it was smiling.
He stepped back.
The water rippled, but the face remained.
Then it spoke.
"You're not ready."
The voice was his.
But it wasn't. It was older. Sharper. Certain.
He reached toward the water, but something stopped his hand inches above it. A barrier? No. A hesitation. One that came from deep inside him.
"You've already forgotten," the reflection said. "But she hasn't."
He swallowed.
The water darkened. The smile faded.
And the face became hers.
Long silver hair. Eyes of gentle gold. A beauty that hurt to look at. Not because it was perfect, because it was familiar.
A memory tried to rise.
He choked on it.
"Who are you," he whispered.
The woman in the water blinked.
"You named me," she said.
His knees weakened. His hands trembled.
He didn't remember naming anyone. He didn't remember anything. But her voice felt like home. A place he'd been torn from. A lullaby interrupted by silence.
"You must find the fragments," she said softly. "You are incomplete. The seal won't break unless you remember."
"What seal?" he asked.
But she was already gone.
The water shifted again. Now it showed only depth.
And from that depth, a pulse.
A glow.
Purple and gold, tangled together, like strands of war and grief.
The first fragment.
He didn't think.
He stepped into the water.
It accepted him.
No splash. No resistance. It took him.
And the moment his head slipped beneath, the world screamed.
Not outside.
Inside him.
A thousand voices.
One name.
Elyndra.
And then silence.
Total.
Unforgiving.
***
Silence.
Not the kind that came from absence.
The kind that came from pressure. From something holding the silence in place like a blanket pulled too tight.
He sank. Slowly.
Not through water. Not through space.
Through something else.
It felt like falling between thoughts. Like slipping between breaths that didn't belong to him.
There was no pressure on his lungs. He didn't need to breathe. Or maybe he simply couldn't.
Below him, the glow sharpened. No longer a blur. It was a shape now, jagged, like a shard of glass shattered in slow motion. Colors rippled off it, purple and gold bleeding into one another like they were fighting over the right to exist.
The fragment.
He reached for it.
But the moment his hand moved, the light reacted.
It flared, violent and sudden.
And something grabbed his wrist.
Cold fingers.
Not real fingers, the memory of them.
He turned, but saw nothing.
Only dark.
Then her voice.
"You left me."
He froze.
The voice came from all around, layered with thousands of tones. The grief of a mother. The blame of a sister. The rage of a child. All of them hers.
"You were born and I was unmade."
The darkness moved.
And it shaped itself into her.
But it wasn't Elyndra.
Not really.
It was a mockery. A hollow version sculpted from pain. Her eyes were wrong, too bright, too wide, too full of anger. Her body glowed with light, but the kind that burns, not heals.
"You are a wound," she hissed.
He couldn't speak. His throat locked.
"To take the fragment is to remember. And memory hurts."
She moved toward him.
"Are you willing?"
He didn't know.
But his feet stepped forward anyway.
The water trembled.
She attacked.
Not with fists. With thoughts.
Images slammed into his mind, chains of light, blood on white marble, a cry that shattered sky. Her scream. The sound of a verdict. A hand outstretched toward him as she was dragged away.
He fell to one knee.
Blood leaked from his nose. His vision blurred.
But still... he looked up.
"I… didn't choose this."
The figure paused.
"I don't remember. I don't know you. I don't even know me."
The pain surged in his skull like a second heartbeat.
"But I want to."
That was enough.
The figure screamed. Light shattered around her.
And when it cleared, she was gone.
The fragment hovered where she had stood. Now glowing with steadiness, no longer twisted in rage.
He reached out again.
This time, it let him.
The moment his fingers touched it, it dissolved into him. No heat. No pain.
Just... clarity.
He remembered warmth. Arms wrapped around him. A lullaby that had no words.
And then... the sound of a door closing.
Forever.
His eyes opened wide.
He was no longer in the water.
He was lying on the floor of the ruin. Breathing hard. The mist around him still. Watching. Waiting.
The fragment was inside him now. A thread of gold-light coiling through his chest, dormant, but alive.
He sat up slowly.
And for the first time, he felt it.
Something behind his heartbeat.
A seal.
Cracked.
***
He didn't move at first.
His breath came in slow, shallow pulls. The ruins around him had grown quiet, as if even the world was holding its breath.
Then, something shifted inside him.
A warmth pulsed beneath his ribs. Not fire. Not light.
A brand.
It wasn't there a moment ago, but now he felt it... a symbol, etched across his chest, just over the heart. Not written in ink, not carved in flesh, but glowing just beneath the skin.
He pulled at the edge of his torn shirt, exposing the skin over his sternum.
The mark pulsed, faint gold and deep violet twining together in a slow rotation a spiral of three runes woven into one.
One looked like a feather.
The second, a broken crown.
The last, an eye without a pupil.
The mark didn't burn. It hummed.
He stared at it. No memory returned. But his body knew. This mark was not from Helheim. Not from this world.
It was part of him.
He stood.
And the fog responded.
All around the ruin, the thick mist that had sat heavy for so long began to shift. It wasn't dispersing. It was listening.
And something within it moved.
A deep voice rose, ancient and cracked. Not from a creature, from the land itself.
"Something wakes…"
The ruin trembled beneath his feet. Dust fell from the archway behind him.
He turned slowly.
From the far end of the room, the mist began to rise vertically, no longer drifting but forming. A massive shape, like a statue pulled from shadow and silence, emerged from the edge of the void. Eyes opened along its limbs. Too many eyes.
But it did not attack.
It bowed.
The action made his blood freeze.
Not in fear. In confusion.
Why would a creature of Helheim, a guardian of the dead, bow to him?
Then he heard the voice again.
This time, closer. Behind his right ear.
"You are marked."
He spun around.
No one.
"You are no longer hidden."
The voice came from within the altar. But not the same as before. It was deeper now. Hungrier.
"You carry what should not exist."
The fog outside the ruin began to churn violently. Wind howled where no air should have moved. Cracks formed along the floor, revealing light beneath. Not golden. Not silver.
Purple.
From deep in the ruin, a scream tore through the stone.
Something had seen the mark.
And it was coming for him.
He didn't wait.
He bolted out of the ruin, the mist parting slightly before him, as if even it was uncertain whether to stop him or obey him.
And for the first time, his eyes caught their reflection in a broken shard of stone by the archway.
They had changed.
No longer dull.
One eye burned with violet glow. The other with gold.
And in their depths a spiral rune slowly turning.
He didn't know what he was yet.
But the world had noticed.
And it would never forget him again.
***