Chapter 3: The Girl With No Past
The rain had stopped, but the city still wore its mourning coat—grey mist hugging cobblestones, chimneys coughing ash like dying lungs, and the lamplight melting like wax down soot-stained walls.
Eiren walked with his collar up and a headache twisting behind his left eye.
Something was missing.
Not something.
Someone.
He couldn't remember who—but the weight of the absence pressed on him like a lost name at the tip of the tongue, like a voice that had once said his name with softness no one else had ever matched.
He passed a fountain in a quiet plaza—one he'd never seen before.
The plaque read:
"Don't Trust What You Remember."
His breath caught.
No moss, no weathering.
New.
But this plaza looked centuries old.
And that's when he saw her.
She sat on the edge of the fountain. Barefoot, in a faded blue coat too big for her, and her eyes… her eyes were burning green, like forest fires trapped behind skin.
She wasn't watching him.
She was watching something over his shoulder.
He turned.
Nothing there.
When he turned back, she was gone.
No. Not gone.
Now she stood in front of him, as if the space between had vanished.
"You're late," she said.
Her voice wasn't accusatory. Just… tired. Like someone who had waited through winters.
"Do I know you?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
"Or… you did. Until you forgot me."
His heart stuttered.
The voice, the phrasing—like the dream, like the feeling—
"To be believed… is to exist."
He studied her face. Pale. Sharp cheekbones. No makeup. Lips thin and cracked, as though she hadn't spoken to someone real in a long time.
"Who are you?"
She smiled. Sadly.
"I was your sister."
Eiren stared at her.
"I don't have a—"
"You don't remember having a sister," she corrected. "That's different."
Wind passed between them. The plaza around them flickered—for just a breath—like an oil painting that almost came unbrushed.
She took a folded note from her coat and handed it to him.
It was written in his handwriting.
But every line… he couldn't remember ever writing.
"They're unraveling me, piece by piece."
"Keep the coin. Don't listen to the reflections."
"Her name is Lyra. She remembers you."
"The god lies even to itself."
He looked up.
She was already walking away.
"Wait!"
She turned, not stopping.
"Go to District 9. Find the Mirror-Seller. He's the last one who hasn't forgotten."
"And you?" Eiren asked.
She gave him a look he couldn't quite read—pity, perhaps, or warning.
"I'll be gone the next time you look away."
And true to her word…
…when he blinked, she was no longer there.
But the air still tasted like salt and ink.
And her name, Lyra—
It clung to his thoughts like a thread he dared not pull.
[New Quest Acquired]
"Recover a Forgotten Truth"
Reward: +1 Insight, +200 Faith Resistance
Failure: +1 Curse Fragment
Somewhere far away, in a temple of black stone and endless illusions,
Velkaris smiled through a mask that had no mouth.
End of Chapter 3