Dusk was falling.
The sky over the capital had turned orange, and as if trying to unite that golden glow with the earth, the Tower of the Gods, as it is called, rose imposingly at the heart of the city.
On one of its highest and widest balconies, a girl who looked no older than twelve held a cup in both her small hands, trying to warm them. But a breeze lifted her long, azure hair, exposing her neck and sending a slight shiver down her spine.
"Ugh... Whose brilliant idea was it to build balconies this high?"
"But it was you who wished to have tea out here, Your Holiness," replied a young woman with red hair clad in resplendent white armor adorned with golden symbols.
"Mmmu..."
The little girl's long, drooping ears, reminiscent of a sorrowful rabbit's, twitched slightly, drawing a smile from the young woman standing behind her.
After taking a sip of the steaming drink in her cup, who had just been addressed as "Your Holiness" lifted her gaze. Her lilac-colored eyes scanned the cathedrals surrounding the tower. Together, they formed the heart of the complex from which the Blessed Kingdom was governed, a theocratic nation and one of the three most powerful human nations on the continent.
"This is the only place where those mummies don't come to pester me. Their bones freeze over."
But just as she finished speaking, the girl's eyes widened and shimmered, and her hands let go of the cup that had been heading toward her lips. However, in an act of superhuman agility, the armored woman managed to catch it before the contents could spill onto her lady's robes.
"Your Holiness? Are you all right?"
"What is this feeling...?" She stood and stepped toward the edge of the balcony, her eyes now fixed on the sky. "It's the first time in hundreds of years I've felt something like this..."
"Oracle... Your Holiness, are you having a vision?" the armored girl whispered solemnly to herself.
The answer came from an unexpected place, for the distant sky lit up with a powerful golden light that swept away the clouds, making them vanish completely and leaving the Oracle, her guardian, and everyone else looking at the sky that day in stunned silence.
*****
Darkness. Nothing but darkness. The only thing that breaks it is the same dream as always.
In it, the world around me crumbles. The land splits, rivers overflow and sweep everything away, while lightning strikes the trees, setting countless fires.
But then, one by one, radiant golden lights begin to shine on the horizon, resembling distant beacons. One of them appears right before me... or rather, around her.
I can't see her illuminated face, only make out her silhouette. She seems to gaze at me for a moment, then turns and disappears into the light.
Before long, that light and all the others begin to ascend, piercing the black clouds covering the sky, leaving me alone in a world on the brink of its end.
I turn around and come face to face with the darkness creeping toward me, engulfing and dissolving everything around.
The ruined world gives way to complete darkness, formless and timeless.
And thus, the cycle begins anew. All I can do is wait for the dream to return once more.
Or so I thought.
This time, in the midst of the darkness, a new light began to shine. This light wasn't golden like the others I had always seen. It was a pure, immaculate white that grew brighter by the second, as if it were approaching me.
Without a second thought, I reached out toward it and managed to grab hold of something. But just then, the light exploded with such intensity that I was forced to close my eyes.
*****
My eyelids felt unusually heavy. In fact, feeling anything at all was already unusual. There were also new sensations on my back and neck that made me feel distinctly uncomfortable.
I slowly opened my eyes and found myself staring at the circular ceiling of what seemed to be a vast stone chamber. Both the ceiling and the walls shimmered with reflections from turquoise waters that surrounded me.
"A different dream...?"
The discomfort in my back seemed to suggest this was reality. More importantly, it urged me to get up already.
"I feel like I slept on a rock..." I muttered, rubbing my eyes with my free hand. "What is this? A pedestal?"
It wasn't a rock, but rather a rectangular slab made of marble or something similar, engraved with all kinds of decorative reliefs.
"As long as it's not a sacrificial altar..."
With my head now clearer after being awake for a few moments, I sat on the edge of the cold, hard structure that had served as my bed, ready to stand up. But that's when I realized that having one hand free meant the other was holding something.
"This is..."
My right hand was clutching a sphere that radiated the same pure white light I had seen in my dream. It had a crystalline texture and felt warm to the touch. But beyond that, just looking at it gave me a strange sense of relief and peace, as if I had finally found something I had been searching for all along.
"But first things first... where am I?"
Lifting my gaze from the glowing sphere, I scanned my surroundings. I was on a platform in the middle of an artificial lagoon, surrounded by walls and pillars holding up the massive dome overhead. Everything was bathed in a soft turquoise glow that seemed to emanate from the water itself.
"That seems to be the only way out."
It didn't take long to spot a path of smooth stone blocks connecting the platform to an archway in the wall, beyond which I could see the start of a staircase rising into the distance.
I called it a path, not a bridge, since it barely rose a few centimeters above the water and lacked any sort of railing. Fortunately, it was wide enough that I didn't have to worry about falling in.
But before heading toward the path, I approached the edge of the platform to see my reflection in the water.
What stared back at me was a young man with golden eyes and long hair of silver.
Part of me thought those features were strange, while another part accepted them without hesitation.
"For some reason, this isn't the face I expected to see... and yet, I feel a kind of nostalgia that's hard to explain."
With my left hand, I traced the face that felt both foreign and familiar. Maybe I'd be able to remember something through touch. A thought born from a very basic human instinct, if I had to say so.
"Zendal..."
Out of nowhere, that name surfaced in my mind. And just like my reflection, it felt deeply familiar, yet I could swear I hadn't heard it in ages.
"It's like I've got a collection of movies in my brain and they're all trying to play at once... Wait, what's a movie?"
Instinctively, I raised my left hand to my temple as a headache started to form. But to my surprise, it stopped almost immediately when I quit asking myself so many questions.
"What a bizarre kind of memory loss, if it can even be called that. It's not that I've forgotten everything. It's more like I'm remembering too much at once, and everything's tangled together so I can't make any sense of it."
If I had to compare my memories to a plate of food, they'd definitely be spaghetti... I think I'm hungry.
Feeling like my stomach might start complaining at any moment, my eyes returned to the distant staircase.
"No point dwelling on it on my own. Maybe I'll find someone who can explain what's going on, or at least give me a piece of bread... spaghetti if I'm lucky."
Still holding the mysterious sphere that lit the way ahead, I began walking toward the exit.