I landed not with a crash, but in a damp silence. My consciousness slowly returned, drawn from an abyss of suffering by a foreign sensation: softness. My back was cradled by something damp and plush—a thick blanket of hypnum moss covering rich, black earth. The air here was heavy and dense, teeming with life. It carried the scent of damp earth after rain, the sweet decay of fallen leaves, and the fragrance of alien flowers whose petals seemed to emit a faint glow, like a dying breath.
This world was a mesmerizing paradox. A symphony of beauty arranged upon a foundation of silent injustice. Houses rose among ancient trees, some made from giant linden wood, their trunks carved with intricate spiral patterns, as if they were one with the forest itself. Others, standing proudly on higher hills, were built from gleaming Parian marble, their silvery veins catching the pale sunlight, radiating an aura of cold magnificence. The ancient forests, which the locals called the Silent Woods, stretched as far as the eye could see. Their canopy was so dense that sunlight had to fight to break through, dancing on the forest floor as fleeting patches of light.
Beneath all this natural beauty, a rigid hierarchy, an invisible system, held a tight grip. Status. A concept that determined the value of a life. Those of high status, the Patricians, lived in marble palaces, wore silk garments, and walked with their chins held high. The higher their status, the more worthy the life they received, and the deeper the arrogance that poisoned their souls. A tidy, logical, and revolting order.
There, at the edge of a small, clear stream, two pairs of eyes were watching me. Two young girls, standing in the shadows of a giant oak.
"Let me go, just let me go!" one voice rang out like the chime of a small bell, brimming with unstoppable enthusiasm. The girl, Aelia, with honey-brown hair tied loosely back, took a step forward, her black eyes sparkling with pure curiosity.
"Don't, Aelia! Don't be reckless!" The other girl, Brynja, taller and calmer, reached out and held her friend's shoulder. Her voice was lower, laced with vigilance. "We don't know who he is. Look at his clothes. That's not a weave from any land we know. We should keep our distance."
Aelia pouted. "That's exactly why! He needs help, Brynja. Look, he's not even moving. What if he's hurt?"
"What if he's dangerous?" Brynja retorted sharply, her storm-grey eyes narrowing as she analyzed my prone form. "A stranger appearing from nowhere in the heart of the Silva Tacita is not a good omen."
Their debate became a blurred background as I jolted awake. Not a peaceful awakening, but a violent convulsion. My lungs burned, as if I had held my breath for a century in the depths of a vacant ocean. I rolled onto my side, my body wracked by a deep, rattling cough—the horrifying sound of a drowning man.
And then the water came out. Not a mouthful. But a small waterfall, pouring from my lips—a strangely clear and shimmering water, as if it held the dust of extinguished stars. The amount was impossible, far too much to be contained by this mortal frame. The water pooled, soaking into the moss, carrying the faint scent of ozone and the void.
The girls' argument stopped instantly.
"By the Ancestors..." Brynja whispered, taking a half-step back in shock and horror.
But Aelia, driven by a different instinct, moved closer. Her concern overcame her fear. "Hey," she called out, her tone now gentle, stripped of all its cheerfulness and replaced with genuine pity. "Are you okay?"
I could only gasp, each breath feeling like shards of glass. I lifted my head, and the world spun.
Brynja closed in on Aelia, her face tense. "This is wrong," she whispered quickly. "I'm going back to the settlement. I'll tell the Phylakes. You, stay here, but don't touch him. For your own safety, Aelia, just watch from a distance." Without waiting for a reply, Brynja turned and vanished swiftly between the trees, her movements as nimble as a deer's.
Now it was just me and Aelia. The girl crouched a few paces away, giving me space but her gaze never left me. The sincere pity in her eyes was now mixed with a kind of puzzled awe as she glanced at the strange, drying puddle around me. A soft breeze played with her messy hair, blowing a few strands across her jet-black eyes—eyes like two bottomless pools.
I stared back at her, or at least, in her direction. My gaze was vacant. Depression was too simple a word. This was a chasm of sorrow, an emptiness left behind by a universe that had died. My eyes didn't see a girl in a forest; my eyes still saw the black vortex devouring my world, still heard the echoes of billions of souls screaming in eternal silence within the seal on my forehead. My eyes still saw the sad smile of the one who had sacrificed everything.
"Are you okay?"
Aelia's voice was a soft melody of genuine concern. I knew that tone, the pity given to a wounded creature. A lie felt easier than the complicated truth, so I just nodded slowly. A small movement that took all my remaining strength.
"Thank goodness," she sighed, and I could feel the tension in the air ease slightly. She no longer saw me as a dying anomaly, but perhaps as someone who could be saved. She sat cross-legged on the grass with a graceful, natural movement, as if she were a part of the forest itself. "Oh, what's your name? My name is Aelia. And my friend from before, her name is Brynja."
She said her friend's name with a special tenderness, her eyes shining. "Brynja is so kind," she continued, speaking more to herself than to me, as if sharing a precious secret. "She helps me a lot, and I love helping her too. We're... we're everything to each other." She rested her slender hands on her lap, a simple gesture that radiated quiet contentment. Then, her dark eyes returned to me, filled with a friendly hope. "What about you?"
Such a simple question. A question that should have the most fundamental answer. I opened my mouth to reply. "My name is..."
The words hung in the air, empty and weightless. Echoes of a million other names screamed inside my head, but none of them were mine. "Name?" I whispered, more to myself. A cold confusion began to crawl up my spine. Who was I?
That question was a key. A key that unlocked a hell inside my mind.
The seal implanted on my forehead, which until now had been only a heavy burden, now exploded with ferocious energy. It felt as if something was trying to tear its way out of my skull, ripping soul from memory. A searing heat, not like fire, but like the heat of a collapsing star, burned through every nerve and synapse. The library containing the whole of "our" civilization was now burning down inside my head, and I was trapped in the middle of it.
I screamed.
It was not a human scream born of physical pain. It was a primal roar that tore from the depths of my soul, an echo of a billion deaths, a shredded symphony of despair. The sound ripped through the silence of the Silva Tacita, sending birds bursting from the branches in a panic.
Aelia's face shifted from friendly curiosity to a mask of pure terror. The color drained from her cheeks.
"Arghh! It hurts! I can't take it!" I stammered, clutching my head. The pain was so immense, so absolute, it obliterated everything else.
"Are you okay?! Hey... hey!!" A panicked Aelia lunged forward, her compassionate instinct momentarily overpowering her fear. She shook my shoulders desperately, trying to pull me back from the chasm of madness that was swallowing me. "Snap out of it!"
But I was too far gone. "Help me!" I shrieked, a plea directed not at her, but at the void, at anyone who would listen. I began to thrash, not to hurt her, but to escape the torment within myself. My fists slammed against the empty air. My fingers clawed at the damp earth, tearing up the moss. My back struck the gnarled root of an ancient tree, feeling nothing but a dull echo, dwarfed by the storm in my head.
That blind violence was the final straw for Aelia. Her panic metastasized into cold terror. She stumbled backward, away from me, her hand covering her mouth. Her eyes, once full of pity, were now wide with horror. She no longer saw a wounded young man; she saw a monster, an incomprehensible, chaotic force.
The pain. The fear in her eyes. The crushing loneliness. In the midst of this agony, a single, terrifyingly clear thought surfaced: I wanted to die.
My vision began to blur. The world around me became a narrowing, pulsating tunnel. My eyelids fluttered rapidly, each blink a flash between the peaceful green forest and the inferno in my mind. It hurt. It hurt so much.
Through a veil of tears and blurred sight, I saw Aelia. She was still there, frozen in terror, tears now streaming down her cheeks not from pity, but from fear. She took another step back, the instinct for survival written on her face. With one last, choked sob, she turned and fled, disappearing among the trees, leaving me utterly alone.