I woke to the taste of dust and the chill of stone against my cheek. My head throbbed—a dull, empty ache where memories should have been. I didn't know my name. I didn't know how I'd gotten here. Just… nothing.
I tried to move, and cold iron bit into my wrists. Chains. But when I pulled, they clattered loose, rust flaking away like dead skin. They were old. Useless. Why put me in chains just to use rotten ones?
Pushing myself up, I leaned against the wall. My body felt heavy, foreign. Rough-spun cloth scratched against my skin, and a dark curtain of hair—my hair, I guessed—fell across my face. It was long, black. That was one thing I knew.
The room was a cellar, small and dark. A sliver of grey light cut through a high vent. My eyes adjusted, and I saw the walls weren't bare. Symbols were cut into the stone. Circles within circles. Eyes inside what looked like gears. Arrows pointing nowhere. They meant nothing to me, but my stomach tightened looking at them.
"Where am I?" The whisper was raw, unfamiliar. It was my voice, but it sounded wrong in the silence.
Stone steps, worn smooth in the middle, led up. I took them slowly, each footstep kicking up plumes of dust that glittered in the faint light. At the top, a heavy oak door. I put my shoulder to it, and it groaned open on hinges that screamed in protest.
The air changed. The dust-smell gave way to something older: damp stone, dry rot, and the faint, sweet ghost of decay. I stood in the nave of a colossal church, or what was left of one. The ceiling was a shattered skeleton, open to a sky the color of bruised flesh. Moonlight poured through the broken dome, illuminating a graveyard of splintered pews and toppled statues. Angels with their wings broken off stared at the floor with blank stone eyes.
"Gods," I breathed, the word coming out unbidden. I didn't know if I believed in any.
I walked forward, my footsteps echoing in the vast emptiness. Everything was immense, and everything was broken. It felt like walking through the ribs of a dead giant. On the pillars, words were painted in a flaking, rust-colored pigment. I couldn't read most of it, but a few phrases stood out: …Fate's wheel turns… and …Death follows…
I reached the altar—a great slab of cracked marble. Carved into its face was a single sentence: HERE LIES THE HOPE OF THE WEAK.
I ran my fingers over the letters. The stone was icy, but for a second, I felt a jolt, like a spark from a dead wire. Something was here. I didn't know what, but I felt it in my bones.
A rustle. Soft, but deafening in the quiet.
I spun around. A shadow detached itself from a fallen statue. A raven. It hopped onto the headless shoulder of a stone angel and fixed me with a bead-bright eye.
"Took you long enough." Its voice was a rasp, like stones grinding together.
I stared. A talking bird. Somehow, in this place of utter madness, it seemed almost normal. "You… can talk."
"I can. You can. It's a day for talents," it croaked. "Call me Croft."
"Croft," I repeated, the name meaning nothing. "What is this place? Why am I here?"
"Questions. Good." It tilted its head. "This is a church for a god who lost. You are here because you were left. As for why… that's the question, isn't it? Why you?"
"I don't know who I am." The admission felt dangerous, but I had nothing else.
"I know," Croft said, not unkindly. "I'm here to help you remember. Before what's left of this world finishes crumbling."
He—it—flew down, landing on a pile of rubble nearby. I noticed more of the symbols here, scratched into the floor tiles. One in particular caught my eye: a crescent moon, upside down, hovering over a circle. Without thinking, I crouched and touched it.
A flicker of warmth. A pull, deep in my chest.
"What is this?" I asked, looking up at Croft.
The raven shuffled its wings. "A starting point. A trail of breadcrumbs in a very dark wood. Your breadcrumbs."
I looked around at the colossal ruin, at the alien symbols, at the talking bird. I had no name, no past, and a future that looked like this. But that faint warmth under my finger was the first real thing I'd felt since waking.
"Okay," I said, more to myself than to the raven. "Okay. Then we start here."
I sat down on the cold floor, facing the symbol. The first clue. Croft settled on a broken pew nearby, a silent watchman in the cathedral of my amnesia. The light began to fail, and the shadows grew long. I had nowhere else to go. So I sat, and I stared, and I tried to remember.