He woke face-down in the snow.
Not just cold—*numb*. It clung to him like a burial shroud, seeping through the thin fabric at his back. His skin was slick with blood, some of it fresh, most of it blackened and cracking.
His first breath rattled in his throat like broken glass.
Then pain.
Then noise.
Then the faint, echoing *clang* of metal on metal far in the distance.
He didn't know where he was.
He didn't know who he was.
But his fingers still worked, and that had to count for something.
He pushed himself up, palms sinking into a bed of crushed gravel and frostbitten moss. Beneath the snow, stone slabs—weather-worn and jagged—sprawled in all directions like the remains of a shattered plaza.
His right hand trembled as he braced himself against a fragment of marble. There, near the base of a ruined column, a streak of blood—his—dripped steadily from the edge of his sleeve.
Silver hair, stiff with sweat and soot, clung to the side of his face. He tried to wipe it away, only to smear dirt and blood across his cheek instead.
Wind howled down from the mountains, carving through the ruins like a predator. It smelled like charred wood, melted steel, and something else—something burnt and sweet and unmistakably human.
He coughed.
Pain bloomed across his ribs.
A scream flashed in the back of his skull—shattered and distant. Then came a memory, flickering like the afterimage of firelight:
A sword.
Too big.
Too fast.
Blood soaking through polished banners.
Someone crying his name—but it wasn't Atlas. It wasn't a name he remembered at all.
"Who am I…?" His voice rasped like old parchment.
A single name drifted up from the ruin inside him.
*Atlas.*
He said it aloud. Again. Louder this time.
"Atlas."
It fit in his mouth like something he'd lost and just found under rubble.
Still kneeling, Atlas glanced around.
The ruins stretched for what looked like miles. Twisted stone archways leaned drunkenly into one another. The bones of a fortress? A temple?
Here and there, he saw swords—rusted, snapped, buried half in snow like markers for the dead. Their hilts bore unfamiliar sigils: snarling beasts, crescent moons, sunburst crosses.
One, half-buried near his boot, had a handle wrapped in dark blue leather.
He reached for it instinctively—then hesitated.
Why?
His hand hovered just above the grip. A flicker of emotion ran through him—not fear. Not revulsion.
*Recognition.*
He wrapped his fingers around the hilt.
The weight settled into his palm with eerie familiarity. The leather was worn smooth in all the right places. It was balanced. Custom-fitted. *His*.
And yet…
He rose slowly, legs shaky beneath him, sword held low.
No memories rushed in.
But his stance changed.
Without thinking, Atlas widened his feet, shifted his weight, and drew the blade into a guard position that felt etched into his spine. A form not learned, but lived.
Snow continued to fall, light and silent, dusting the exposed blade.
He stared at the sword.
The longer he held it, the more it trembled—not from his hand, but something in the steel itself. A faint hum traveled up his arm. Not quite magic. Not quite memory. Something older. Something broken.
Atlas looked up.
Far beyond the ruins, at the edge of the white horizon, a jagged line of mountains cut the sky like fangs. Below them, smoke curled upward—thick, black, rising slow.
A city?
A battlefield?
Was that where he'd come from?
No answer came.
But something stirred in his chest.
Resolve, perhaps. Or fear. Or both.
He turned toward the smoke.
And began walking.
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