Chapter 5 – Echoes of Dust
Ashen walked.
The ash swallowed his footsteps the moment they fell. No horizon, no sun, no sky. Just dust and silence. Every breath he took stirred the ground into pale clouds that clung to his throat. His legs were sore, his chest tight, but he didn't stop.
There was no path—just the sense that forward meant something. That if he kept moving, something would change.
It didn't.
For hours—or what felt like hours—nothing happened.
Until the whispers came.
They were faint at first, just behind his ears. Not words. Not yet. Just the suggestion of sound.
shhhh...sh...shahh…
He turned. Nothing behind him.
But the next step forward stirred something beneath the ash. A hand. Dry, brittle, thin as bone and wrapped in flakes of gray. It reached upward blindly, trembling, and then collapsed into dust again.
Ashen backed away.
But more began to rise.
All around him, shapes formed and fell apart—humanoid figures half-emerging from the ash. Some with no heads. Some reaching toward him with open arms. They were not hostile. Just… hollow. Empty. Forgotten.
And then—one of them spoke.
A single word: "Why?"
Ashen froze.
The figure didn't move again. It crumbled like paper in the rain. But the others started echoing it. One by one.
"Why?"
"Why did you forget us?"
"Why do you carry us, if you do not remember?"
Ashen shook his head. "I don't know you," he said quietly.
The voices hissed. The ash trembled.
"But we know you."
And then—they stopped.
Just ahead, the dust parted.
A field of cracked stone stretched before him, like a courtyard shattered by time. Lining its edges were statues, broken and headless. Dozens. Hundreds.
Some wore cloaks carved from stone. Some bore weapons. Some knelt. Others stood with hands clasped behind their backs. And at the center of them all stood a single tall statue, whole and untouched.
Ashen walked to it slowly.
Its face was covered with a mask—plain, featureless, smooth.
But something in it twisted his gut. Something familiar.
There was no plaque. No name. Just three deep, ancient words etched into the base:
He Who Remembers.
Ashen touched the base. It was warm. Not physically—warm in the way a memory was, right before you grasped it. A sound rose in his mind. Wind over stone. Chanting. Something ancient. Words that didn't belong to any tongue he'd spoken.
He pulled back.
But when he looked around again—he was not alone.
A boy stood where the statue had been.
Seven, maybe eight years old. Black hair tangled and messy. Thin arms, dirty hands. Eyes like his.
It was him.
The boy looked up at Ashen with no surprise. Only quiet.
"You're walking the wrong way," the boy said.
Ashen opened his mouth to speak—but no sound came.
The boy took a step back.
"They'll forget you too," he said.
Then he vanished.
The statue returned.
Ashen stumbled back, breath shallow.
He turned—and behind him, the cracked stone had vanished. In its place stood a black lake, utterly still. Its surface was like glass, and where it should have reflected his face—
—it showed something else.
Flashes.
A tower lost in vines. A hand reaching from rubble. A circle of fire around a boy with golden eyes.
And then—a door. Tall. Ancient. Made of black iron and bone.
Ashen stepped to the edge.
His reflection blinked.
And whispered, with his voice—but older, broken:
"You are not just Ashen. You are what was left behind."
The wind screamed suddenly.
And the lake shattered.
Everything went white.