Ashen emerged into silence.
No smoke. No whispers. Just a vast stone plain under a sky of grey clouds. Windless. Still.
The ground was smooth—unnaturally so. Polished like glass, cracked only in lines that resembled veins. In every direction stood stone obelisks, tall and narrow, their tops swallowed by fog. Each was carved with thousands of letters, many in languages Ashen couldn't understand. Some shimmered faintly, pulsing with a slow inner glow.
Ashen took a step forward. The sound echoed across the plain like a drop of water in a cathedral.
The nearest obelisk called to him.
As he approached, he felt the air tighten, not with heat or fear—but with weight. The weight of history. Of memory. The names on this monolith were endless. Stacked atop one another like a tower of forgotten voices.
He placed a hand against the stone.
His vision split.
—A soldier screaming into fire, dragging his wounded brother through the mud.
—A child scribbling their name into the wall of a collapsing school.
—A man whispering the name of a lost love, just before a blade met his throat.
Each name was a story. Each story was a scar.
And somewhere, deep within that ocean of forgotten lives—he found one carved at the bottom.
ASHEN.
Ashen stumbled back.
"No," he muttered. "That's not supposed to be here."
But the name glowed. A faint ember, just like the others.
A second obelisk lit nearby.
Then a third.
A chain of light slowly began to form, drawing a path across the plain. Ashen followed.
As he walked, more names called to him. Some he somehow recognized—as if he'd once known them. As if they'd once whispered to him in dreams he couldn't remember.
Then the path ended.
Before him stood the largest obelisk of all.
It was broken—split down the center like a shattered spine. Its halves leaned inward as if trying to stand but unable to hold themselves together.
Ashen stepped closer.
Between the two halves, something floated.
A book.
Its cover was leather, scorched and cracked. Its pages were bone-white, but as Ashen touched it, they blackened with ink, bleeding with memories not his.
He opened it.
—A god of memory, chained in a place without time.
—A ritual performed by dying monks, carving a name into a boy's soul.
—A village swallowed by ash, not because of a curse… but because the world tried to erase him.
Ashen's breathing turned shallow.
He was shaking.
This trial… it wasn't made to test his body. It was carving into something far deeper.
The book's final page was blank.
Then one line appeared in ink that looked like shadows:
"Will you bear what we have left behind?"
Ashen stared at the words for a long time.
Then he whispered, "Yes."
The tomb quaked.
The wind returned, howling.
All around him, the obelisks sang—not with voices, but with names. A chorus of the forgotten. A flood of identity. And deep within his chest, a spark bloomed. Not fire. Not light.
Memory.
He was remembering something not his. Not fully. But real.
And it was only the beginning.