They never told him where he was born.
No photographs. No stories. No birthday candles, no baby name scrolls. Skyler Novaah had lived seventeen years in the bunker beneath the Ruined Fields, raised by people who called themselves his parents—but who spoke of the past like it was illegal.
It was always:
"Don't ask."
"Don't remember."
"Some truths burn more than fire."
He once believed it was trauma.
Then the dreams began.
In his sleep, he stood beneath twin moons that pulsed like hearts. He watched cities crumble to ash before they ever stood. He saw a woman cloaked in living flame scream his name from the edge of forever. Her voice echoed in colors he didn't have words for. Her name... he knew it, though he'd never spoken it aloud: Aeria.
But each morning, the memories vanished. Like fog fleeing the sun. But not completely. They left scars.
This morning, his left hand trembled—not from fear, but from memory. It wasn't the first time. He rolled up his sleeve. Across his veins, a faint glyph shimmered under the skin like ink caught between dimensions. It hadn't been there last week.
"Skyler!" his mother called from the kitchen slab. "Eat something. Today's a memory day."
He froze. That word again—"memory."
She always used it like it was sacred. Like it was radioactive.
Skyler walked in.
His mother stood in the coldroom, pale and beautiful, but always distant. Her eyes bore that same glow sometimes—faint gold-white, like someone had poured starlight behind them. She was stirring food, but watching him. Always him.
"I saw the sky fall," Skyler said.
His father looked up. Stiff. Silent. Measured.
"You saw it forget," his mother corrected gently.
A pause.
Then she reached under the stone counter and brought out a silver cylinder etched with flame sigils—one he had never seen before.
"It's time," she whispered. "The seals are waking. Your blood can't hold the lock much longer."
"What seals?" Skyler asked. But she didn't answer.
The man from yesterday—Orias—had vanished by morning. No sign. No footprint. No echo.
But something had changed in the air. In Skyler's bones.
"You're not cursed," his mother said softly. "You're remembered. That's far more dangerous."
He sat. Confused. Hungry. Terrified. But beneath it all—burning like the slow unfurling of an ancient flame—was something else: eagerness.
He wanted to know.
He had to know.
Suddenly, the pendant at his neck clicked open.
Inside wasn't a photo or lock of hair—but a symbol. A circle of swirling runes surrounding a flaming eye. Beneath it, etched in the smallest script:
"Only those forgotten may witness what remains."
Skyler looked up at his parents.
"Tell me who I really am."
And this time… they didn't say no.