There was no light here.
No fire. No sky. No time.
Dren floated in a place where thought frayed like thread, and silence wasn't quiet—it pressed. Every breath was a struggle against forgetting. Every heartbeat felt distant, like it belonged to someone else.
He didn't know how he got here. He couldn't remember who he was supposed to be.
There had been a voice once. A girl. Fierce eyes, steady hands. "Say your name," she had whispered through golden light. But the name had drifted away, like a leaf caught in a stream.
Now, in this void, Dren wandered through fog that moved like smoke but smelled like sorrow.
"Dren."
A whisper reached him.
He turned—though there was no direction, no up or down. The voice came again.
"Dren. You were born under the blood moon. You used to sing to frogs in the well. Your mother laughed when you spilled flour trying to bake. Remember."
He gasped, and color bled back into the grayness. Faint. Fleeting.
"Who—who are you?" he called, but the fog devoured his words.
The Beast stirred nearby.
He could not see it, but he felt it—like something folding and unfolding inside his head. It unknit memories, pulling threads from his mind with gentle cruelty. Not pain. Just… emptiness. A slow unraveling.
Dren clutched his chest. There, something warm pulsed beneath his tunic. He pulled it out.
A small stone, carved with a spiral. Ember-etched.
He didn't remember placing it there. But he remembered her voice again.
"Hold this if the dark ever touches you. You are flame, Dren. Flame remembers."
Chizzy.
The name crashed through the fog like thunder. And with it came images.
A bonfire. Her standing in front of it, arms raised, golden sparks in her hair. A story she told about fire dancing on snow. The way she looked at him—not like a child, but like a person who mattered.
He gripped the stone tightly.
The void groaned.
Suddenly, the grayness convulsed. Whispers surged from every direction—voices twisted into things they were never meant to be.
"You're nobody."
"You were never real."
"You are a memory no one kept."
But Dren screamed back. "I am Dren! My sister's name is Mella! My house smells like pine and stew! I remember!"
The Ember stone pulsed, and a crack tore through the void.
Light—small and golden—spilled through the rupture.
On the other side stood Chizzy, her hand outstretched, her eyes fierce.
"Come back!" she shouted. "You are remembered!"
The Beast howled. The void twisted violently.
But Dren ran—toward her, toward the light, toward himself.
As he crossed the threshold, the fog clung to him like claws. He nearly faltered—but Chizzy grabbed his wrist, yanked him forward, and the light consumed everything.
He collapsed on the ground of the Hollow, gasping.
He was back.
The villagers surrounded him, awestruck. Sera nodded from behind, her bow still drawn. Aerun exhaled a breath he didn't know he held.
Talia wiped tears from her eyes. "You fought it."
Dren shivered. "It almost took everything. It doesn't just erase memories. It feeds on who you are. It turns you into an echo."
Chizzy looked toward the darkened woods.
"He's testing us. Probing. That was only the beginning."
But Dren looked up at her and smiled weakly.
"You reached me."
"No," she said softly. "You reached yourself."
The Ember glowed on his chest, stronger now. A tether anchored in truth.
And deep in the woods, the Beast retreated—wounded, but not gone. It had underestimated the fire of memory.
It would not make the same mistake twice.