---
Darkness.
But not empty.
Ash floated—weightless and breathless—in a vast sea of shadow, not water. There was no air, no ground, no sky—only an endless, velvet expanse that pulsed in rhythm with something unseen.
He wasn't dreaming.
He was inside himself.
Flickers of sensation brushed past him—like old memories trying to reach out through thick curtains. A child's laughter. A woman's scream. The scent of incense. The coppery tang of blood.
> "Who... am I?"
His voice rang out, but there was no echo.
He didn't remember falling.
Didn't remember the battle.
But he remembered... being betrayed.
Not by someone else.
By the world.
---
Whispers in the Void
Shapes stirred in the dark.
Ash turned. It wasn't fear he felt—it was longing. Like something important waited ahead.
He walked, though there was no floor beneath him. The darkness shifted with each step, folding around him like smoke curling through broken glass.
Then, a sound.
Soft, at first. Then louder.
A heartbeat.
Thump.
Thump.
It wasn't his own. It was older. Deeper. Coming from beneath whatever this place was.
Suddenly, the space lit with a red shimmer. Beneath his feet, an ocean of molten runes churned, forming and unforming words he couldn't read—but somehow understood.
> "Remember."
Ash gasped. The pressure in the space surged, and his limbs felt heavy—as if a mountain had collapsed on him. His skin cracked with streams of light, like something inside him pushing out.
And then the pain began.
---
[Chains of Memory]
Searing light ripped through his mind.
Scenes crashed down like lightning:
A child—himself—clutching his mother's hand in a burning village.
A cold, noble voice declaring the orphan boy "an anomaly to be discarded."
A blade descending toward his throat—stopped by a hand cloaked in celestial flame.
A voice: "Let the boy live. One day, he'll make the world remember."
Ash screamed.
His body in the real world trembled at the sea floor, limbs twitching inside the seal's faint glow. Cracks spread along the outer layer—not large, but definite. A pulse of energy escaped into the ocean, so faint it went unnoticed by the surface, yet strong enough that certain ancient watchers stirred in their sleep.
---
[Inside the Dream Temple]
Ash fell to his knees in the void. Before him, the dark parted like curtains—and a temple emerged.
Massive, sunken, covered in spiraling chains of light and shadow. It floated like a mirage—built of stone, memory, and thunder.
Ash stood.
Something called to him from inside.
He stepped forward.
At the temple gates stood a single figure—hooded, unmoving, faceless. Yet the figure bowed slightly, as if greeting someone long awaited.
Ash opened his mouth to speak—but no sound came. The figure simply pointed behind him.
Ash turned—
And saw himself.
Not as he was now, but older. Taller. Eyes like storm-wrought blades. A scar ran down one side of his face, and his aura crackled with restrained power.
Ash stepped back. "Is that... me?"
The faceless figure spoke, not with a voice but with feeling—You were. You will be.
Then both the figure and the vision of his future self vanished in smoke.
Only the gate remained.
Ash moved toward it.
But just as his fingers touched the surface—
A shockwave rippled through the void, sending him flying back.
From somewhere below, a whisper curled into the air:
> "Not yet. You are still breaking. You are still blind."
---
[Sea Floor – Awakening Signs]
In the real world, deep beneath the ocean, the seal around Ash flickered with threads of light—lines forming incomprehensible symbols before fading.
The Crimson Mourner watched from his further cell of shadow, amused.
> "Ah… cracks in the bottle," he murmured. "So the child remembers the burn."
He tapped one finger on the runes around his own prison.
> "Let it leak, just enough. Let the world forget how silence tastes."
Far above, the sea shifted. Whales sang the wrong song. A coral reef glowed with ancient symbols not seen in eons.
---
[Back Inside – A Choice]
Ash stood, panting.
Before him, the temple gates had begun to close.
But something had changed inside him. A seed had opened.
He didn't understand it, not yet. But he felt the fire.
The hunger.
And a voice inside—his voice—finally answered the question he'd asked at the beginning.
> "Who am I?"
> "Someone they tried to bury."
The void pulsed with warmth. And then—
He woke.
Not fully. Not with eyes.
But enough for his presence to reach upward—
Toward the surface world.
Toward a girl leafing through forbidden records…
Toward a storm that had not yet begun.
---