Paul awoke to a dull, throbbing pain in his head.
His eyelids were heavy, resisting every effort to open.
When they finally did, he found himself in near-darkness. A single flickering candle on a distant table offered a faint light in the room.
He tried to move, to lift an arm or shift his legs, but his body refused to respond.
A weight, unfamiliar and heavy, pressed down on him. Every attempt to move was met with a dull ache, like his limbs had turned to lead.
"What… happened to me?" he whispered, voice hoarse and thick in his throat.
The room he was in felt strange—opulent, yet outdated.
Thick velvet curtains hung from the windows, their edges frayed from age.
Ornate wooden furniture filled the space, carved with intricate designs that spoke of wealth and status, yet everything felt... wrong, like he had been dropped into a scene from a medieval painting.
His mind raced.
He didn't remember how he got here.
He strained his memory, trying to recall the events before waking up.
Nothing came to mind—just an unsettling blank.
With a deep sigh, Paul let his eyes wander, trying to piece together his situation.
The longer he observed, the more he realized that the style of the room, with its heavy drapes and old-world furniture, resembled something from a time long past.
It was as if he had been transported back to an era where nobility and royalty reigned.
A creeping unease settled into his chest.
Then, the door creaked open.
Paul's heart leapt.
His body remained frozen, but his senses sharpened.
He focused on the doorway, trying to make out who—or what—had just entered.
The room was too dark to see clearly, but he could hear the unmistakable sound of footsteps approaching, slow and deliberate.
The figure moved with a careful, almost hesitant gait.
"Who's there?" Paul demanded, his voice betraying the fear he tried to hide behind his words.
His pulse quickened, pounding loudly in his ears.
There was no answer. The footsteps paused, and the silence stretched thin, taut as a wire.
Paul's eyes locked onto the door.
His breath caught in his throat as he finally saw a shape—vague, shadowy, and human-like—standing just inside the room.
The figure stood motionless, as if contemplating whether to approach him.
"Who are you?" Paul called out again, this time with more urgency.
Still nothing.
Then, through the darkness, a pair of glowing purple eyes appeared—intense and eerie.
They stared directly at him, unblinking, as though studying him.
Paul's breath hitched. Those eyes weren't normal. They felt... unnatural.
He instinctively averted his gaze, the intensity too much to bear.
The figure shifted but didn't speak.
For a moment, Paul felt certain it would step closer, that the glowing eyes would draw nearer.
But then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the figure turned.
The door creaked open once more, and without a word, the figure stepped out and closed the door softly behind them.
Paul was left alone in the suffocating silence, his heart pounding in his chest.
"What the hell was that?" he whispered to himself, still reeling from the strange encounter.
His hands were trembling—though he wasn't sure if it was from fear or the lingering weakness in his body.
As his mind began to settle, the silence of the room was suddenly interrupted by a flood of fragmented memories, each one assaulting his senses in quick succession.
Images flashed before his eyes—disjointed, confusing.
Two boys, dueling with wooden swords in a sunlit courtyard.
Laughter echoed in his mind, the carefree sounds of children playing.
He could see their faces, their bright smiles as they practiced under the watchful gaze of a man and woman—parents, perhaps.
Then, the scene shifted.
The same two boys, now older, were running.
Their surroundings had changed drastically—a cliffside, treacherous and steep, with a raging waterfall cascading below.
The older boy was pulling the younger one by the hand, urging him to keep running, to escape from something unseen.
Paul could feel the tension in the air, the desperation in their movements.
Suddenly, the younger boy was struck—hit by a spear that came from nowhere.
Paul's heart dropped as he saw the weapon tear through the boy's shoulder, the force of it flinging him off the edge of the cliff.
"No!" Paul's mind screamed. But the vision continued relentlessly.
As the younger boy fell, his voice echoed in Paul's ears. "Eldrich!" the boy called out in terror as his body plummeted into the waterfall below.
The older boy—his name on his lips—cried out, "Aldrich!"
And then, darkness.
Paul gasped, his chest heaving after what he had just witnessed.
His mind struggled to process it all, to make sense of the images that had been thrust upon him.
One word lingered, burning itself into his consciousness, etched deeply into his thoughts.
Aldaman.
The name reverberated through his mind like an unrelenting drumbeat.
It was tied to the memories, to the pain, and to his circumstances.
"No way!" he mentioned, the truth daunting on him.