A Memory Without a Name
Garret jolted awake, gasping for air as the images of Aseda's life faded from his mind like mist in the morning sun. His heart pounded. The salt pits, the crimson moon, the glowing light—he had seen it all, felt it all. But there was one major problem.
Who the hell was Aseda?
He rubbed his temples, trying to shake off the strange sensation, but the memory clung to him stubbornly. It wasn't his life, yet it had burned itself into his mind as if he had lived every painful second of it. That wasn't normal. Not even for him.
Garret had experienced strange visions before—usually after a questionable tavern drink or an unfortunate brush with wild mushrooms—but this was different. Someone had ripped out the context, leaving him with only the raw emotions. He had all the pieces of a tragic puzzle but none of the edges to hold it together.
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud snore.
He turned his head to see Dunwich, his ever-unreliable traveling companion, sprawled out across a rock, using his own arm as a pillow. The man could sleep anywhere—once, he had dozed off in the middle of a battle and somehow dodged an axe because of it.
Garret nudged him with a boot. "Wake up, you sack of useless meat. I think something's wrong with my brain."
Dunwich cracked open one bleary eye. "Yeah? How's that different from usual?"
"I just had a vision of someone's life, but I don't know who they are."
The other man yawned, stretched, and promptly rolled off the rock, hitting the ground with a dull thud. "Sounds like a you problem," he grumbled from the dirt.
Garret ignored him and focused on the details of the memory. If someone had deliberately erased the identity of the girl from his mind, it meant one of two things: either they didn't want him to know her, or they didn't want her to know him.
Neither option was comforting.
Still, he had other things to worry about. Like surviving the next day without being eaten, stabbed, or cursed by some ancient relic (again). The last town they had passed through wasn't exactly friendly, and the wanted posters with his face on them weren't doing him any favors. Apparently, people didn't take kindly to someone "accidentally" setting a mayor's house on fire. In his defense, the building was mostly flammable to begin with.
He sighed and stood up. "Come on, we need to move before the bounty hunters catch up."
Dunwich groaned but pulled himself to his feet, brushing dirt off his already-filthy coat. "Do we at least get breakfast first?"
Garret patted his pockets. A single, sad-looking piece of jerky stared back at him. He split it in half and tossed a piece to Dunwich, who sniffed it suspiciously.
"This looks like the kind of thing that was once alive but really regrets it," Dunwich muttered before eating it anyway.
Garret smirked. "That's how you know it's authentic."
They packed up their meager supplies and started down the winding path ahead, the early morning mist curling around them. The road was long, full of danger, and most likely leading them into another disaster.
But as Garret walked, his mind kept circling back to the girl in the memory.
Who was she?
And why did it feel like knowing her would change everything?