For as long as he could remember, however long that truly was, he had rotted in the dark. Wandering aimlessly and scraping along the cold and dark floors of the Underground.
There was no sky in the Underground. Just endless layers of stone pressing down from above like a forgotten grave. The air was stale, tasting of metal and dust. And the silence? It was only broken by the occasional shuffle of the other Hollows, dragging themselves aimlessly through the shadows like discarded husks. Not even mice nor insects were to be found in that place.
He was one of them.
A Hollow.
He didn't know his name anymore. Or if he'd ever really had one. Names were things for the living. For people who still mattered. Hollows didn't speak. Hollows didn't think. They wandered and rotted.
Mostly gray and bald, their eyes were lifeless, forever staring into the distant darkness, not actually looking at anything.
But something inside him wouldn't let go. He was different, able to see and understand. Looking in a puddle of dirty water, he was different from them. There was still life in his eyes and a skinny, but still human-like build to support the body.
He leaned against a broken wall, his body thin and pale, his fingers trembling as he stared down at his chest. Right there, beneath the fragile skin, he could feel it again.
The itch.
It wasn't physical. No amount of clawing or scraping would make it stop. It came from inside... deeper than his body. A restless pulsing where the last piece of his soul still flickered weakly, refusing to extinguish.
No other Hollows were like that, they didn't react or seem to have that same itch. It was like a piece of humanity was still clinging on and calling for the rest to restore itself.
Once, maybe, he thought he had been something greater. Someone greater. There were memories—faint, distant things that drifted through his mind like smoke. Faces he couldn't name. A sky that wasn't black. A fire, a rebellion, the feeling of standing against something vast and terrible. It was a feeling of importance and responsibility that never seemed to vanish.
And then…
Pain.
After what felt like countless years of decay, that fragment of his soul pulsed again. Stronger this time. The itch was turning into something else.
From the first time he awakened in this dark and uninviting place, he could tell that it wasn't a place he belonged. There was no ecosystem or a reason for life to thrive in such slum. Not even the dead seemed to have a place there.
He pressed his hand against his chest, as if trying to hold himself together. But the warmth inside surged. His pulse quickened, echoing in his hollow ears.
Thousands of memories flowed through his mind. Going in and out faster than he could embed them into his mind. A face, a council, and a great power. A faint voice flew across his mind as well, whispering, "Carry out your legacy, oh chosen one. Release them and bring a halt to this never-ending madness once and for all. Break the cycle, Siff!"
"Siff." That name rung a bell. It was... his name. A name he had forgotten for decades. Thousands more of Siff's memories ran through his mind—childhood, adulthood, friends, family—but none of them could stick for longer than a few seconds.
And then the ground beneath him split open.
A crack as thin as a strand of hair ran across the floor, glowing faintly with dim green light. He stumbled back, watching as the fissure widened, splitting the stone as if some unseen force were carving open reality itself.
No other Hollows reacted. They kept dragging themselves forward, oblivious to the rift tearing open right in the middle of their decayed world.
Why only him?
Why all of a sudden?
"Because you are not done yet. It's still not over!" whispered a voice in Siff's mind before disappearing with a faint low-pitched echo.
The itch turned into fire.
And before he could resist, the light swallowed him whole...
The fall felt endless.
Colors he'd never seen bled across his vision as he spiraled through a tunnel that didn't obey any sense of reality. Time bent. Space fractured. Somewhere along the way, the heavy weight of the Underground peeled away, and the emptiness inside him began to... hum.
When he landed, it wasn't on stone.
It was soft but pointy at the same time. The luscious strands were waving in harmony while still holding onto their shape. A thought popped into Siff's mind. "Grass!?" Even if he'd never seen it, he knew.
Shortly after, before Siff was even able to look around, a shockwave hit him. It was a strong and warm gush of wind that carried emotion and voices with it.
A small flickering light appeared in front of him. It danced around Siff's head for a few moments before spraying a gush of blue mist into his face.
For the first time, Siff felt a kind of refreshment. The sensation was nice and "Cool?" he thought, never even knowing what it meant. His skin started gaining color, and life slowly returned to his eyes. Energy that was long gone slowly returned. Sound, that wasn't present in the Underworld, grazed Siff's ears for the first time. It was wind and quiet squeaks of the flickering lights all around him. All of a sudden, Siff heard mumbling near one of the flickering lights.
"A new savior has appeared! A new Cyclebreaker! May he be the one to break this cursed cycle and free us from this torture."
Siff, while stunned at what he had just heard and been able to understand, accidentally let out a small sound from his mouth.
One of the small flickering lights approached him. With slow, distant-sounding words, it said:
"Oh good, it looks like you cleared your head, and your speech should also return slowly. We gave you some of our spiritual energy to make you somewhat more human, I guess."
Siff stared into the small flickering light in confusion, not able to muster a word.
"Oh, sorry. Forgot to mention. All of us are souls trapped here inside this realm. We are forced to endure endless cycles of destruction and apocalypse. You must be one of the saviors, aren't you?"
Siff's head started to pound. He collapsed to the ground, growling intensely in pain. Thoughts started filling his head uncontrollably, popping almost out of nowhere and disappearing in an instant. A sense of purpose and responsibility appeared in his mind.
"End the cycle!
Free them!
Reclaim the missing parts of yourself!"
These three things repeated themselves in Siff's mind hundreds of times.
Finally. After what seemed to be an eternity, the thoughts stopped. Siff's mind felt warm and quiet. Everything felt warm and quiet, actually.
Shortly after, the ground started trembling, and the air became significantly heavier.
"W-what is happening!?" Siff asked the flickering light with a concerned expression on his face.
"The cycle is ending again. Where you are right now is one of the many worlds in the Forgotten Realms. These worlds are at the brink of extinction. This world will be destroyed, but before the last traces of it disappear, it will reset to a certain point before destruction. That happens endlessly because of us, the lost souls that are trapped here for eternity, reliving these loops. Unless all that exists gets destroyed, a world can't perish. And since we souls can't die, it resets without ever reaching its conclusion."
The ground started shaking even harder and became unusually warm. The sky turned bloody red, almost like a field of roses. The small light started flickering even faster, and Siff, although the small light didn't have a face nor a proper tone to its voice, still sensed concern and panic in the lost soul.
"There is not much time left! In order to free this world, you have to stop the catastrophe that's about to destroy it and harvest its power. That way you can consume the essence of this world, release all the lost souls, and let it finally die!"
Before the soul could say another word, a hole opened in the bloody red sky. A bright yellow beam started shooting down to the ground. It started disintegrating everything in sight.
Siff started to panic and crawl away from the beam that was slowly covering everything around it.
"No use..." whispered the lost soul in a quiet and calm voice.
Finally, the beam caught up to Siff. Burning down all around him and melting his flesh off the bones, it was a new feeling for Siff. Pain... something Siff also never felt before. It was unpleasant and annoying.
Moments later, everything went black...
Then, the loud noises of wind and destruction had stopped. It wasn't hot nor cold, and that weird feeling of pain also ceased. Siff was confused.
He opened his eyes and realized he was sitting in the same spot as before. The grass was still green, the sky a warm yellowish color, and there was no strong wind.
The flickering lights floated calmly as if nothing had happened. Siff looked around in disbelief, his hands gripping the grass beneath him, feeling its texture, needing to know it was real.
"...Did... Did I die?" he finally asked, his voice weak and rough like an old, unused tool.
One of the flickering lights hovered closer. "Sort of. But not really. This is the cycle's reset. Everything is as it was before the end... except you. You keep your memories now. Each time this world falls, you'll return to this moment until you find a way to stop the catastrophe."
Siff looked down at his hands. They looked more human than before. Color had returned to his skin, and the dull emptiness he always felt in his chest had faded into something... warmer. It wasn't much, but it was enough.
"How am I supposed to stop something like that?" he asked. "I don't even know who I am... or what I'm supposed to do."
"You are Siff," the light replied, its glow pulsing softly. "And you are not just anyone. You are the Cyclebreaker. You are the only one who can end this. You must find the source of the catastrophe, harness its power, and free the souls trapped here. Only then will this world—and all others like it—be allowed to truly die."
Siff took a shaky breath. For the first time since awakening in the Underground, the emptiness wasn't all-consuming. There was fear now. Confusion. Purpose.
"Where do I start?" he asked.
The flickering light twirled in the air, scattering tiny blue sparks. "Explore. Listen. Learn. The answers are hidden all around you. But hurry... the cycle will end again, and next time, it may hurt even more."
Siff slowly stood up, his legs trembling but holding. He glanced at the sky, still warm and peaceful for now, and clenched his fists.
"Break the cycle," he whispered to himself. "Free them... and reclaim myself."
And so, with nothing but the fragments of a forgotten name and the echo of a mission he barely understood, Siff took his first steps into the unknown.
The cycle had started again.