300 A.R. (Arca Regalis)
Darkness.
Then came the flame.
The island of Phesmadion was on fire. The ruins of the sanctuary collapsed into the stormy sea, black smoke mixed with the smell of burnt blood. The flags of the two great powers, Ancharon and Vaelthor, were lying in the mud, bathed in red. The air was filled with the echoes of the dead—the whispers of those who no longer had a mouth to scream.
It was not a fight. It was an execution.
It all started when the bloody cycle was torn. Throughout the ages, balance has been maintained through the Chosen Wanderer, sacrificed at the vaults of the four Kings of the Wilderness. But the last Wanderer has disappeared. The kings have weakened. The balance collapsed. And so the two most powerful rulers of the old world decided to get its blood and wealth for themselves.
But in the senseless pursuit of supremacy, they all died.
And in the midst of that destruction, between the rotting skeletons and the cracked earth, lay a man, an ordinary man, in a world too big and dangerous.
In a world he never knew.
Deep beneath the ruins of the sanctuary, in the ruins of a forgotten temple, the body moved. Hands, burned by the flames of war, trembled. A piece of ash fell from his face. Then there was a faint, jerky breath.
And he got up.
308-310 A.R. (Age of Ashes)
A loner surrounded by a wasteland, stretching across the surrounding area. The wind blows sharp dust that sinks into every corner of the island, into every crack, into every memory of the past. He leaves, he does not look back. Wind and ash will not allow him to do so. They lead him through plains, seas and oceans to a distant, unknown land. Here the sea escorts him to the mainland. He thinks, he thinks, he doesn't understand anything, he can't remember anything. Why is he suddenly here?
He sits on the cliffs every day, listening to the singing of the waves somewhere deep below him, under the high cliffs, and looks far into the fog on the horizon, creating his own images of reality and trying to remember what the water has washed away from him over time. It is now completely clean, without the burden of the past. He is wrong. He never forgot to forget, he will remember soon. Time is the key in his maze of thoughts. Time plays with it like the sea plays with stone – it slowly grinds it down, shapes it... and reminds him that nothing will be forgotten forever.
The first hint of memory comes at night, when the wind over the cliffs whispers old words in a language he does not know, yet understands. He feels it like a cold hand on his shoulder, like the echo of a voice that has long since died down.
The second memory comes at dawn. The moment the sun emerges from the fog and its rays cross the surface of the sea, an image flares up in the mind of a loner. The flames in which he once stood. Flags that blow in the wind. Bloody ground under your feet.
And then comes the third – sharp and relentless.
It is not a vision. It's a feeling.
Promise.
It comes as a sharp blow to the chest. His lungs contract, his fingers clench into a fist. He perceives something awakening deep inside him.
He knows he can't stay any longer. The wind carried him here, but the same wind is now calling him on.
And so he turns to the sea for the last time. He watches the waves that have cleansed him, that have silenced him, and he speaks. In a weak voice, but with certainty:
"I remember."
The clouds will part. The journey begins.