The dim light flickered once behind him—then died, swallowed by a silence so complete it felt less like absence and more like a suffocating presence.
Kael stepped forward, boots crunching on brittle earth that cracked beneath his weight. The forest here was a graveyard of shadows—gnarled blackened trees with limbs twisting upward as if in silent supplication to some forgotten god. Their silhouettes fractured reality itself, folding it back in impossible angles. This place was older than memory, older than myth.
No path. No door. No promise of escape.
A weight settled in his chest, heavier than the chill in the air. Something ancient lurked beneath the soil and stone—an echo of something broken. The pendant resting cold against his sternum hummed faintly, its iron surface etched with sigils that pulsed in rhythm with a heartbeat only he could feel.
Not just a trinket. A tether.
The question clawed at him, sharper than any blade:
Who am I?
But beneath the question, beneath the fog of forgotten names and faces, a conflicting tide churned. He was afraid—yes. Yet the fear wrestled with an equal, strange urge: to press forward, to unravel the dark tapestry woven into this cursed forest.
He wanted to run. To flee and hide from the hunger lurking in the shadows. But deeper still was a stubborn ember, a whisper of defiance that refused to be snuffed.
From the corner of his eye, movement—a flicker of black between the trees.
He spun, eyes sharp, but found only the slow dance of shadows cast by dead branches. The forest breathed around him, slow and deliberate, as if watching, waiting.
Then a scream shattered the silence—raw, ragged, and human. It tore through the stillness like a blade, then faded into the cracking leaves and whispering wind.
Kael's knees threatened to buckle.
Someone—or something—was trapped here.
The scream came again, nearer now, dripping desperation.
He wanted to move—had to move—but his feet betrayed him, rooted like the ancient trees themselves.
Ahead, a pale light shimmered—a clearing bathed in an unnatural silver glow.
At its center, a pond.
Still as obsidian glass, it reflected not the sky but an impossible void.
Approaching slowly, Kael saw his own face ripple across the black mirror—midnight-blue hair tangled like restless waves, pale gold eyes deep with sorrow and a haunting emptiness. Yet the reflection felt wrong—hollowed, fragmented, as if the man in the water was a ghost wearing a borrowed skin.
His fingers trembled as they brushed the cold surface.
The pendant pulsed sharply, syncing with glowing script that bloomed beneath the water—ancient, unyielding, alive.
Find the Mirror That Remembers.
The words throbbed beneath the liquid glass like a heartbeat, a command woven with old power and darker promises.
A sudden roar ripped through the forest—no scream this time, but something primeval and cruel, something that spoke of hungry voids and forgotten gods.
The pond churned violently, then stilled, its surface perfectly calm again.
Kael stumbled back, breath shallow, eyes darting.
A shadow slipped between the trees—watching, patient, unblinking.
The forest was no mere place. It was a prison, a predator, and a puzzle.
His voice was barely more than a whisper, fragile but resolute:
I don't remember who I am.
Yet beneath the frailty, a spark burned—unyielding and fierce.
I will find the Mirror.
Turning from the pond, he plunged back into the waiting darkness, voice steady with a promise that chilled the night air:
Even if finding it means becoming something... other.
Far behind him, beneath the black glass, new words glimmered faintly:
What if the one who remembers is no longer human?
Kael did not see it.
Not yet.
But the question had alrea
dy begun to hunt him—into shadow, into silence, into the heart of the forgotten.