The village of Elowen had seen better days. Its streets were lined with cracked stones, its roofs patched with hope more than wood. But its people endured. And none more so than Lira, the healer.
Lira had known loss—too much of it. War had taken her brother, plague her mother, and the cold silence of abandonment had taken her father. Yet every morning, she opened the doors to her clinic, stitched wounds, and offered herbs for aching souls. Her strength wasn't in magic or swordplay, but in her quiet persistence.
When Eron stumbled into her care—a young man with no memory of who he was, only the echo of dreams filled with fire and stars—something shifted.
He had been found on the edge of the Whispering Woods, half-conscious, his body marked by strange, glowing lines that pulsed with an otherworldly rhythm. The villagers feared him. Lira did not.
She saw the sadness in his eyes, the confusion and fear. She saw the boy beneath the mystery.
And he saw in her the first warmth he'd ever known.
Chapter Two: The Spark Within
Eron's strength returned with the spring rains, but so too did the questions.
Every morning, he helped Lira in the clinic. He learned the names of herbs, the craft of stitching wounds, and the art of silence—how listening could sometimes heal more than words. But his nights were filled with dreams that belonged to someone else.
He dreamt of fire raining from the heavens, of a man cloaked in shadows calling his name, and of a throne made of obsidian that pulsed with power and pain.
"I think I was someone before," he confessed one evening as they sat by the hearth.
Lira stirred the stew slowly. "We're all someone before. That's not what defines us."
Eron smiled faintly. "You always know the right thing to say."
She looked at him, eyes gentle. "No. I just know pain when I see it."
Later that night, he wandered toward the Whispering Woods. The trees hummed in a language he almost understood. A light—pale and pulsing—appeared between the trunks. He followed it.
It led him to a stone arch covered in vines, a ruin from an age no one remembered. As he touched it, his vision blurred.
He stood in another time.
A great hall, filled with armored warriors. A woman in silver robes raised a sword to the sky. "Eron, Guardian of the Flame, you must not fail."
And then darkness.
He awoke on the ground, gasping.
When he returned, Lira was waiting, a lantern in her hand. She said nothing—only embraced him.
"I think I'm more than I ever imagined," he whispered.
She held him tighter. "Then we will discover who you are. Together."
Outside, for the first time in weeks, dawn broke with golden clarity.
To be continued...