It started the morning after the celebration.
I woke to a heaviness in my chest—not the emotional kind, but something physical, like a weight pressed behind my eyes and lungs. My limbs ached, and my skin felt warmer than usual, though the breeze outside was cool.
Xena noticed first. She touched my forehead gently while I sat curled in the kitchen corner, staring at my untouched breakfast.
"You're burning up," she said softly. "Salah—can you bring some herbs?"
I tried to tell her I was fine, that maybe it was just the excitement from last night, but my voice came out thin. Cracked.
Even Silas looked worried, standing by the door with his small hands clasped.
"Do you want my blanket?" he asked, holding it out like an offering.
I smiled weakly and nodded. "Thank you. That helps."
But even then, I knew this wasn't just a fever.
Something inside me was shifting.
The next few days blurred together. I stayed in bed, sweating through the nights and waking with dreams I couldn't hold onto. When I tried to think about my past—about the moment I had died, the things I'd done, the powers I'd wielded—it was like reaching into murky water.
I could still feel my strength. I could still use it, if I tried.
But the clarity was fading.
Salah sat with me often, cooling my forehead with cloths soaked in water. Xena brewed bitter teas and hummed to ease my breathing. I didn't tell them about the memories—how sometimes, I'd forget names I once spoke in my sleep. How my former life was beginning to flicker, like candlelight in wind.
What would I even say?
"Thank you for raising me. By the way, I used to be someone else entirely, but now I'm slowly losing that part of me"?
It sounded foolish even in my mind.
One evening, after my fever broke, I sat on the porch, wrapped in Silas's blanket. The sky was dark, but clear, full of stars I couldn't name anymore.
Salah joined me, quietly.
"Feeling better?" he asked.
"A little," I replied. My voice was stronger now, but something else felt dimmer.
We sat in silence for a while before he added, "You were calling out strange names in your sleep. Names I've never heard before."
I stiffened.
"Oh?"
"Yeah. One sounded like 'Asterius.' Another like 'Klerion.'"
I blinked.
They meant nothing to me.
Or—no. That wasn't true. They meant something. I just couldn't reach far enough inside myself to know what.
I looked away. "Maybe dreams don't always belong to us."
Salah seemed to understand more than he let on. He didn't press.
Instead, he said, "You don't have to carry anything alone, Euryale. Not here."
And that was when it hit me.
He still said my name like it belonged to me. But even that name—Protector Euryale—was starting to feel like a title from a book I once read, not a memory I had lived.
The days passed, and I got stronger physically. I could eat again. Walk further. Play with Silas in the yard. But the space in my mind where my past once lived now felt like a room slowly emptying of furniture.
I remembered the feeling of protecting the planet.
But not the how.
I remembered the sensation of power flowing through my hands.
But not the shape of the battles, or even the faces of those I fought beside.
Instead, something new was forming—something smaller, gentler.
I remembered the taste of Xena's broth more clearly than the weapons I once carried.
I remembered the way Silas's laugh could lift a tired heart more than I remembered my own last words before turning to ash.
And strangely… I didn't fear it.
One afternoon, while I was helping Salah gather wood, he said something that stayed with me.
"You know, when I first pulled that egg out of the water… I thought it was going to change the world."
I looked up, arms full of sticks. "Did it?"
He smiled. "Not the way I expected. But yes. It changed our world."
We said nothing more after that. But I carried those words with me like a warm ember.
Maybe I didn't need to be remembered as the savior of a planet.
Maybe being a son, a brother, a big sibling to Silas… was enough.
Still, sometimes—at night—I'd press my hand against my chest and ask myself quietly:
Who am I, really?
I didn't always have the answer.
But when I listened closely, I could still hear the ocean inside me. Not as a storm now, but a hum. A lullaby. One that whispered not of battles, but of rest.
I wasn't afraid of forgetting anymore.
Because maybe this life—this quiet, beautiful life—wasn't a replacement for the one I lost.
Maybe it was a gift I had never expected to receive.