The sky was the color of ash.
The sea whispered like a dying god, its waves clawing at the crumbled shore with the hunger of something ancient — and forgotten. Rusted bones of ships lay half-buried in the blackened sand, twisted metal and rotting wood mingling like graves the ocean refused to bury.
A boy stirred.
He awoke face-down in the wet sand, coughing salt from his lungs. His body trembled — not from cold, but from something deeper. Fear, perhaps. Or the echo of something that had once been human.
His arms were thin. Scarred. The marks of chains still lingered around his wrists like ghosts of captivity.
He didn't remember where he was.
He didn't remember why he was there.
He didn't even remember his own name.
He raised his head slowly and saw a world broken beyond repair. Jagged cliffs stood in the distance, their peaks lost in clouds. Towering, rust-stained pillars jutted out from the beach — like remnants of a forgotten civilization.
And far beyond that... was a wall. Massive. Impossibly tall. Faintly glowing.
It hummed.
It repelled.
It called.
The boy stared at it for a long time before collapsing back onto the sand.
---
Somewhere nearby, something moved.
Footsteps.
Silent, careful, deliberate.
Then a voice — calm and cold, like steel wrapped in silk:
"He's alive."
Another voice. This one younger, hesitant:
"That's the third one this week. But… he looks different."
The first voice stepped closer. The boy felt a shadow pass over him.
"Strip him. We'll see what the Warden thinks."
"We can't just leave him like that."
"Do you want to die, rookie? We don't help the unknown."
"...He's not unknown. He's just forgotten."
That voice lingered.
Then, something sharp touched the boy's shoulder — a blade? A test?
He forced his eyes open. For a moment, just one, he thought he saw her.
A girl. Tall. Pale. Armor scorched from battle. Her eyes were a piercing grey, so cold they burned. She didn't flinch when he looked at her. She only stared — as if she was searching for something in him.
"Who are you?" she asked.
He opened his mouth.
No sound came out.
He didn't know.
---
Somewhere, far away — across mountains and oceans and years of memory — a soul stirred. A shadow moved. And a name long buried beneath blood and sorrow prepared to rise again.
But not yet.
Not today.
Today, he had no name.
Only a heartbeat.
And a second chance.
---