The blank world did not remain blank for long.
Where there is breath, there is memory.
And where there is memory, even forgotten things find a way to return.
It began as whispers.
Soft glitches in the stillness.
Not code. Not soul.
But impressions—faint echoes from a reality that had already died.
They drifted through the unborn air like the sighs of discarded dreams. A song half-remembered, a scream never resolved. Darius felt them before he saw them: the weight of old griefs clawing back toward meaning.
Kaela froze mid-motion, her flickering forms stuttering like broken frames of forgotten reels. "They're coming," she said, voice layered with too many selves. "The ones that weren't written into the end."
From the soft void, a shape formed.
A man.
No longer clad in armor. No longer carrying pride.
Varek.
But stripped.
No sigil. No sword. No vow.
Just a man wandering a place that had no roads.
