The void stretched endlessly—a graveyard of broken realities. Cities hung in jagged shards, their skeletal skyscrapers frozen mid-collapse. Oceans glimmered in suspended tsunamis, their waves crystallized into glass. Forests of petrified trees clawed at the emptiness, their branches twisted into skeletal hands reaching out for life. At the center of this cosmic decay, the protagonist awoke. His chest pounded, yet no air filled his lungs—only the void’s suffocating silence.
He tried to scream, but his voice dissolved into nothingness. Panic surged as he clawed at his throat, fingers meeting only empty space. Am I dead? The question slithered through his mind like a cold, unyielding whisper, as the shattered fragments pulsed with a sickly light—waxing and waning like the final breaths of dying stars.
Then, from the debris of ruined worlds, a figure emerged.
Robed in living shadows, his face shifted like smoke—one moment ancient and gaunt, the next unsettlingly youthful—yet his eyes remained constant: sharp, grey, and uncannily alike the protagonist’s own.
> “You’ve forgotten. But I remember everything. I am you. And you are about to see the world as it truly is—the price of immortality is more than you can fathom.”
The words shattered the silence like ripples across still water. The protagonist recoiled, his mind assaulted by disjointed fragments of memory—a powerful leader, a master of fate, a tortured soul who once dared to manipulate destiny’s threads. He did not recognize the voice, yet its intimacy felt inexplicably his own.
The figure pressed on, his tone deepening with weighty inevitability. “This is your legacy. I paid the price so you could survive. But the curse has followed you. The world you knew is gone. All that’s left is the battle for its soul, and you're the key to either saving it or ending it.”
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Before the protagonist could grapple with these revelations, the void convulsed. An immense, churning wave of raw, crystalline magic—violet and alive—swept over him, ripping through the debris with the force of a thousand collapsing stars. As the surreal chaos roared, fragmented images blazed in his mind: warriors clashing in forgotten battles, whispers of lost civilizations, and moments of ethereal beauty looped endlessly. Over it all, the voice murmured once more:
> “Your mind is shattered, but soon you will remember everything. The power you once wielded is yours. But it will come with a cost… a cost you are not ready to pay.”
Then, the madness subsided like a receding tide. Slowly, the vortex of shattered light and color gave way to sensation. He felt a violent tug—an abrupt wrench from the cosmic battlefield into something altogether different. As the rushing magic surrendered, cold earth pressed against his back, and the heady scent of pine and decay invaded his nostrils. The void was gone.
He blinked under a pale, quivering moon. Gnarled trees loomed like ancient sentinels; their skeletal branches weaved an eerie tapestry overhead. His body felt alien—slender limbs trembling, his long, flowing silver-grey hair cascading disheveled around a face now marked by a mysterious sigil etched across his left cheek. Running a trembling hand over his chest, he traced the raised scar—a shattered star burned into his skin.
“Where… where am I?” he whispered, voice brittle and raw as his confusion lingered in the cold night air. His fingers dug uncertainly into the damp soil, desperate to anchor him to this new reality. For a long, agonizing moment, the forest remained silent save for the rustling leaves and the echo of his pounding heart.
In that vulnerable pause, the fragments of his past mingled with the shattering weight of destiny—a silent promise that his journey to reclaim lost memories and confront a hidden power had only just begun.
