The sky did not turn. It never had.
It hung like an old wound above the world, a void stitched in silver strands each thread a crack across the pale, fractured face of the moon. Where stars should have been, there was only dark water, still and bottomless. And beneath that dead sky, the world waited, breathless and cold.
A figure stirred beneath a tree that had not grown from soil, but from bone.
The branches above him were white and bare, brittle as sunless glass. They hummed faintly, though no wind stirred them. From the pale limbs hung strings of memory-charms small discs of moonstone etched with names, tied with black silk, swaying soundlessly in the stillness. Most were cracked. A few bled softly.
The boy did not notice them.
He awoke as if rising from the bottom of a dream, gasping not for air, but for something real. Something known. But the world gave him nothing.
He lay on his side beneath the boughs of the grave-tree, one arm bent beneath his ribs, the other curled over his chest. His hands trembled. His mouth was dry. His body ached like a thing recently reborn or recently buried.
There was dirt in his mouth. And something metallic.
He sat up slowly, the world spinning. As his vision steadied, he touched his chest, feeling the burn a sigil pressed into skin just over his heart. Not ink. Not scar. Branded.
It was a crescent, smooth and sharp, with a single line crossing its curve like a blade drawn across a throat.
He did not remember how he'd gotten it. He did not remember anything at all.
The tree watched him. Or perhaps it merely existed. It was hard to tell, in this place.
The boy who had no name to give himself rose on trembling legs. His clothes were threadbare, ceremonial in shape: long black sleeves, a tunic split at the thigh, moon-threaded linen wrapped around his waist like a mourning sash. No shoes. No cloak. No weapons.
He looked down at the ground where he had lain.
A symbol was etched into the soil, scorched into the pale ash by some invisible fire. It looked like a lunar loom, half-burned. Its threads had been unraveled, fraying outward in spirals.
As he looked at it, a sound flickered behind his eyes: a distant song, no louder than breath, weaving itself into silence.
He shook his head to banish it, but the melody lingered, sorrowful and strange. He could not tell if it was something he remembered… or something that remembered him.
Around the hill where the grave-tree stood, the land sloped into a valley of shifting ruins. Marble bones jutted from the ground like teeth. A broken road ran like a scar through the dust, swallowed at both ends by darkened woods and bleached stone.
In the distance, a tower leaned crookedly toward the sky, wrapped in thorned chains.
The boy took a step forward.
Then another.
The silence was complete but not empty. There was a weight to it. As if something watched not just him, but through him.
And then, the world whispered.
"Do you remember your name?"
He froze.
The voice wasn't behind him, or around him. It was within soft, breathless, close to the bone. He pressed his hands to his ears, but the voice echoed beneath his skull.
"You have none. That is your first price."
He stumbled, heart racing. "Who are you?"
"I am the song beneath the ashes. I am the knot you've yet to untie. I am what you left behind to walk this path."
The moon burned overhead, pale and cracked. The voice exhaled.
"You chose the Moonwoven Path. You wove away your name. What you gave, you cannot take back."
The boy backed away from the tree, his breath sharp. He glanced at his hands, at the brand over his heart.
"What path?" he whispered.
"The one that leads forward. Or nowhere."
The voice faded, leaving only the echo of the song the low, haunting thread of memory unraveling.
The boy knelt in the dust, gripping his arms. His body felt fragile, new, and yet aged. His soul felt stretched, worn thin like paper soaked in saltwater.
Something had happened here. Something terrible.
As he sat, trying to steady himself, movement flickered along the road below.
He went still.
At first, he thought it a trick of shadow but no. Something was coming. A figure. No several. Tall. Pale. Their limbs were too long, their heads bent at angles that felt wrong. They shimmered like cloth hung underwater, but moved like smoke.
Their feet did not touch the ground.
Their faces were hidden beneath veils of cracked bone, carved with names.
The Hollowed.
He did not know how he knew the name. But he knew to fear it.
The Hollowed drifted in slow procession, dragging behind them a long chain of memory charms. Each charm pulsed faintly. The air around them wept drops of light falling from the sky and hissing away into dust.
They did not speak.
They did not need to.
The boy crouched behind a fallen pillar, heart pounding. His thoughts raced.
Who were they?
Why did they feel familiar?
And why did he ache not just with fear, but with… recognition?
As they passed, one of the Hollowed paused.
It turned its veiled face toward the grave tree.
Toward him.
It tilted its head, and a soft sound escaped its mask a breath. Or a song. Or a broken whisper of remembrance.
Then, just as quickly, it turned away.
The procession continued, vanishing into the misted road beyond the ruins.
The boy emerged only after the dust had settled.
The charms they dragged had left marks in the soil threads that shimmered faintly in the moonlight.
He knelt beside one.
It pulsed at his touch, like a memory trying to wake. He reached for it and the charm disintegrated in his hand, turning to ash.
But in the instant of contact, something entered him.
A flicker of someone else's grief. A name spoken in desperation. A mother's face. A sword raised. A moon cracking open.
Then silence. He staggered backward, clutching his skull. The world swam. His heart raced.
He had touched a memory. Not his own. But it had wanted to be remembered. He stood, slowly. He understood something now. This was not a land of life. It was not a land of death. It was a land of remembrance. And he was empty.
He needed a name. A place to begin. Something to anchor him to this unraveling world.
He looked down at his reflection in the blackened stone. Pale. Young. Hollow-eyed. A brand over his heart. The faint thread of a song in his ear.
"Calyx," he whispered.
It was not his name. But it would be. It would hold him until something stronger came.
He clenched his fist.
"I will walk this path," he murmured. "Even if it forgets me."
Above him, the cracked moon pulsed faintly. The grave-tree's branches shivered, and one of its memory-charms snapped loose, drifting toward him. He caught it before it hit the ground.
It bore no name. Only a mark. A crescent, crossed.
The charm felt warm in Calyx's hand, though it was carved from stone. He turned it slowly in his palm. The symbol etched into its surface the same one branded onto his chest seemed to shimmer faintly in the cold glow above, as if it drew strength from the moonlight. He pressed his thumb into the groove. The warmth deepened, blooming outward like the memory of fire struggling to live.
For a fleeting second, he remembered something.
Not clearly. Not entirely. A flicker. A tower veiled in thornlight. A voice calling through the void. A name shouted across a hallway of broken stone, filled with silence and dust. He couldn't grasp the shape of the words or the voice that spoke them. But they stirred something deep inside him. A seed of recognition.
Then it vanished.
The charm cooled in his hand, and the flicker was gone. He slipped the stone back into the sash around his waist and continued walking. He didn't look back. There was nothing left behind him, only the field of bones and the endless dark.
Ahead, the road twisted through ruins swallowed by ash and fog. Thornroot crept over collapsed buildings, tangled in dead vines. He passed what might once have been a shrine. Now it stood broken and bent, moonlight staining it like tears. A crescent sculpture was split down the center, its face missing. A rusted bell hung from the shattered arch above, unmoved by wind or presence. Beneath it, names had been carved into the foundation. Every one was violently scratched out.
As if no one was permitted remembrance.
He kept walking. The air felt heavier with each step. The wind no longer whispered, it watched. Shapes moved in the corners of his vision, flickering between twisted arches and behind broken walls. They never emerged fully, just hints of long fingers and hollowed eyes.
At the end of the broken road, Calyx came to the edge of a chasm. A vast black rift opened in the earth, devouring the land. The air was thinner here. Sound felt muted. Even his breath seemed quieter, as if the chasm drank it. A bridge had once spanned the gorge, but only fragments remained. The stone was jagged, the gaps too wide to cross.
But far across the gulf, perched atop a solitary black spire, a faint blue flame flickered.
A Moonflame.
Its presence called to him. He didn't know why. Only that something inside it felt… familiar. Like a heartbeat buried under stone.
He stared at it for a long time, then sat at the edge of the broken bridge. He said nothing aloud. But in his mind, he asked.
Show me the way.
He didn't expect an answer.
But the moon answered.
Its glow shifted. Pale silver light bent downward like silk unraveling. Threads of moonlight stretched out across the chasm, weaving between broken stones and curling into shimmering strands. Slowly, a path began to form. Not of stone. Not of rope. But of pure light.
A bridge made of lunar thread, anchored by the air itself.
Calyx stood and stepped onto the shimmering path. The surface gave slightly underfoot, but held. Each step forward made the thread beneath his feet pulse with light. With every pulse, memories brushed the edges of his mind. A name spoken softly. A melody hummed beneath breath. Hands reaching. Eyes turning away.
He walked steadily, eyes never leaving the distant flame.
When he reached the other side, the moonlight tightened around him like a second skin before fading. He found himself standing before the base of the spire. It rose like a needle carved from obsidian, veined with silver scars. Symbols wound upward along its height, spirals of runes and old tongues lost to time. Some glowed faintly. Most were faded.
At the peak, the blue Moonflame danced in silence.
Beneath it, on a platform of stone and memory, sat a woman. Her presence was still, yet absolute.
Her skin was dark gray, almost mineral, veined with faint light. She wore robes of woven thread, each strand shimmering with forgotten thoughts. Her face was veiled by a single strip of cloth etched with dozens of names, most of them fading into blankness. Her hands moved across a loom that sat between her knees. Silken threads of silver light passed through her fingers as she wove. She did not look at him.
But she spoke.
"You've forgotten yourself."
Calyx stood silently for a moment. "I don't know who I was."
"Few do," she said, voice quiet like falling ash. "Fewer survive what it costs to know again."
He stepped forward. "What is this place?"
"This is the first altar," she said, still weaving. "Where the Moon watches those who would weave power from the threads of loss."
The mark on his chest throbbed. He winced, his fingers brushing the skin through his tunic. The woman tilted her head as if sensing the reaction.
"You carry a wound. Not of flesh. Of truth."
"I didn't choose this," he murmured.
"You chose it twice," she answered softly.
That sentence struck something in him. A hollow space.
"Then why don't I remember?"
She stopped weaving. Her fingers stilled.
"Because remembrance must be earned," she said. "Stolen, reclaimed, or sacrificed for. Never given freely."
She pulled a single thread from the loom and reached it toward him.
"Your first thread," she said. "Hold out your hand."
He did.
The thread coiled gently around his wrist. It pulsed once.
"This binds you to yourself. It will awaken when you face the echo that holds your first name."
"I don't even know what my name was."
"You will. When you take it back from the Hollow that wears your face."
Her words made his skin prickle.
"When the moon calls again," she said, "follow the bell that does not ring. And when the path splits, walk where no footsteps echo."
He stared. "What does that mean?"
The weaver closed her eyes. Her hands returned to the loom. She began to hum.
A slow, sorrowful tune.
It was the same melody that haunted his dreams.
He turned away. He didn't understand the thread, the prophecy, or the song. But something within him stirred. Something that reached for the flame above and the void inside.
He descended the spire with the silver thread still glowing faintly on his wrist.
The valley had shifted again.
Moonlight now poured from the east. Shadows stretched long. The fog grew thick. And the ruined world whispered louder.
He walked.
Hours passed. Or maybe years. Time bent here.
He came to a place where the air shimmered like glass. Footsteps echoed like bells against stone that hadn't existed a moment before. The mist formed shapes: people, weapons, memories. But none lasted more than seconds.
He passed through a corridor of stone mirrors.
Each mirror reflected him.
But never the same him.
One was old and battle-scarred. Another wore armor of black memory. One bled from his mouth. One had no eyes. One looked like a king. One looked like a monster.
One looked like him, exactly as he was except for the faint light behind his eyes.
He reached out.
The glass rippled.
He passed through.
The world beyond was black. A shore stretched beneath a torn sky. Fire bled from the moon. The ground trembled with the memory of a scream.
And there, standing beneath the flame-stained sky, was himself.
But older.
Clad in thorns. Eyes full of sorrow. A blade in his hand, shaped from song and ash.
He didn't speak.
He attacked.
The blade struck like guilt, and every swing cracked a memory open inside Calyx. A woman crying. A fire consuming books. Blood on his hands. A name shouted. A promise broken. A child taken.
Calyx stumbled.
The double raised the blade high.
"You are not yet worthy," the reflection said. "You remember too little."
The blade fell.
But the charm on Calyx's waist flared with silver light.
A single note rang out.
Not a weapon, but a song.
The blade stopped. The reflection screamed. Light surged from the charm, blinding and warm.
When he opened his eyes, he was back in the mirror field.
The mirror he had touched lay shattered.
In his hand was a shard of obsidian, veined with pale silver. A word glowed faintly across its surface.
Ashen.
Not a name. Not yet. But the first echo of one.
A beginning.