"There was a village once—
so quiet, even its gods forgot it."
Lengaza woke up in the middle of a storm.
But not a storm of rain.
A storm of names.
Whispers spun around him like dry leaves:
"Azeran…"
"Théel…"
"Marik."
"Lengaza…"
Each name echoed, then vanished—as if the sky itself spat them out.
He sat up on cracked earth. The stars were gone.
Above him hung a dull, grey sky—stitched like old cloth.
Nyra knelt beside him. Her eyes were unreadable.
"This is a forgotten zone," she whispered.
"Where the erased go to haunt themselves."
Lengaza looked around. "I've… seen this place before."
In the distance stood ruins of a village.
Not destroyed—but blurred.
Like someone had tried to erase it with trembling hands.
Statues stood halfway-formed.
Wind chimes hummed in languages no one remembered.
Lengaza stepped through the dust.
Each step brought a memory he didn't own:
A child laughing.
A red ribbon tied to a finger.
A fire—so bright it swallowed everything.
"What happened here?" he asked.
Nyra replied quietly, "This is where your story began.
Before it was rewritten."
Lengaza touched the stone wall of a half-destroyed home. Symbols glowed faintly—then rearranged themselves into words:
"He who kept his name… broke the code."
Suddenly, a child appeared behind him.
Pale. Eyes glowing silver. Wearing a crown of feathers.
The boy looked exactly like Lengaza—but smaller.
He reached out.
"You left me behind."
Lengaza froze. "Who… who are you?"
The child didn't answer.
Instead, he turned… and walked into the mist.
"Don't follow him," Nyra warned.
But Lengaza stepped forward anyway.
The air tightened.
The mist pulled him into a room carved from memory.
A dining table. Four empty chairs. One name carved into the wood:
> Lengaza.
He touched it—and the room trembled.
"This was home," he whispered. "Wasn't it?"
Outside, thunder cracked.
But it wasn't real thunder.
It was the Collector—ripping through the sky, searching again.
Lengaza turned to Nyra, breath trembling.
"I want to remember. Everything."
Nyra's eyes lit with sorrow and pride.
"Then prepare yourself.
The world didn't forget you by accident."