The first thing Elias felt was not pain, but weight.
Not on his chest. Not on his limbs. On his name.
He blinked, vision blurred by smoke and incense, and found himself kneeling on a dais made of polished obsidian. The air shimmered, not with heat, but with expectation. Around him, dozens of robed figures bowed low, heads touching the ground. A great gong rang out behind him, vibrating down his spine like a threat wearing perfume.
"Kéon the Flame-Bearer," a voice intoned behind him."Voice of the Mirror. Speaker of the First Memory."
He did not move. Could not move.
Elias's hands, not his hands, rested on his thighs, old and wrinkled, each finger covered in silver rings etched with spirals. The skin was darker than his own, lined by years, and crackled like dried leaves. He stared at them, these foreign hands, and remembered dying.
Not violently this time. Not in fire or blade. But willingly. He had stood before the mirror, again and made a choice.
Now he was here. In a body that belonged to another. Kéon.
The crowd rose together like waves. Every face was painted with ash and ochre, eyes wide with devotion. But Elias caught something else: fear. Not the fear of failure or gods, but the fear of disappointing a man they thought should already know what to do.
"You may speak the prophecy now, Speaker."
It came from a woman to his right. She knelt beside him, armored from neck to toe in carved gold and bone. Her face bore no makeup. Only scars. Her eyes met his, and narrowed. Recognition? Suspicion?
She leaned in closer.
"You don't remember, do you?" she whispered.
He said nothing. Couldn't.
The mirror stood behind them all. It wasn't small anymore. It towered three stories high, embedded in a stone monolith at the back of the temple. It shimmered faintly, not glass, but something older, alive. Elias could feel it pulling at him, humming beneath his ribs.
It knew him. It was waiting.
"I must enter the Mirror," he said, voice cracked like old parchment.
The woman beside him stood. She raised her hand and the crowd immediately dropped their heads again. She looked down at Elias with something new: resolve.
"Then the Trial begins."