It rained fire the day I forgot my name.
Not the kind that crackles with warmth. This rain fell in sheets of oily black, trailing sparks that hissed through the air. Where it landed, the earth peeled like scalded flesh. The sky split open in violet scars. The storm had a sound, too—not thunder, but whispers.
I woke in a crater full of bones.
The scent of char and copper clung to the wet air. Around me, bodies twisted into blackened statues, some reaching toward the sky, others clutching symbols I didn't recognize—broken medallions, scorched prayer knots, fingers still wrapped around hilts.
My hands shook as I sat up. Ash clung to my skin like bruises. My clothes were torn, half-burned, crusted with dried blood—some of it mine. Maybe all of it.
There was a word scorched into the meat of my palm.
SOVEREIGN.
I didn't know what it meant. Only that it wasn't my name. I didn't remember my name.
A sound tore through the silence.
Heavy, wet breathing. A snarl. Then metal clanging as something moved through the deadfield. I scrambled behind a toppled pillar, pain lancing through my ribs.
From the smoke emerged a hound—not the kind that barked or bled.
Its body was stitched from silver bones and memory-thread. Eyes like polished glass, mouth stitched closed with wire. A banner fluttered from its back, bearing the sigil of a half-sun bleeding down a black mountain.
A Citadel Enforcer.
And it was tracking me.
I held my breath. The hound stopped near one of the corpses. Its tongue slid from between the stitches—a strand of black root that tasted the air.
Then it spoke, without opening its mouth.
"Relic thief. Ash-marked. Designation: Kaien. Subject is conscious."
Kaien. Was that my name?
I didn't get time to think.
The hound's legs unhinged, unfolding with a screech. It lunged.
I ran.
Over bone, over ash, through ribs that jutted from the ground like gravestones. The air sizzled where it brushed my skin. My breath burned. My vision tunneled.
The hound was faster.
It closed the distance in seconds, leaping—
—And a blade rose from the earth.
I didn't see it until the hound struck it mid-pounce. The metal sang as it split the creature's jaw. Sparks. Bloodless. The beast crumpled in two, twitching, leaking threads that evaporated before hitting the dirt.
I stood there, panting. The sword was still half-buried in the ground, humming softly.
I knew, somehow, that it had killed before.
Its hilt was wrapped in tattered leather. A sigil ran down the spine—a circle crossed with a single tear. I reached for it. My fingers brushed the grip.
The hum grew louder.
A voice rang in my skull.
"Who do you remember?"
I yanked my hand back. But the mark on my palm burned brighter.
I heard footsteps.
Not metal. Not stitched.
Human.
From behind the ridge came a figure draped in a gray coat, hair braided with white ash. A woman, tall, holding a staff carved from memorywood. Her eyes were inked black, no whites, no irises.
She looked at me and smiled.
"It's been a long time, Sovereign."
The woman didn't stop walking until she stood over the broken corpse of the Citadel hound. Its halves still twitched, leaking memory-thread that shimmered faintly in the burned air.
She crouched and touched the edge of the split jaw, then wiped her finger across her tongue.
"Not a true Enforcer," she said quietly. "A scout-beast. Hollow-stitched. And rushed."
Her voice was calm, without fear. Like someone used to speaking in graveyards.
I gripped the sword without meaning to. The hum thrummed up my arm, not hostile—watchful.
"Who are you?" I asked.
The woman rose. Her eyes were still like oil. Her ash-braided hair hung down her back like a severed veil.
"You don't remember me."
I stiffened. "Should I?"
She stepped closer. Not threatening, but with the weight of inevitability.
"You remember fire," she said. "And ruin. You remember the black rain. But you don't remember yourself. That means the Mark is real."
I looked at my palm. The word was still there: SOVEREIGN, etched like a burn scar that wouldn't fade.
"My name is Erya," she continued. "I walk the Memory Thread. I record what the Citadels try to erase. And you, Kaien Vael, are one of their oldest sins."
Kaien Vael. The name rang like a broken bell. It didn't feel like a lie.
But it didn't feel like mine.
"You said Sovereign," I said. "What does that mean?"
Erya tilted her head, amused. "Once, it meant you had dominion over a thousand flames. Now, it means you're an exile. Marked by the rain. Hunted by the world it left behind."
I looked down at the sword. It pulsed gently, as if affirming her words.
"What is this?" I asked.
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.
"That? That is a name-binder. A memory weapon. It only sings for those the Garden tried to forget."
"Garden?"
"Later," she said. "You need to leave this place. The Citadel won't stop with one hound. They'll come. They always come."
I didn't move.
"I have no place to go."
Erya crouched and touched the ground. Her fingers came up stained with gray-black ash.
"Then come with me. You can run, or you can remember."
I looked once more at the sword, then the dead hound, and the ruin around me.
Then I followed her.
We walked for hours.
The land had no name, not anymore. The rain had stripped it bare—fields of scorched stone, rivers turned to veins of cracked glass. Trees stood like skeletons reaching for a sky that never forgave them.
Sometimes we passed bones. Sometimes whole families, curled together where they'd tried to shelter beneath broken rooftops. Sometimes relics: rusted rings, shattered blades, idols so melted they no longer held shape.
Erya didn't speak unless I asked. When I did, her answers were brief.
"What did the rain do?"
"It burned what you were. Left behind what you couldn't forget."
"What was the Garden?"
"A lie so beautiful, people died for the memory of it."
"What am I?"
That one she didn't answer.
Eventually, we reached a ridge of slate-colored stone, broken like snapped ribs.
Below it, nestled in the hollow, was a ruin.
Or at least, it looked like one.
Tents stitched from scavenged canvas. Cookfires burning blue flame. Children without shoes chased smoke-birds between leaning towers of twisted metal. A shattered tower jutted from the center, its top half buried beneath rock.
"Refuge?" I asked.
Erya shook her head. "Memory camp. Sovereignless."
She led me down the path.
We were watched.
Eyes followed us from behind cracked visors and thread-wrapped cloth. Some of them bore markings like mine. Ash-brands. Others were tattooed with symbols I didn't know. A few didn't look entirely human anymore.
No one stopped us.
The camp buzzed with the sound of low murmurs, cooking pots, and someone sharpening blades against glass. Erya led me to the tower.
Inside, the air changed.
Cooler. Heavier. The walls were lined with vellum and bark etched with names. The ceiling was painted with soot patterns that shifted when I didn't look directly at them.
A woman waited in the center. Thin, pale, with arms inked in looping calligraphy.
"This is the Archivist," Erya said. "She keeps what can't be kept."
The Archivist studied me. Her eyes flicked to the mark on my palm.
"He woke near Deadroot Field."
Erya nodded.
"Then the timeline's collapsing faster than we thought."
She walked toward me, slowly. Her gaze was heavy.
"Kaien Vael," she said. "Do you remember the Black Vault?"
I shook my head.
"The Cataclysm? The Trial of Sovereigns?"
I shook my head again.
She didn't look surprised.
"Then we start at the wound."
She reached into her robe and pulled out a shard of polished glass. It pulsed with blue light.
"Hold it," she said.
I hesitated.
"Will it show me?"
"No. It will show you what the world refused to forget."
I took it.
Pain.
Not physical. Not at first. A pressure. A heat behind my eyes. The glass pulsed against my skin. Then the visions came.