The guesthouse was cold and smelled faintly of damp straw, but it was quiet. Kael sat on a wooden stool beside the hearth, where only the ghost of a fire had been. He held his hands out toward the ashes anyway, hoping memory would come with the heat.
None did.
The door creaked open. Lira stepped in, carrying a battered leather satchel. She placed it on the table and pulled something from it—a thin, worn book with no title and pages as pale as bone.
"Here," she said, offering it.
He took it carefully. "What is it?"
"Yours. For now."
He flipped through it. Blank pages, each lined with faint silver threads that shimmered only at certain angles.
"I don't remember how to write," he admitted.
"You will. Just don't try to write what you used to know. That's gone. Write what stays."
She sat across from him, elbows on knees, watching him in the flickering lanternlight.
"You spoke clearly today," she said.
"Shouldn't I?"
"Most can't, the first few hours. Or they speak nonsense. Riddles, sometimes. Pieces of someone else's memories stuck in them."
He stared down at the pages. "So what does it mean, that I can speak?"
"Maybe it means something held on."
He looked up. Her eyes hadn't left his face.
"Do I seem familiar to you?"
The question was quiet. Not an accusation more like a soft thread unspooling between them.
He opened his mouth, closed it.
"Yes," he said finally. "But I don't know why."
Her lips parted slightly. Then she stood, brushing invisible dust from her skirt.
"You should rest."
He frowned. "You were going to say something."
"I was going to ask you something," she replied, voice even. "But your answer isn't ready."
She walked toward the door.
"Wait," he said, standing. "What happens if I never remember?"
Lira paused, one hand on the frame.
"Then you become someone new. But the question is whether you'll like him."
She left before he could ask what that meant.
He stayed up for hours, staring at the book. He wrote one word in the center of the first page his hand moving before his mind could catch up.
Fire.
That night, the dream returned.
Crimson light pulsed in the sky like a heartbeat. A forest burned, trees groaning as they collapsed inward. He stood at the center of it, untouched by flame, watching shapes flee into the dark. Someone screamed his name. A girl's voice. Not Lira's. Softer, breaking, terrified.
The fire reached for him.
He woke with ash on his tongue and the word echoing in his skull.
Kael.