After a bit of resistance, I managed to leave.
I stood in the front yard of the expansive manor, taking a moment to gauge the surrounding infrastructure.
It looked like a place torn from the pages of a fantasy tome, which, all things considered, made far too much sense.
The manor was forged from deep black stone, textured like obsidian and cold with old power.
Upon second glance, it did not just resemble a gothic castle. It was one, repurposed through time's erosion and memory's will.
Encircling the yard, an intricate garden sprawled outward with unnatural precision.
Long black metal gates coiled around the estate, less like a protective boundary and more like a silent warden, one that remembered everything it had ever seen.
I stepped forward, lingering to absorb the atmosphere. The air itself felt heavy, as though infused with mourning. Then I turned to Mirabel.
"You said you're the last follower. Is that really true?"
She walked past me, her hand pressing against the gates. They opened without resistance, groaning as though woken from centuries of silence.
"Kind of," she said, her voice wrapped in something brittle. "Most from that era are dead. Some were sealed. Others just disappeared. I'm the only one who stayed by your side."
Her tone was distant, and though her face remained calm, her eyes seemed to fixate on something behind me, something long buried.
I didn't need to ask to understand what loyalty had cost her.
We crossed through the gate, and the world shifted.
We passed rows of abandoned shops, every building still intact, every window unbroken. No vines crawling, no rot or ruin, just eerie stillness.
It wasn't natural. It wasn't luck. This wasn't time spared.
Someone had preserved it.
This time, I looked with sharper eyes.
The roads were pristine, the cobblestones laid with care. Every plant was trimmed. Every frame cleaned. No dust. No neglect.
She had done this.
Mirabel had held back the tide of time, stone by stone, breath by breath. The entire district had been kept alive, not by magic, but by her refusal to let it die.
A devotion like that demanded acknowledgment. It demanded something greater than words.
"So, how should I go about finding the others?"
She shrugged. "They should have sensed your awakening. Some might show up at any moment."
I tilted my head, sensing a hesitation.
"But?"
We passed a large stone fountain. Her steps slowed. She looked back at me, then at the water.
"But odds are, they ignored it. Out of spite."
I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, but before I could, she dropped to a crouch and dipped her hands into the fountain.
The water rippled. Then she threw it upward in a wide arc.
The droplets froze mid-air into perfect spheres of ice. A breath later, she caught them all, like she had done it a thousand times.
"I've felt your power stir a few times lately," she said, inspecting the orbs. "Some followers returned during those surges. But your awakening? It felt the same as those."
She tossed the frozen droplets to me. I caught them without thinking.
"Your body remembers. Every skill, every instinct, every battle. It's still there. If you can reach into those memories, truly recall them, the others may find their way back too."
I squeezed the orbs until they cracked in my palm.
"Memory. Is that what I need to awaken?"
She nodded.
In this world, mana and magic were mere foundations. Beneath them ran something stranger. Deeper. Something called Memories.
A Memory wasn't learned. It was earned.
Each one awakened through a condition, a moment. A flower blooming under moonlight. A promise whispered at the end of a war. A defeat borne in silence. When that condition was met, the Memory bloomed.
And from it, an ability emerged, fused to the memory's essence. They weren't skills. They were truths, pulled from one's soul.
They were Memories.
Strange, yes. But in a world like this, strange was quickly becoming familiar.
I had only just returned from death. Maybe I was always meant to belong to the strange.
"Did I ever tell you what mine was?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"I know you used it in battle. But the details? Only one person knew."
"Oh? And who was that?"
Her answer came like a breath drawn too slowly.
"They died a long time ago. I doubt revival is even an option, considering how they went out."
Revival.
I hadn't considered it until now. In a realm where the past could empower the present, perhaps even death could be reversed, if not in body, then in meaning.
Still, a question for later.
Now, I needed clarity. Strategy. Power. My kingdom had withered. My followers had scattered. My name had faded into myth.
It was time to rebuild.
"For now, let's start by securing the forest."
She nodded. "There are a few complications. First, we're isolated. Second, the monsters."
The word monsters pulled something loose in my memory.
The forest returned to me in fragments. Vast and boundless. A wilderness at least thirty times the size of Russia. Teeming. Breathing. Watching.
This wasn't isolation. It was abandonment.
"What do you suggest?" I asked, already shifting into calculation.
"You need your sword first. Then I'll begin training you. After that, we move."
"Are the monsters really that dangerous?"
She didn't answer right away. Her silence was the answer.
"Nicholas, your instincts might keep you alive for a minute."
She turned toward the fountain, her voice stripped of comfort.
"A minute against the weakest animal in the forest."
"Ah. So I'm that weak now?"
"It's not that you're weak," she said. "You've just forgotten how strong you are."
"Then we begin now. Where is my sword?"
Her gaze lingered on the fountain's rippling surface.
"You dropped it in here. It vanished. I think it slipped into the Sea of Time."
The Sea of Time.
The name tasted abstract, more poem than place.
I peered into the water. No depth. No shimmer. Just calm, unbroken surface.
"Should I reach in?"
"You can try. But it won't respond unless your mind is in the right place."
I shrugged and plunged both hands into the water.
Nothing.
I began to pull away.
Then I felt it. Like a thread caught in thought, tugging me downward. A mental undertow.
I looked up at her, confused.
She smiled. Not warmly.
Then she placed a hand on my back.
And pushed.
The water swallowed me in silence.
My senses unraveled. Time stuttered. Memories surged like a broken dam.
I fell through moments I could not name.
Then stillness.
A weightless pressure surrounded me. Old fragments brushed against my mind like whispers behind glass.
And then nothing.
I gasped as I stumbled out, soaked and breathless. Light pierced my eyes.
Mirabel stood with her arms crossed, brow raised.
"That was awfully fast, wasn't it?"
I looked down.
In my right hand was a black blade, jagged and cracked with white streaks of lightning frozen mid-flash. In my left, a matching scabbard.
The sword was double-edged with a cruel point, its guard shaped like a folded banner twisted into the symbol of a skull.
The hilt, white and wrapped in unfamiliar material, ended in a black skull pommel.
The scabbard gleamed white, marred by black, star-like sigils. A chain wrapped around it, unmoving, as if coiled with purpose.
Mirabel stepped forward, hands gentle as she took the sword.
Pain flickered across her face the moment her fingers brushed the grip, but she steadied herself.
She slid the weapon into its sheath with practiced care and handed it back.
"You need to be careful with this," she said quietly, as if the sword could hear her.
I stood, the weapon anchoring itself into my grasp like it had never left. "The Shattered Darkness."
The name fell from my lips, not as recollection, but as recognition.
This was not just a weapon.
It was a fragment of someone, something incomprehensibly strong; it felt connected to me, like a gift.
One that holds extraordinary power.