"On the day I forgot my name, it rained fire."
He felt heat right away.
Not warmth, but heat. The ugly, red heat bit his flesh like a hungry hound. The sky bled when he opened his eyes. Black rain fell in thin strips through the fireclouds and turned to steam before it hit the ground.
He had no idea where he was.
He didn't even know who.
He slowly sat up, his fingers sinking into the burned ground. The field was packed with bodies. Not all of them were human. Some had extra limbs. Some had none. One was twisted like a dead flower, spine arched, fangs buried in its own wrist.
A name tugged at his throat—but it wouldn't come. His mouth opened, closed. Nothing.
Just ash.
Then pain. A burn on his left palm. When he flipped it over, the skin was burned with a single word:
It surged like a wound. He didn't know what it meant. Only that it was his. Somehow.
"Drop the blade."
He flinched.
The voice came from his right. A figure stepped into the smoke. Armored in bone-white armour, a symbol glowing in the center of their chest like a third eye. Their helm curved up into a jagged horn.
The enforcer raised a blade that hissed with flame. Not fire. Memory. He could feel it in his teeth, cold and harsh, like biting into a scream.
"You're under arrest for Relic Theft and Unauthorized Remembrance. By the Laws of the Twelve, your penalty is death or forgetfulness."
"I don't—" His voice cracked. "I don't remember anything."
"Exactly." The Hound stepped forward. "Which makes you dangerous."
Kaien crawled backward over corpses, hand seizing on something half-buried beneath a man with no face. Metal. Cold. Familiar.
A sword.
He didn't think—just pulled. The relic came loose with a moan, like a door in an ancient home. It was black-metal and bone-thin, encased in chain. As soon as he touched it, something sang inside his skull.
A whisper. Or a falsehood.
"Don't believe them."
The Citadel Hound took a step back.
"That blade is bound," they growled. "Name it and die."
Kaien stood. The blade was warm in his hand, but not burning. It felt like... gravity. Like it had been waiting.
The Hound lunged forward.
Kaien raised the sword. Not to strike. To block. To beg.
The blade shrieked.
No—not the blade. The air.
A flash of something—gold, maybe. A memory that wasn't his. A boy laughing amid the rain. A door banging. Fire. Screams. A voice calling—
Kaien.
His knees buckled. The sword slashed through the Hound's blow and forced the enforcer back, metal crashing against bone-plate. The sigil on the Hound's chest flashed red, then cracked.
They staggered, coughing.
Then froze.
Their body began to shake—violently. Kaien reached out immediately. His fingertips brushed their shoulder—
And the recollection hit him like a hammer.
"Tell my daughter... she remembers wrong."
The Hound dropped.
Kaien stumbled back, shaking. His skin itched like it had been rewritten. His pulse throbbed in his mouth. The sword in his grasp hummed—not with joy, but with hunger.
"What... what are you?" he whispered.
The blade did not answer.
Only the rain.
And far behind him, in the forest, he heard something howl.
Something that recalled his name.
"Names have weight. Some, too heavy to carry."
The corpse stirred once, then stilled.
Kaien stared at it for a long time. Not because it was dead—he got a faint impression that death wasn't infrequent in this place—but because the sword in his grasp had ceased buzzing. It was quiet now. Empty.
The silence felt worse than the scream.
He crouched by the Citadel Hound's body. Beneath the fractured symbol, the enforcer's chest had crushed inward, as if someone had ripped the memories out through their bones. Kaien didn't want to touch him again. Not after what occurred the last time.
But curiosity—no, something deeper—made him press two fingers to the cold forehead.
Nothing.
Whatever memory had been there was gone. Not stolen. Burned.
Kaien stood and wiped his hand on his coat. Or what was remained of it. The sleeves were torn, the hem burned. His boots were split at the heel, and the wind carried the subtle copper aroma of stormblood and singed hair.
He stared down at the blade.
It was already shifting.
The chain wrapped around its hilt had loosened slightly. A rune near the guard had faded. When he leaned it toward the firelight, he could almost see something scratched out down the spine. A name?
No. Not scratched out.
Forgotten.
He moved rapidly.
Not because he had a plan, but because staying still made the air feel heavier. There were too many bodies here. Too many memories ready to flow into him. Every stride was a whisper.
He passed a child no older than ten with a rosary made of teeth.
A woman whose arms had been tattooed with names—hundreds of them. All crossed out.
A beast-thing, limbs overly long, eyes glassy and wide open, as if it had remembered something horrific moments before it died.
The rain had ceased, but the devastation remained. Charred pits where tents previously stood. Broken relics, their bones buzzing softly. One blade twitched when he moved past. Another yelled his name—Kaien—but he didn't stop.
He didn't know how it knew him.
He didn't even know how he knew him.
The woodland approached swiftly.
It wasn't a kind woodland. The trees here didn't sway—they loomed. Black roots twisted out of the ground like grabbing hands. Some of them still held bones. The path was narrow and constructed of compacted ash. It felt wrong to walk on.
But he walked nevertheless.
The blade at his side surged with each step. Not with power. With loss.
Kaien didn't have the words for it yet, but somewhere deep in his bones, he knew: the blade had neglected something when it murdered the Hound. Not only the enforcer's memory.
Its own.
He sat down beneath a crooked tree and lay the blade over his lap.
"I need to call you something," he stated aloud. His voice was hoarse. "You're not just a relic. You're... something else."
The sword didn't answer. But a breeze blew through the woodland, touching his skin like air. He blinked.
And a word slid into his mind.
Mourncaller.
Not a name. A title. A curse.
Kaien murmured it. The blade flickered once in his lap, and then was still again.
He struggled to remember.
Not simply his name—he already had that. Kaien. It felt real enough. Heavy enough.
But what came before?
Nothing.
Not even flashes. No family, no childhood, no face in the mirror.
All he had was the word burnt into his palm. SOVEREIGN. And a blade that forgot itself with every kill.
And a sense—horrible and hollow—that something was watching him.
Night descended rapidly here.
He didn't sleep. Couldn't. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her—not a true memory, he thought, but something the blade had eaten.
A girl. Long white coat. Barefoot in the fire. Eyes full of dead things.
She was laughing.
She was screaming.
He wasn't sure which.
At dawn, he walked on.
He reached the edge of a damaged settlement around mid-morning. Nothing here was whole. Doors suspended from single hinges. Roofs had crumbled in slow, sagging groans. The well was choked with plants. Strange birds eyed him from rafters, their eyes too human.
He walked carefully.
This place recalled too much.
A sign hung beside the entryway, rusted and crooked. The name had been washed clear, but someone had etched a new one beneath it:
Kaien read it, and immediately tasted blood in his lips.
He wiped it away with the back of his fingers and pressed on.
In the center of town stood a shrine.
It was small—stone, basically, and overgrown—but not abandoned. Someone had cleared a route through the dust. Candles burned on either side of the archway. Wax pooled like bone marrow.
Inside the shrine, a figure knelt.
They didn't move. Didn't speak.
Kaien regarded them for a long period before speaking.
"I don't mean to interrupt."
Still quiet.
Then, softly:
"You carry death with you."
The figure turned. A woman. Hooded. Her eyes were hazy white, but they tracked him like she saw through skin.
"I—" Kaien hesitated. "I don't remember how I got it."
"Memory is a lie we live with." The woman stood. She was tall, thin, with hands like a scribe's—scarred by ink and knife. "The sword sings. I heard it from the trees."
"It sings less, now."
"It will forget how to scream. That is its mercy."
She approached. Did not flinch when she neared him. Her fingers stretched for the blade.
"May I?"
Kaien hesitated.
Then nodded.
She touched the hilt. Not like a warrior—but like a priest. Her breath caught.
"So much loss," she muttered. "You walk a path unthreaded. The Citadel will not forgive you."
"I didn't mean to kill him."
"You remembered him. That's worse."
Kaien looked aside. The guilt was strong, but not unambiguous. He felt bad about what happened, but not because he knew the man.
Because he didn't.
"Do you have a name?" he enquired.
The woman smiled, and it was the saddest thing he'd seen all day.
"No. I gave it to the rain."
She gave him food. Old bread, spicy roots, and a dried fruit he didn't know but chewed anyhow. It filled the hollow in his gut. Not the one in his chest.
As they ate, she spoke.
Of the Twelve Citadels, poised high above memory fields. Of Writ Priests, who drunk remembrance and sold fictitious pasts to the wealthy. Of the Relic Thieves, hunted like beasts.
"You are marked," she added, referring to his palm. "They will come for you."
"I don't even know what I did."
"Exactly. That's what makes it sacred."
He didn't comprehend. She didn't explain.
Before he left, she gave him a name.
"Eira," she remarked, pointing to a hill above the settlement. "The girl who watches death. She'll find you before the enforcers do. If you're lucky."
"What if I'm not?"
"Then only your blade will remember you."
Kaien departed Ghostwettle with a full tummy and a heavier heart.
By midday, he was strolling along a ridge, the settlement long behind him. The sword was quiet again. The wind had teeth.
And on the ridge ahead, someone was waiting.
A girl. Wrapped in black fabric, barefoot, hair twisted with bones. She stood with her back to him, peering at the valley below.
When he got closer, she spoke without turning.
"I saw you kill him."
Kaien froze.
"The Hound," she continued. "His death screamed. I haven't forgotten it."
"Are you Eira?"
She turned.
Her eyes were sparkling. Too bright.
"I don't know," she answered.
And smiled.