The sky was wrong.
That was the first thing Elijah noticed.
It wasn't just the color — a washed-out, sickly green that pulsed faintly like the sky itself was breathing — but the weight of it. Heavy. Pressing. It stared down at him like it knew his name, though no wind whispered it. No voice spoke.
Just silence.
He lay on his side in a dry field of ash and brittle roots, breathing shallowly. The earth beneath him was cracked and dead. It smelled like burnt paper and rust. His body ached. His hands were raw. There was blood on his shirt — someone's blood. He didn't know if it was his.
He blinked slowly, trying to gather his thoughts.
But nothing came.
No memories. Not even fragments. Just a name: Elijah.
He whispered it, just to hear something real.
"Elijah…"
The sound was small in the endless field. It didn't echo. It barely felt like it mattered.
He sat up. His limbs moved stiffly, like they hadn't been used in days. Or years. His fingers trembled. He touched his face, feeling dried sweat and dirt, and behind it all — a flicker of something else. Something missing.
Where was he?
Who had he been?
He stared at the horizon. There were mountains far in the distance, jagged and unnatural, shaped more like claws than stone. And there were trees — or things that looked like trees — scattered like bones across the land, black and leafless, with bark that seemed to shift under the light.
Nothing familiar.
No roads.
No homes.
Just… this.
This world.
This forgotten place.
And in the quiet, he realized something else:
He wasn't cold.
The air was sharp and dry, the ground unforgiving — but his body felt warm. Too warm. Like something inside him was burning slow and low, a smoldering coal buried beneath his ribs.
He didn't understand it.
So he ignored it.
He stood, slowly, one foot at a time, until he was upright. His legs nearly gave out, but he managed. He looked down at himself: worn black pants, scuffed boots, a shirt torn near the collar. No weapons. No bag. No water.
Nothing.
Except his name.
And the wrong sky.
He walked.
There was nowhere to walk to, no destination, no sense of direction. But standing still felt worse. So he moved. One step after another, over cracked soil and dry weeds that crumbled under his feet. Sometimes he thought he heard something — wind? Whispering? His own heartbeat?
He didn't stop to check.
Hours passed.
Or maybe days.
Time didn't feel normal here. The sun never moved. If it was even a sun at all. It hung above him like a faded coin, casting thin shadows and offering no warmth.
Eventually, he found a tree that had fallen and crawled beneath its twisted roots. There was no shelter, but it felt like something — a place to stop. A place to breathe.
He leaned back, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep.
But he dreamed.
The dream wasn't made of pictures. It was made of loss.
He stood in a room he couldn't name, surrounded by voices he couldn't hear. A table. A chair. Something warm cooking in a pot. And someone — a woman? a sister? a friend? — laughing at something he said.
And then the walls cracked.
The ceiling peeled away.
And the sky — the wrong sky — swallowed them all.
He woke with tears on his face.
He didn't know why.
He didn't know who he had lost.
Just that he had.
The next day — if it was a day — he saw the first sign of life.
Smoke.
A thin column in the distance, barely visible in the strange light. He hesitated. He wasn't sure if it meant people. Or danger. Or both.
But it was better than wandering forever.
So he went.
The smoke led him to a small camp — barely a cluster of stones and half-burnt wood. And a figure.
They sat hunched over the fire, wrapped in a heavy cloak. Their face was hidden. Elijah stopped several paces away.
"I don't have anything," he said hoarsely.
The figure didn't move.
"I'm not here to hurt you."
Still nothing.
He took a cautious step forward. "I just need to know where I am."
The figure slowly turned. Their face was hollow — not in the literal sense, but in expression. Worn. Tired. Their eyes looked past Elijah, as if seeing through him.
"No one knows where they are," the figure said. Their voice was old and rough, like stone dragged through dust.
"What is this place?"
"A graveyard," the figure said. "A world of forgotten things. It was made long ago and abandoned."
"Abandoned by who?"
The figure smiled — not kindly. "Does it matter?"
Elijah said nothing.
"You're not the first to come through," the figure added, almost as an afterthought. "Most don't last."
He frowned. "Come through what?"
The figure didn't answer.
Instead, they reached into their cloak and pulled out a piece of bread. Hard. Cracked. But real.
"Eat," they said, tossing it at his feet. "If you can bleed, you can starve."
Elijah stared at the bread.
Then slowly picked it up.
That night, he slept by the fire. The figure didn't speak again. They simply stared into the flames like they saw something inside them that Elijah couldn't.
And as he drifted off, he realized he couldn't remember the name of the city he was from. Or what his house looked like. Or even the shape of the letters in his mother tongue.
He still remembered Elijah.
But that was all.
And soon, even that might slip.
The next morning, the figure was gone.
The fire was cold. Their bedroll empty.
But something had been left behind — a scrap of parchment, burnt at the edges. No letters. Just a drawing.
A circle.
Split down the middle.
One side black, one side white.
He didn't understand it.
So he folded it and kept it in his pocket.
He walked again.
There were ruins now. Stone towers fallen into themselves. Roads broken into pieces. He passed strange statues — some tall, others small — none fully human. The wind seemed to hum when it passed over them.
And then came the birds.
Not real birds.
But shadows.
Shapes that circled high in the sky and never landed. They didn't caw. They didn't flap. They just floated. Watching.
He moved faster.
And somewhere in the miles that followed, he realized something:
He didn't want to go back.
Not because he didn't miss what he came from.
But because he couldn't remember it.
Whatever place he had been before — it was gone. Wiped from inside him. Replaced by the silence of this world. By the weight in his chest. By the dream of the laughing woman whose name he could no longer speak.
He was Elijah.
But Elijah was no one now.
Just another stranger swallowed by a world that didn't care.
He found a stream eventually. Cold. Black as ink. He drank from it and threw up immediately. But it didn't kill him.
That night, he saw lights in the distance — faint, flickering, like torches. But he didn't approach.
He wasn't ready to meet others.
Not yet.
He needed time.
Time to forget the world that no longer remembered him.
Time to learn how to walk in a place where the ground shifted when you weren't looking.
Time to become something new.
Not a hero.
Not a god.
Just someone who didn't die.
And far, far above him…
Beyond the wrong sky…
Beyond the mountain-shaped bones…
Something moved.
Something watched.
Not because it knew who he was.
But because it had once known the name of the path now buried inside him.
A path that had not been walked in a very, very long time.
A path made not of glory or strength…
…but of sorrow.
And ruin.
And the long, slow march toward something forgotten by even the gods.