You stand in a subterranean city of black stone. All around you are statues of heroes, yet every single one is damaged. Arms broken off, eyes gouged out, failed champions. Elarion Silverleaf kneels before an empty altar. His voice is quiet, resigned: “I was not enough. If you want a new one, then give them what I did not have: Truth.” The vision fractures and you are standing on a balcony. An elegant city lies beneath you. Syngorn. You have never set foot in it. And yet... you know every street. Behind you, an elven woman steps forward. She places a hand on your shoulder. In her other hand, a medallion. She whispers: “She does not remember. But you will.”

Your body feels entirely weightless. Your thoughts lose their edges. Then… there is moss. Soft, pleasant, slightly damp. You are enveloped by mist, dense as linen, and you hear voices. Ancient, not from a mouth, but from the ground itself. They are singing, not a song, but a memory. You see yourself: a child, no older than three, covered in mud, crawling among the roots. The memory sings, sings of a bygone time, and you are certain that you are being addresse, only without your name. Suddenly, you step out of the mist and stand within a stone circle in the forest. Six figures stand in the circle. No faces, only masks: animal masks made of bark, stone, and grass. A voice says: “You are not lost. You were sent.” The masks look toward you. One raises a hand, holding a stone heart, pulsating. It speaks: “You carry the sound of the ancient veins. The movement of the First Rock. This is not magic, Thavax. This is memory.” Then the circle crumbles away. You see yourself on a stage. Madame Luska is laughing, the applause is roaring. Backstage, she says with her rough, warm voice: “What you seek is not with me. It is beneath your feet. It shaped your name before you could speak it.” Suddenly, you fall. Deeper. Ever deeper. Until you land on a rock, amidst the darkness. A faint glimmer: a glowing rune. Your name.

You find yourself at a lake. Silent, moonlit, like something out of a memory. You know that you recognize it. You have been here before. Your reflection shimmers on the water’s surface, yet when you move, it remains still. Then, it lifts its head. The figure in the water is humanoid, slender, hairless. Its eyes: golden and serpentine. Around its neck: half of an amulet. “Sister of the Night…” the figure whispers. “… How much longer can you ignore me?” The water freezes to ice. You blink, and the figure changes its appearance: It now appears in a human body with half a dozen arms and a gigantic, serpentine head with fangs. Dense, dark strands of hair grow from its scaly body, coiling around it like shadows and veiling its entire form. And suddenly, you are standing in a swamp. Dead snake bodies hang from the trees; a dark moon hangs in the sky. Behind you lies a rock into which the symbol of a serpent has been burned. The figure says: “As long as you carry what I carry, we are never alone.”

You wander across a meadow, swept by the wind. No animal, no bird, no voice. Only the rustling of memories. A song rises. Not language, but a sound that only your heart seems to know. You follow it to an ancient tree and a shrine built of branches, stones, and leaves. Beneath it: bones, wrapped in linen and marked with the colors of your tribe. You recognize this place. The voice of the song grows clearer: “You do not wander because you are free. You wander because something is locked inside you.” The shrine begins to glow, to flicker. The wind storms around you, tossing leaves and branches through the air, as you hear: “You are not the end,” says the wind. “You are the Guardian of the Beginning.”

You stand on a cliff in the Stormcrest Mountains. A bright light pierces the clouds, illuminating a hidden valley. There: Goliaths and Dwarves, shoulder to shoulder, working in a massive forge. “The mountains gave us the heart, the earth the tool,” says a deep voice beside you. An old Goliath, looking like one of your own kin, bears a hammer mark on his forehead. The scene shifts. Smoke, fire, panic. A raid. Shadowy warriors with violet glowing eyes, scaly armor, and elemental weapons attack. They roar a single word: “Kuori!” Ice meets fire, meets poison, meets acid, meets lightning. Dwarven axes lodge in dragon scales; a few Goliaths defend a massive axe of dark ore with their lives. When its bearer falls, the axe shatters into several pieces. Then, silence. You stand before a stone pedestal in an ancient cave. The broken axe lies on a piece of white cloth; a few candles line the shattered ore, and the memory of forged alliances fades. On the base of the pedestal, you see an inscription: “Unite what is broken.”