For the next few days, Ren avoided the shrine.
Laying on the bed, he still couldn't explain what had happened.
The dream, the knight, the strange pulse in his chest when she called him Lyselle — it all felt like the prologue to a story that had already begun without him.
He kept telling himself it was coincidence. A dream fueled by exhaustion. A warrior in shining armor mistaking him for someone long gone. And yet…
He couldn't stop feeling it.
Something inside him had shifted. The world didn't feel as quiet as before. The wind spoke differently. The stars looked older.
On the fourth morning, Elder Hagar, the temple caretaker, summoned him.
"You've been troubled lately," the old man said, not unkindly. "Is it the shrine again?"
Ren looked down. "…Yeah."
The elder poured tea into a cracked porcelain cup. "I wondered when it would start."
Ren's eyes snapped up. "You… what?"
Hagar leaned back, eyes foggy with age and memory. "That shrine? It wasn't always broken. It once held the image of the Wandering Saint — Lyselle. A hero from centuries ago. Some say he destroyed the Demon King. Others say he vanished into the gods' realm. But no one ever truly knew."
Ren froze. "…Wandering Saint?"
Hagar nodded. "Strange, isn't it? Your name is Ren. The Saint's birth name, before he ever became a legend, was Rensalis."
The cup in Ren's hands trembled. Tea spilled over his fingers, but he didn't feel the heat.
"I thought it was just a coincidence when you were brought to the temple," Hagar continued. "But now… I'm not so sure."
That evening, Ren walked alone into the forest. The dream had returned. The battlefield again. This time, he saw faces — allies, enemies, beasts of shadow and flame. And a tower of white stone falling into the sea.
He needed answers.
And if the knight — Calia — was right, then Solmira was the place to start.
He returned to the dormitory, packed what little he had: a weathered cloak, dry bread, a canteen, and the old knife he used for chores.
He left a single note for the caretaker:
"I'm going to find the truth. I'll come back when I know who I am."
As dawn painted the sky in quiet gold, Ren stood at the edge of the temple grounds. The world beyond the village stretched wide and strange. He'd never been beyond the southern hill before. But now it called to him.
Not as Ren the orphan.
But as someone who once saved the world… and had been forgotten by it.
He tightened his cloak and stepped forward.
The journey of the Wandering Saint had begun again.