"Hey... wake up."
The voice drifted through the void like a ripple across still water—faint, muffled, as if carried from a great distance.
"Young lad," it called again, firmer this time, lined with concern.
Then a second voice, closer, sharper:
"Hey. Wake up."
The words pulled at something deep within him, like hands dragging him up from beneath dark waters. Slowly, groggily, he stirred. His eyelids fluttered open, his deep crimson eyes stared into the figures, and then blurred shapes came into focus—shadows shifting into men, their forms towering above him.
Knights.
A ring of armored figures stood over him, their helms off, faces taut with surprise and caution. Firelight glinted off their steel plates, casting flickering shadows across the clearing. The one nearest stepped back with a sharp intake of breath. Others followed, their movements deliberate, tense. Hands crept to hilts and handles, leather creaking as fingers curled around steel.
He blinked, dazed. His body still ached, stiff and trembling, but he felt the tension in the air now—the unease thick as the smoke curling from the campfire.
"Wh... who are you?" one of them asked at last.
The speaker was a broad-shouldered man with a closely shaved beard and long brown locks that fell messily over his brow. His voice was gruff, but edged with confusion more than threat.
"And... why are you wearing Tritonian armor?" he added, his gaze dropping to the boy's battered cuirass.
The boy followed the man's eyes down.
His armor—dented, blood-streaked, and cracked at the seams—matched theirs. The same sigil, the same dark steel forged in the same style. Tritonian.
But he didn't know what that meant. Not really.
Not yet.
"I am... my name is..."
The words stumbled from his lips, fragile and uncertain. He paused, eyes narrowing in quiet confusion.
What was his name?
His gaze fell to the battered armor clinging to his frame—Tritonian steel, worn and bloodied, its weight unfamiliar yet strangely natural. His brows furrowed. The firelight danced across the curved metal, but offered no answers.
"My... name..." he murmured again, as though saying it aloud might jog something loose. But there was only silence inside his mind. A void where his name should have been.
Then, like a dam breaking, a rush of memories surged forward.
Flames. Shattered glass. Screams.
A blast of unbearable heat.
The roar of an explosion swallowing him whole.
"I... I remember..." he whispered, his voice shaking. "There was... an explosion. I... died. I'm sure I died..."
The memory struck him like a blade—vivid, visceral, and cruelly incomplete. He remembered the agony, the panic, the light consuming him. But beyond that, nothing. No name. No identity. Just a boy in someone else's armor, surrounded by strangers in a world that shouldn't exist.
What is happening?
Why can't I remember... who I am?
The thoughts clawed at his skull, frantic and wild. His heart pounded.
"I... I don't remember my name," he finally said, lifting his eyes to the knight with the brown locks. His voice was hollow, tinged with dread. "And I don't know why I'm wearing this armor. S-sir... I don't even know what's happening..."
The fire crackled in the silence that followed. The other knights stood frozen, their expressions unreadable beneath shadow and steel.
His voice broke.
"I don't know who I am..."
Crimson eyes, already haunted, shimmered with a dull scarlet sheen—and then the tears came. Silent at first, then steady, trailing down bloodied cheeks and pooling on the collar of the dented cuirass. His shoulders shook with the weight of it all: the fear, the confusion, the loneliness.
He was a stranger to himself, a ghost wearing the skin of a soldier, surrounded by men who didn't yet know if he was a brother... or a threat.
"I... I just woke up... in the middle of that..." His voice cracked, trembling under the weight of memory. "That place. That horrifying place—piles of dead bodies all around me..."
Tears spilled freely now, cutting clean lines through the dirt and dried blood caking his cheeks. His words faltered as his breath hitched, choked by panic and helplessness. He looked up at the armored men, pleading—not for mercy, not even for understanding, but for something, anything, to anchor him in this nightmarish world.
The knight who had spoken earlier straightened slowly, his brow furrowed in thought. His eyes never left the boy, scanning him—judging him, weighing what little truth could be pulled from a stranger's pain.
One of the other knights leaned close and muttered, "What should we do now, sir?"
A moment passed. The leader didn't answer at first. The wind rustled the trees above them, the fire snapped and hissed, and in the boy's ears, the thundering beat of his heart was deafening.
Finally, the knight spoke—measured and resolute.
"...I don't know if you're telling the truth. Not yet. But until we figure out who you really are..."
He met the boy's wide, tear-rimmed eyes.
"You're coming with us."
He gave a curt nod, and two men moved forward.
The boy didn't resist. He had no strength left, no will to fight. Their hands closed around his arms—firm but not cruel—and hoisted him to his feet. He stumbled as they led him through the mist, toward a large covered carriage waiting at the edge of the clearing.
The door creaked open.
Inside, the air was close and heavy with silence. Dozens of eyes turned toward him, glowing faintly in the dim lantern light. Figures sat shackled to the walls—some human, many not.
He froze.
Among them were horned beings with skin the color of rusted iron, eyes burning like embers beneath ridged brows. Others had scaled flesh and slitted eyes, long tails curled around their legs like coiled serpents. One, impossibly large, hunched beneath the ceiling—its head crowned with two gnarled bull-like horns, its chest rising and falling with slow, restrained breaths. A beastkin. A living mountain of muscle and fur.
The boy stood at the threshold, breathless, paralyzed. These were creatures he'd only read about in books—myths, legends, fictions from stories told in warmth and safety. Now they sat before him in chains, watching him in silence.
His heartbeat thundered in his chest.
This isn't a dream, he thought. This is real.
The guards gave him a light shove and he stumbled forward, his legs buckling as he was pushed into the carriage. The door slammed shut behind him with a metallic finality.
He was no longer alone—but he had never felt more lost.
"Looks like we got ourselves a fresh one," came a voice—sharp and amused, with the lazy cadence of someone long resigned to their fate.
The boy flinched slightly, turning just enough to glimpse the speaker. A woman—though "woman" seemed too tame a word for her. She was a fiendspawn, unmistakably. Her skin was an earthy red, mottled with faint scars and ceremonial ink, and her tusked mouth curled into a grin that showed no kindness. One eye gleamed amber, the other cloudy with an old wound. She leaned forward from her place on the bench, chains clinking softly as she moved.
Her gaze rested on him, smug and unblinking.
But he didn't meet it.
His crimson eyes remained locked on the door, as if sheer will alone could pry it open and free him from the suffocating presence of monsters made real.
A few of the other prisoners chuckled. Low, knowing sounds—part mockery, part curiosity.
"Hey, you!" the fiendspawn called again, her voice carrying a rasp. "White-haired guy."
The boy blinked, confused. White hair?
He raised a trembling hand and ran it through his hair, only now realizing the color had changed. The dark locks he vaguely remembered were gone, replaced with pale strands that felt like snow between his fingers. A pang of alienation twisted in his gut.
"New guy," she pressed, her grin widening. "I'm talking to you."
Slowly, cautiously, he turned to face her—his expression wary, guarded.
"What brings you in here with us?" she asked, cocking her head. "You look like you've just crawled out of a battlefield." She chuckled, the sound deep and scratchy, not unlike a crow's caw.
Her gaze dipped, taking in the battered armor he wore. Recognition flickered in her eyes, and her grin sharpened like a blade.
"Aha... Tritonian steel." She gestured with a nod. "So, you're a knight of that war-reeking empire, huh? What's the matter? They throw you in here to keep an eye on us?" Her voice dripped with mockery, though the undertone was darker—something between suspicion and disdain.
He opened his mouth, but no words came. His thoughts were still fractured, tangled in smoke and fire. He could barely remember his own name—how could he explain who he was to strangers in chains?
The fiendspawn leaned back, still watching him like a cat eying a twitching mouse. Around her, the other prisoners stirred, their eyes fixed on him with renewed interest. Not entirely hostile—but not friendly, either.
He was surrounded by beings from storybooks, chained and broken, staring at him like he was either a mistake... or something worse.
"His eyes... they're red," someone muttered from the shadows.
Another voice rose, rough and grumbling, thick with disdain. "What are you, a vampire or something?" The speaker stepped forward—a beastkin, broad and bristled like a boar in armor. His snout twitched with suspicion, small tusks jutting from beneath a sneering lip. "Didn't know Triton was breeding bloodsuckers into their knight ranks. No wonder they're gods-damned hard to kill."
"I'm... no vampire," the boy answered, his voice hollow. It was less a denial than a weary breath of thought. He barely knew what he was anymore.
The boarkin snorted, unimpressed. "Then what are you, pup?" he asked, cocking his head. "Hope to all hells you're not one of those lunatics. Thau'ron's worshippers." He said the name like a curse, spitting it into the floorboards.
The boy blinked. "Thau'ron...?" he echoed, the name foreign to him, as if spoken in a tongue he wasn't meant to know.
The beastkin raised a brow. "Don't know him either? You're either lying, or you've hit your head harder than we thought." He leaned back, arms crossed. "Thau'ron's a mad diety, fallen from the heavens for trying to tear down the others. Got followers that paint their faces in blood and dream in screaming tongues."
The boy remained silent, his crimson eyes slowly turning from one prisoner to another, their forms blurred at the edges of his fatigue.
Then a new voice piped up. This one deep but measured. A squat figure, thick-shouldered and dark-skinned, sat not far across from him. A dwarf—likely one of the deeper castes, his beard plaited in iron bands, eyes glinting like onyx under the torchlight.
"What's your name, boy?" he asked, blunt and plain.
The boy's lips parted, but nothing came. He stared down at his hands, mud-streaked and trembling, the dried blood of strangers still crusted at his knuckles.
"I... forgot my name," he murmured, the words bitter in his mouth. His throat tightened with something too old to be panic and too young to be madness. "I can't remember who I am."
A silence fell across the carriage—not total, but thick enough to feel. The fiendspawn woman let out a slow whistle, long and low.
"Well," she said, "looks like we're riding with a ghost."
Time slipped by, swallowed by the silence of night. The carriage creaked and groaned as it rolled across uneven earth, its wheels grinding over stone and sodden soil. Outside, the world was hushed beneath a canopy of stars, and the knights pressed onward in grim formation, their armor whispering against leather and steel as the cold wind gnawed at their cloaks.
Inside, sleep had settled like fog over the prisoners. Their breathing, slow and heavy, filled the dark cabin with a rhythm that only deep fatigue could summon.
Then came the voice.
"Finally awake?"
It was low and rough, like stone scraped over wood. The boy stirred, breath catching in his throat as the voice peeled him from the edges of unconsciousness. His eyes fluttered open, red irises glinting dimly in the lantern's dying glow.
"They're taking us to the Court of Triton," the voice said again. "Where we'll all be judged and sentenced for our crimes—whatever they decide those are."
The boy blinked, pushing himself upright against the wall of the carriage. His joints ached, and every movement felt like dragging weight through molasses.
"Triton?" he asked, his voice hoarse. "That's... the kingdom you mentioned last night?"
A chuckle, low and humorless. "You're wearing Tritonian steel, boy. That crest on your pauldron? That's the Black Griffin of Highmarsh—Triton's military sigil. And yet, you don't even know your own kingdom?"
The boy looked down at his battered armor, at the blood-caked sigil carved into the iron like a scar across his chest. He frowned, furrowing his brow as if concentration might will his memory back.
"Well..." he muttered, "I don't even remember my name. What hope do I have of recalling a kingdom?"
The voice chuckled again, quieter this time. Less mocking, more... resigned.
"Then maybe it's a mercy," the man said after a beat. "You forgot a world that deserves to be forgotten."
The carriage rumbled on into the night, carrying with it nameless ghosts and stories not yet told.
Time dragged on like an endless road beneath them. The world outside the carriage began to shift—no longer drowned in night, but touched by the pale fingers of dawn. Golden light filtered through the slatted wooden walls, seething into the gloom within like some divine intrusion, unbothered by the weight it disturbed.
It was morning.
They had ridden through the night, without rest, without pause. The prisoners sat in silence, each of them marinating in their own thoughts, their own dreads. Shackles clinked softly whenever one of them shifted. No one spoke. There was nothing left to say. All but one knew what awaited them.
The boy—white-haired, crimson-eyed, nameless—sat among them with a quiet uncertainty carved into his face. The others braced for fate. He braced for clarity.
A voice rang out, sharp and commanding:
"Halt!"
The carriage jolted to a stop, wood groaning beneath the strain. From outside, they heard the echoing clatter of mechanisms—iron chains pulled, massive gears grinding. The sound was unmistakable: a gate was opening.
They had arrived.
Triton. The Empire of Iron. A land who conquers. Its banners stretched across borders like claws; its army, a tide of steel and fire. To its enemies, it was a scourge. To its people, a monument.
The carriage groaned forward again, pulled past the threshold.
From within, they could hear life returning to the world. Merchants hawked their wares in sing-song voices. Children screamed in laughter as they darted between legs and carts. The rhythm of hooves against cobbled stone mingled with the sharp scent of baked bread and spiced meat.
Outside, Triton was alive—golden and thriving beneath the morning sun.
Inside the carriage, it was another world entirely. Still, cold, and hollow. A prison of flesh and fear. The dread inside was palpable, clinging to the walls like mold. Each breath was heavier than the last.
The boy leaned closer to the slatted wood, glimpsing flashes of the empire through narrow cracks—high stone buildings wrapped in banners, armored guards watching from parapets, people passing without a second glance.
He was here. In the heart of an empire he didn't know. Wearing the armor of a kingdom he didn't remember.
And whatever awaited him now, he would face it without a name.