The wind carried the smell of ash as I followed the cloaked figure through the ruins of a Custodian outpost. His steps were slow, silent. It felt as though every stone held memories too heavy to disturb. We descended into a hall half-buried in rubble. Old banners clung to the walls like fading echoes of the past.
He did not speak until we reached the last intact door. Its surface bore strange symbols. I almost recognized them—patterns from my dreams, always broken, never complete.
“You are the vessel,” he said at last. His voice was low, roughened by dust and years of silence. “The sealed memory inside you is older than the Custodian Order. Older than the first wars that shaped the realms.”
I stared at him, feeling the weight of words I could not carry. Vessel. The name made me sound less like a man and more like a container left behind for reasons no one wanted to explain.
He told me of the Primordial Window—the first gateway ever opened between realities. Legends claimed its light could create or unmake worlds. The power depended on who commanded it. But its location was lost when the Primordial Guardian sealed away their memory. The seal was hidden in someone who would not remember. Someone who would live as an ordinary man until the time came.
Until now.
Pieces began to align in my mind. My dreams of collapsing Gates. The whispers about factions hunting the Memory Map. The voices speaking my name as if it belonged to another life.
“There are those,” he said, “who would use the Primordial Window to reset everything. They are not of the Balance. They move unseen, even among us. And they will come for you because of what you carry.”
I asked him who led this hidden faction. He only shook his head. Maybe he did not know. Maybe the truth was too dangerous to name.
We left the ruined hall in silence. Far away, the sky cracked again. Another Gate had fallen. Another memory spilled into the wind. For the first time, I wondered if the thing sealed inside me was truly a key… or a curse waiting to be unleashed.
