“He could do it, you know? He is strong enough. He was. He will be.”

The voice was distant and slightly warbled, yet D’Argen heard the words clearly as if they were whispered right into his ear.

“D’Argen…?” a second voice, a more familiar one, but this one was so distant that all he heard was the question behind his name.

“It’s a bit confusing, I know, but you can do it too. That’s why you’re here.”

The words made no sense, but they did rouse D’Argen enough to feel his heavy arms, prickling with the pain of overused muscles.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I pushed you too much. I had to try though.”

“Listen to me. Ignore the—” the second voice faded away abruptly.

D’Argen tried to open his eyes as the voice moved from one ear to the other, passing through his brain in the middle and causing painful vibrations.

“You aren’t strong enough. Seriously. What else could I expect? But I had to try. I guess I should apologize now, but there really isn’t a reason to do so.”

The way some of the words blurred together was too similar to D’Argen’s own speech pattern and that made him focus even as he tried to move.

“I am so sorry,” the second voice sounded like it was crying.

“Okay. Fine, fine! I’ll give you a push. Mostly because I don’t think you can do it without one.”

His body refused to move. The thought of being completely paralyzed yet awake was terrifying. He knew he was lying flat on something soft, could feel it, but he could. Not. Move.

“Just a moment more. I have to reset some things.”

He started struggling, trying to fight away the panic even as the voice became gentler and the tone so familiar.

“I need you to remember—” the cut off was even sharper this time, the first voice overpowering the second.

“I want you to imagine a wall. It has cracks on it already. Many have already tried to break it down. So far, I’ve only found a handful that are strong enough to actually do so though.”

One of his fingers twitched and the vibrations between his eyes turned into the stab of thousands of needles. He missed the next words completely, even as he heard the voice.

“And none of them have agreed. Which is why, I need you.”

“D’Argen. Remember.”

“But for now, I just need you to wake up and continue—”

“Remember one thing: Thar.” The second voice finally overpowered the first, almost shouting the last word.

“Wake up!”

D’Argen shot out of bed with a scream, his eyes wide and mahee even wider. He ended up running right into a stone wall and hitting it hard enough to dislocate one of his shoulders. The impact had him falling back and quickly looking around.

A room.

His room.

His room in the castle at—

As he watched, the stone rippled and turned to wood. The double doors that will one day lead to his sitting chambers shimmered away like a mirage and turned into a single wooden door. As he stared at it, it opened, and a figure rushed through.

“I heard you scream! Are you alright?” Simeal asked with a tremble in her voice.

D’Argen looked around the room again, trying to remember why it felt strange to look at it. The stabbing needles between his eyes only made him squint when he faced the window and the bright sky outside it.

“I was wondering if—”

Thar. Thar. Thar. D’Argen started repeating the name in his head, ignoring Simeal’s words and focusing on that single word instead. Name. He got up and did not realize his legs were shaking until he stumbled into the desk in the corner. The paper there was rough, obviously made recently and before the villages in the north learned how to refine the texture, but it would do. He tipped the ink well over when he tried to dip the quill in it, but only the corner of the page got covered.

Thar. Thar.

He wrote the name out with a shaky hand, the letters blurring together.

When the world spun, he realized he had fallen again. Simeal was crouched over him, one hand cradling his cheek. He flinched away from her touch as soon as he registered it and pushed her away, trying to get to the desk again.

“Here, here,” Simeal said quickly and urged him to remain lying on the ground. She handed him the paper.

D’Argen’s vision swam as he tried to read it.

“What does this say?” he asked her when his pounding head made the edges of his vision turn black.

Simeal took the paper from his shaking hand and turned it.

“Thar,” she read it out.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

D’Argen let out a sigh of relief and finally closed his eyes, the headache sending him under again.

When he opened his eyes again, the sky outside the window was dark and Simeal was sitting in a wooden chair by the bed. She had a small embroidery circle in her lap, but her hands and face were slack with sleep. He tried to move and heard a crinkle. Clutched tightly in his fist was a small scrap of paper. When he slowly unfurled his fingers, he read a single word that made no sense.

Thar.

He ran the word through his mind and tasted it on his tongue. When he said it out loud, the white shade appeared in the corner of his eye. He turned on instinct and this time, it did not fade away. He saw a broad back with long white hair and long white robes that dragged on the ground as the figure opened the wooden door of the room and walked out.

With a quick glance at Simeal, D’Argen confirmed she was still asleep, and he got out of bed. His legs were trembling for the first few steps but once the door closed behind him, he felt his gait strengthen.

He was in Simeal’s house. The white figure was at the other end of the main room, opening the door leading out. D’Argen called the single word from the paper. The figure hesitated but did not turn to face him. It walked out. D’Argen followed.

The streets were rough and made of dirt and mud. For some reason, D’Argen could not catch up to the figure as it walked a few steps ahead.

Once D’Argen’s feet hit the paved stones of the centre streets—paved! They had not even started talking about that when he left for the music festival!—he started looking around. There were not many people out and about, but everyone he saw raised their chins to him in respect. None of them addressed the white figure.

Finally, the white figure stopped walking in front of a crooked wooden house that had three stories. Its head shifted as if looking up and D’Argen followed the movement. One of the windows in the topmost floor had a light coming from it. When D’Argen looked down, the figure was gone.

D’Argen walked up to the door and knocked.

There was a shuffle, something heavy fell, a swear, and finally quick footsteps running down wooden stairs. When the door opened, D’Argen was surprised only because he was not. Vain’s youthful face was staring up at him with wide eyes through a pair of crooked spectacles that he did not need.

“I need to talk to you,” D’Argen informed in way of greeting.

Vain poked his head out and looked both ways down the street then over D’Argen’s shoulder.

“What for?” he finally asked when he looked at D’Argen again.

“History.”

The confusion and skepticism from Vain’s face disappeared and it was instead replaced by a bright smile. Vain loved talking history. He welcomed D’Argen into the house and then told him to be quiet as he shuffled him toward the stairs and up to the third floor. Vain shared the house with two others and informed D’Argen that they were both sleeping.

“So, what did you want to know?” Vain asked as soon as he closed the door behind him to the top level.

“Is there any record, anywhere, our own or somebody else’s, of this?” he handed Vain the crumpled paper he had not let go of until then.

Vain took it, adjusted his glasses so he could look under them, and then his brows furrowed.

“Is this a place? A village? An event?”

“A person.”

“Ah.” Vain walked up to one of the three desks in his room and behind it where there were diamond cubbies holding scrolls and loose papers. “I do not have much on individual mortals, other than their famous names. Most mortals usually use three or four names, as well, so a single name means this person was either important enough—”

“One of us,” D’Argen interrupted.

Vain hesitated, one hand raised over a set of scrolls. He dropped it after a moment and turned to face D’Argen.

“I know the names of each of us here. So do you. There is nobody named Thar.”

“It could be an alias.”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“And your records?”

“They do not write themselves. Nothing here was written by a hand other than my own.”

“Please, check again.”

“D’Argen, if this is a name one of us uses, it is not to my knowledge. You know that. You know that I do not—”

“Do you remember the eruption of Mount Silvas?”

“You know I do. That was barely a millennia ago.”

“Do you remember when we first discovered gold?”

“Yes…” Vain sounded wary as he answered slowly. “What is going on, D’Argen?”

“Do you remember when Acela and Zetha’s first mortal child died?”

Vain only nodded in response.

“Do you remember what happened before we fell?”

This time, Vain had no response.

D’Argen waited for one anyway, even though he knew the answer. When nothing came forth for a very long time, D’Argen asked clearly, “What happened before we fell, Vain?”

“I do not know.”

“Does anybody?”

“No.”

“Why do we not remember?” D’Argen asked but before waiting for an answer again, he asked another question, “Why do we not try to remember?” When Vain had no answer for him, D’Argen nodded as if that proved a point and asked, “Then, how do you know for sure that Thar is not one of us?”

Vain hesitated. He bit his lip as his bright eyes darted all over the room, clearly looking either for an escape or an answer.

“When the eruption happened at Mount Silvas, who was responsible for getting the mortals to safety?” D’Argen asked again, a tickle at his mind turning into a headache behind one of his eyeballs. But he knew he was on the right track.

“All of us.”

“I know, but I meant—whose help was invaluable?” Vain did not answer. “Who was it that froze the lava long enough for the mortals to escape.”

“It was… it was Vah’mor.”

“Since when does Vah’mor control the cold?”

Vain was once more stumped.

“I think it was Thar. And, for some reason, none of us remember him.”

“What are you talking about, D’Argen? You are starting to scare me.”

“Think about it. If we can all forget what happened before we fell, if we can all not want to know, then is it possible for the same thing to happen with one of us?”

A knock at the door downstairs startled Vain into chewing his lip. D’Argen did not dare to move his eyes off the historian.

“Is it possible?” D’Argen asked again, trying to keep his voice level and calm.

The knock was louder and Vain stepped toward the door. D’Argen shifted his weight to block the way and Vain took a rocking step back behind his desk, as if needing a defense between the two of them.

“No. No. That would involve—”

The knock was loud enough to wake the house and there was a grumble from the floor beneath them. A moment later, the grumble faded away to measured steps down the stairs. Then the voices came.

“What would it involve?” D’Argen prompted Vain to continue.

“It would… too much mahee. Nobody has that much mahee. And changing all our memories? And convincing us to—”

There were three sets of steps up the stairs, loud and heavy. Vain’s eyes darted to the door behind D’Argen.

“And convincing us to not question it?” D’Argen asked as a prompt.

“Convincing us to not think about it. The amount of mahee would be immeasurable to do so for all of us.”

“And yet when we fell—”

“That is not the same.”

“Why not?” D’Argen quickly shot back over Vain’s interruption. After a moment of silence, D’Argen instead asked, “Is there one of us strong enough to do that?”

The door opened but D’Argen refused to look back.

Vain did not answer.

“Oh! D’Argen! I did not know you were here. What a coincidence!”

The voice made D’Argen’s blood run cold. He turned around slowly, afraid of what he would see. There were three gods standing there but D’Argen could not even register who two of them were. Instead, he focused on bright white teeth flashing between dark lips as Abbot smiled at him.

For a moment, all D’Argen felt was hot blood gushing against his palms as a raspy breath slowed.

“Vain, Vah’mor needs you. Something urgent,” Abbot said, his eyes focused over D’Argen’s shoulder.

The historian shuffled quickly, as if finally free and able to run away. With D’Argen focused on Abbot, he barely registered Vain had circled him and left the room until the man’s head disappeared down the stairs. Abbot and his two companions remained.

“How are you? I have not seen you in centuries,” Abbot asked with a smile and stepped into the room.

D’Argen did his best to smile back.