The birds sitting on the nearby trees chirped aloud. The leaves swayed due to the wind during this hot day in spring. He stepped over the green grass towards his sister’s casket while everyone watched. He placed yellow flowers there on top of it and stepped back watching as others went to do the same thing after him.

It was a beautiful day for such a sad state of affairs. The sun was out with not a single cloud in the sky. Green grass and flowers kept the ground covered nicely with neatly trimmed bushes. Despite the beautiful day and nature that surrounded them, everything felt quite grim to him.

A day like this deserved to be cloudy and dark. It was not the sort of day that deserved such beauty when they were to bury his sister.

Every other minute he looked around the sizable crowd hoping to spot his father. No matter where he looked, Father never appeared. His Uncle Roy was there along with plenty of family and friends. But for some reason, Father hadn’t yet come.

Hands gripped his shoulder from behind while others kept dropping off flowers on top of his sister’s casket. All he could do was watch and struggle to maintain his sanity and not simply run away.

He wanted to cry aloud and let tears fall from his face. Plenty of others wept but he forced himself not to. I have to be strong. I mustn’t cry in front of others. The only person he ever cried in front of was her.

And now she was dead leaving him all alone.

There’s no one left for me anymore. It’s just me and me alone.

There was Roy of course and other people in his family who he rarely ever saw, but despite that, he found himself unable to feel the connection towards any of them that he had with his sister and his father. That connection to his father was becoming nonexistent, unfortunately. He wasn’t even by all appearances going to appear today to see Amberilla buried.

How can he not appear on a day like today? Why father? What is wrong with you? How can you do this and not expect me to hate you?

Those tears that wished to fall were continually denied by him. He stood there trying to hold it all in but this facade he hoisted up broke down.

He began to weep before everyone in attendance as he remembered those wonderful moments he shared with his beloved sister who was now dead and gone.

This moment in his past began to shift away. A new memory emerged from the haze that covered his sight within the awakened dream.

Once the memory fully formed, a fist came slamming straight into his face.

His body hit up against a wall and another fist went straight for his head. This person assaulting him then sent their knee to his chest causing him to hit the ground and gasp for air.

While he wanted to get up so he could better defend himself, a pair of bodies—or a mob rather—began to kick at him. They kicked him from head to toe.

A pained scream exited his mouth but no matter how much he hoped someone would come to stop them from attacking, no one came. It was just him and this mob of people assaulting him.

No matter how much he pleaded for them to stop, they kept kicking, and he kept screaming in agony.

Above the mass of people all around him, the moon glowed in the sky looking down at them all. He held up his arm as they continually kicked at him and he began to close his palm around the moon hiding it from his sight.

And much like the previous memory, this one too faded bringing in another one.

This time however, when he looked up at the moon, it was not as it was before. It was red and becoming torn apart. The lower half of it split open violently. Pieces of it floated away and a red liquid began to spill out of it and fall upon the planet far away from where he was.

When he looked away from the fracturing moon, dead bodies lay all around him. They all wore robe-like attire—although not the kind found at the university he had once attended. They were students of some sort, but not the kind who deserved to live.

One young woman gasped for air. He approached her with a bloodied sword in hand. She held a hand to the wound on her chest as blood gushed out. Her eyes were bulging from her skull and all he could do was think, that she deserved this and much more.

“Kill…me.”

He tilted his head finding her request abhorrent. What did a wretched little person such as her think to make such a request of him. He wanted her to suffer and live in torment in the last moments of her life. She was one of them, like all the others who were corpses within this location hidden away from human society.

And they thought they could remain hidden, but he found them and killed them all. But his plan to infiltrate them and stop their plans in time had failed.

The fact remained as his own eyes revealed, that there was no saving the moon at this point. Their organization had succeeded and his efforts to prevent it had not worked.

The young woman grasped onto his blade trying to send it plunging into her heart. However, he pulled it away causing the blade to slice her palms. She fell back and struggled to breathe giving up on that silly attempt to quicken her death.

She was going to die soon anyways whether he plunged it straight into her or not. She had no reason to be in such a hurry. But rather than lay there gasping for air from likely her lungs being damaged in their encounter earlier, she began to laugh.

“We got you.” She began to laugh even more intensely.

This was what she wanted. She wanted to irritate him so he would simply end her life. Instead of doing what he figured she wanted, he lowered himself down to her and ran his fingers alongside her left cheek.

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Oh Miriam. Why did you choose to consort with these people?

He looked into her eyes and witnessed the light in them go away bit by bit. Her smile disappeared and she shortly passed away. He stood back up and gazed once more at the continually fracturing red moon fully realizing that the world would be further plunged into darkness and chaos with its absence.

This memory, just like the others faded and formed into another one.

He sat in a chamber filled with people in military uniforms. They motioned around and he sat at the table with hands noticeably older than the previous ones those memories revealed.

“I am supportive of your measures,” a man with gray hair said, “but I doubt the efficacy of such a plan. How many times did our ancestors fail?”

A man seated at the corner of the long circular table pulled his hands back from underneath the table. “We have learned from their mistakes. And the fact remains, that we can no longer afford to tolerate their existence on this planet. This endless cycle between our two kinds has to end and there can only be one solution.” With a brief pause, he already knew what he was going to say. “They must all die. Every single one of them.”

Many in attendance were in agreement and thus, the cycle would continue. A war waged between humanity and the familiars, how similar to all the ones in the past he had learned throughout his decades of being alive. None of those previous times were as dire as this one, however.

Every second. Every minute. Every hour. Every day. Every month. Every year. And every decade, things only grew worse for humanity and the familiars who were also determined to wipe humanity off the entirety of the planet.

While the memories up to this point solidified for a long enough period that he could make sense of them, new ones began to appear, reappear, and do so at a rapid enough pace, that he lost his ability to understand them.

Memory after memory shifted to the point that he was wondering why all of a sudden it was no longer working as it had been to grant him some insight into his past.

However, the continually shifting memories stopped allowing for one memory to solidify itself. He became surrounded by endless dark space. There was nothing but darkness below him yet somehow he could stand upon an empty surface and not simply fall for an eternity. Amidst this overwhelming darkness, light did exist. Above, below, and all around the sides of this space. There were giant roots that exuded a bluish glow wrapped around endlessly and at the center of it all, a giant blue glowing tree with giant roots spreading out all around.

Within this strange and wondrous place, there stood a man with long gray hair with their back turned to him. They kept both of their hands in their long coat’s pockets.

He wanted to approach them, but he stood back wary of them. “You need not despair any longer,” the man said in a voice that sounded unfamiliar yet familiar at the same time. They stood several meters ahead of him obscuring the giant bulging tree that lay ahead of the man from quite a bit of distance. “All will be set right.”

“Father?” Who else could this be? It has to be him. Their voice, while sounding strange, sounded familiar enough that he felt confident that it was truly him.

They didn’t bother turning their body around to look at him. They just stood there facing away. “I cannot change the past. All that has been shall continue to be. But the future is for us, and particularly I, to determine for the better.”

He stretched out his arm for his father who he hadn’t seen in ages. “Father!”

They finally turned to face him with tears in their eyes. His father smiled at him with that old wrinkled face of his and then looked away. “Farewell, my son.”

A bright light flooded his vision and the brightness faded pulling him out of it. His body tensed up as he lay there on the table in Noreko’s lab. The sorcerer kept their palms pressed to his body as they leaned in closer to him. “Remain calm,” he said softly. “Breathe in, and breathe out.”

He focused on his breathing after being pulled out. A sharp headache coursed through his mind. It wormed its way through like a worm burrowing itself deep into the ground.

All of the memories were brief but they felt quite powerful in the grand scheme of things. It didn’t illuminate everything about his past but it gave some insight. However, he lacked the proper context and understanding to fully grasp most of the memories.

Noreko pressed a finger to his lip appearing somewhat distraught. “Is something wrong?” Kiran asked.

The sorcerer at first hadn’t registered his question. Their eyes quickly shifted to his realizing he had in fact asked him a question. “Not at all. I am merely trying to make sense of things.”

“That doesn’t sound likely. Were you able to witness my memories?”

“I was able to observe,” he said in admission. “These memories however, are not from someone who originates from the world as it is. These memories clearly come from a time before this planet became fractured. Which begs the question,” he said with a lift of a finger. “Who exactly are you?”

Kiran sat up at the edge of the stone table. “I wish I knew.” With all of those additional brief moments of his past given to him, they still didn’t give him much to work with other than to know that things in his previous life had gotten out of hand many times.

The sorcerer stood back and muttered words beneath their breath. His eyes appeared frantic for a brief moment until he quickly shifted them to appear more normal.

“I knew you were quite unusual given your ability to survive out there in the fog. But with that being said, I did not expect that you would somehow contain memories from a time that hasn’t been seen for hundreds of years. How then Kiran, are you able to exist?”

“You tell me,” he said. “I’ve been wondering that along with plenty of other questions surrounding my existence.”

“So you don’t know who exactly you are or why you exist at all?” The sorcerer slightly grinned. “What a fine existence indeed.”

“Maybe if we do more of this process, we can uncover some answers.” He was hoping he would say yes. While some of the memories were quite intense, he wanted to get a full picture of his past. All he had were brief moments lacking context.

“Whatever memories you gained from this, were the only ones I was able to unlock so to speak. Something was preventing me from getting to anymore.”

“Was that why a lot of them sped by so quickly?”

“Possibly. The truth is, I am not an expert in the kind of magic revolving around the mind. I don’t believe that I will be able to go any further unless something changes within you. Whatever memories you have gained back—brief as they are—are as far as I can go for now at least.”

“Well I’m glad you were able to help me get some of them.” It appeared that he would have to remain patient since over time he would experience some of his past as he dreamed. He was unsure of why he gained them back intermittently and not all at once, but he was glad to receive any at all.

“I will not stop here,” Noreko went on to say, “although I cannot focus all of my energy on this matter for you. I will try to take notes, study a little, and come back to you in the future if I come up with anything that might aid in this quandary of yours.”

“Thank you.” Kiran stood up and shook the sorcerer’s hands. This was one of the things he had wanted to get from joining the coalition and he had received it. It wasn’t perfect nor completely illuminating to his situation, but it was something at the very least or a tangible link to help bridge the gap between his current self and past self.

His journey to uncover his past was far from over, but he felt satisfied to at least see some progress.