He awoke with the softness of breath, as if the world itself had exhaled and brought him into being.
The ground was lush, impossibly green.
Wildflowers whispered softly, their colors strange,
hues unknown to memory. grass brushing gently against his skin like forgotten lullabies. The trees loomed high, not in menace, but in silence, as if they too were holding their breath.
He sat up slowly. His limbs felt foreign, yet familiar. And then,
a flood.
A flickering deluge of fractured moments.
Images flaring like dying embers, laughter, screaming, warmth, a blade, someone crying, someone leaving, everything and nothing.
He clutched his head, jaw clenched, eyes shut so tightly he thought he might split open.
And then silence.
Gone.
The memories slipped away like water between fingers.
He opened his eyes again. The world remained unchanged. The forest watched him, ancient and still.
He whispered, more to the air than to himself,
"Who... am I?"
But no answer came.
He stood.
The air was thick with the scent of moss and time. He didn't know where to go, no path, no signs. Only trees and endless green.
He could have stayed there. Fallen back into the grass, let the forest take him in, roots curling around his bones like a lullaby.
But something inside, something small and stubborn, moved.
A single step forward.
Then another.
Not because he knew where he was going.
But because standing still felt worse.
And so he walked.
Through a wilderness both outside and within.
The trees whispered as he passed, not words, but memories he hadn't earned yet.
The forest was not cruel, only vast.
And he was so very small.
Time melted away. Hours? Days?
It didn't matter.
He was ready to give in.
To lie down and let the green swallow him whole.
But then,
a flutter.
Delicate wings, painted in colors no brush could capture.
A butterfly.
It hovered before him like a living dream, gentle and certain, as if it had always known he would be here.
His breath caught.
"You... want me to follow, don't you?"
No answer. But somehow, he understood. So he did.
He followed.
Through thickets and sunlit gaps, across roots and streams and the heavy weight of doubt.
Until.
Light.
A faint glow ahead, too steady to be a trick of the mind.
His feet moved faster.
And then he ran.
Faster, harder, as if the light were a thread tied to his very soul, pulling him toward something he didn't understand but needed more than air.
And suddenly, the trees parted.
The world broke open.
The sky and earth collapsed into one another, blending into an ocean of clouds and endless white.
He stepped forward, and the ground gave way not to a fall, but to a dream.
The world became mirror and mist, each footstep sending ripples across an invisible sea.
He walked across a surface like breath, memories brushing beneath each step, truths surfacing in ripples too subtle to speak aloud.
The air held no wind, no sound. Only stillness.
Not empty, but sacred.
And in that silence, he felt it.
The ache.
The love.
The loss.
The echo of something once whole.