He doesn't remember where he was born.
If he remembered, he wouldn't answer it.
Now, he walks as Sora
names are taken, not given.
An ancient word meaning the sky after fire.
Nobody calls them that.
There is no one left with that name.
The forest they passed through whispered like something alive, even though no birds were singing.
Only the soft cry of ashes falling from long dead branches,
and cracks in the fragile soil that no longer has roots.
Ruins appear among the trees, the remains of a world that once believed in light.
Altars to forgotten gods, statues eroded to smooth stone,
and the rusty armor still attached to the bones beneath the thorns.
Sora didn't cry.
Sora doesn't speak. Because, he can't speak at all or is mute.
He was as silent as a rock that resisted the gusts of wind.
There was no one who could talk to him or even a voice within him to speak or even shout.
What did he bring? No one knows.
However, it is definitely tough.
Not in his hands, but in his steps.
Every step he took on the ground was like an oath.
Carefully, Deliberately, and Endingly from every experience he goes through.
He walked through the Sharp Tooth Gate where the collapsed arch marked the end of the last known path and entered a wasteland known only to those who never returned.
There, beneath a sky that flickered like a dying furnace, he saw her.
A figure.
Not moving.
Encased in cracked black glass armor, but breathing.
He didn't speak, but watched.
Like a living statue with a soldier's armor that had long rotted away in the middle of nowhere.
It was as if the creature had been waiting for his arrival.
And Sora, who had no sword, no shield, and no name in this world, other than what he carried was like a grave, a person who had been dead for a long time but still moved.
He kept moving forward.
The wind blew through it.
Likewise, the world always turns according to his wishes.
The figure did not move.
His armor was made of obsidian, riddled with cracks, faintly pulsating with a dim light from within.
Not warmth.
Not life.
Something older.
Something that is broken but refuses to die.
Sora stopped three steps directly in front of him.
Dust stirred beneath their shoes, swirling like things they had never imagined before.
No weapons were drawn.
No challenges were given.
And still, the figure raised his hand.
The figure, its fingers gloved and serrated, reached out...
not to attack, but to signal.
Behind him, the air shimmered, and the forest cracked.
A shape emerges dimly, shifting between what once was and what now remains:
The Gate of Memory, forged from sorrow and echo, flickers like candlelight in a storm.
Sora knows this.
Not from his learning. But from his feelings.
He had seen such a gate in his dreams that was sewn with blood.
A door that doesn't show a place, but shows the truth that is buried beneath the layers of the world.
The armored figure's voice sounded like glass on stone, even though his mouth never moved:
"You carry a burden that has not been named."
Silence for a moment Or maybe this is a test?
"Come in, if you want to know what caused the first fire to start."
Sora didn't answer.
He just stepped forward.
And enter the gate of memory.
The air jerked.
The gate widened.
And the world momentarily seemed to tilt for him.
For a moment, maybe nothing happened.
There is no wind.
There is no land.
Just bloody memories.
So...
Sora saw a destroyed tower in the middle.
Built of marble stained with blood and a staircase leading to itself.
The sky above cracked like old bones.
The statues he saw around the tower, dripped blood from their eyeless faces.
Sora stood in it.
Alone.
No clue.
There is no guide.
There was only one burning inscription beneath his feet that still felt warm:
"The first truth is not spoken. But it is remembered."
Let the process begin.
Sora closed her eyes.
And when he opened them again, he wasn't alone.
The unknown shadows watched him in his vision.
And one of them... moved towards Sora.
Sora's Memory Fragments: The Years Before the Silence
He was not born in love.
He was left in the world.
Not under the stars, but under the Cleft Tree
something wrinkled and rotting on the outskirts of Mireholt,
a village forgotten even on the map,
where the land is only overgrown with wild grass,
and every birth was considered a curse unless it brought a harvest.
The child has no name.
Just cold.
And his cry was not his own cry, but the cry of his soul.
He will die there.
Should.
But, the gods are cruel,
and fate, even more cruel.
He found it.
Eyla Varn, outcast midwife.
She was exiled twice, first for giving birth to a stillborn child in front of the village Elders, and second for refusing to bury it beneath the Temple.
Eyla's hands were burned for her defiance.
But he still had hope to carry with him.
And so he did.
He carried the crying child to his holey hut through the mud fields,
where moss grows on the walls and the roof whispers when it rains.
There, at first he did not give it a name.
Just silence.
He was raised with little more than that.
Silence, and eyes that learn to observe rather than ask.
She didn't cry after being taken by him.
He noticed it.
And the village responded with some disgust, some fear, and they never spoke out loud.
They called him Mireborn.
A rotten child who was never wanted.
But he still grew up in that village.
When he was seven years old, a pack of wolves came to their hut.
Not wild animals, but a group of armored people with weapons in their hands.
Black Maw, a mercenary from Eastern Gulch,
the taker of gold, harvest, and life.
Eyla was dragged away by them with force and violence.
His screams never reached the forest trees near the village.
Sora looked from under the floorboards of his hut and saw the entire hut and village burning.
The villagers screamed and begged for forgiveness to escape the mass murder.
And, their screams were instantly silenced as the mercenary held his sword covered in blood.
The heads were impaled on their spears.
The bodies of the villagers were piled up and burned like a bonfire.
Silence, death, blood, and he remembered all those events.
Like a silent living witness to the massacre they committed against the villagers.
When dawn came, the hut was reduced to ashes.
The village was covered in blood and people's houses turned to ashes.
He walked out of his hut.
Not heading down the path of revenge.
Or even not towards the path of salvation or help for him.
He walked because he couldn't stay any longer.
And looked up at the blue sky with a collection of black smoke from the combustion.
From then on, he bore the name Sora.
He carved it into a piece of Eyla's charred table and carried it until it burned his hand.
The pain became his name like the sky that became a silent witness besides himself.
An oath that was never said, but always felt in his heart.
Back to the tower of memories,
Sora stood still...
His hands were clenched as if holding a piece of burning glass.
From beyond the shadows, a voice whispered not into his ear, but into his soul:
"You remember... but have you forgiven?"
And behind him, the moving shadow began to form.
He wears a deer bone mask.
The figure appeared fully now.
A deer bone mask that has a crack in its jaw.
A cloak sewn from the skin of those who cried out too late.
The hands were long-fingered like humans but not alive.
His hands throbbed with the memory of the violence.
Sora stepped closer without fear and the tower of memories shook.
Sora stopped as the tower of memories shook.
There is no sword.
There is no shield.
No sound.
Just an echo of his former self.
"You walk under her name,"
The masked creature reached for it.
"The woman who burns for you."
Sora didn't flinch even when faced with the threat of the shadow that had transformed into a masked creature.
The creature circled him slowly, as if trying to evoke fear from within Sora.
However, there was no fear in the silence.
Just memories... and determination.
“Why don't you have a grudge?”
“Why don't you scream?”
“Why didn't you fight back?”
Still, Sora remained silent.
But his hand, his right hand slowly opened.
And in his palm, there was a sword in the form of a burning ember that he had held earlier.
Not fire.
Not light.
But the burden comes from the memory.
Fragments of Eyla's burnt table.
The last remnants of the hut he once lived in.
Transformed into a sword formed from the embers of a long-extinguished fire.
Seeing this, the creature wavered.
"That name... is still warm," he whispered.
Then the creature charged with uncontrolled emotions.
An attack without a scream, the blade of the sword drawn from his own shadow, curving towards Sora like a memory turned to anger.
Sora moved not in a hurry, not in a panic.
But with full concentration.
He ducked down at the first attack, sliding into the enemy's blind side.
And as the masked creature turned around, Sora pressed the sword to its chest.
There are no words.
There was no screaming.
Only fire was visible when stabbing it.
The sword burned like embers not outward, but inward.
A silent roar erupted behind the bone mask, and the creature staggered, clutching its chest as fire consumed the remnants of its stolen will.
And the sword disappeared along with the shadow in the burning fire.
Sora saw him fall.
Not dead.
Not lost.
However, it was just released like flying ash.
The tower shook.
And then the light came.
Not clear.
Not warm.
But silence.
The stones around him rearranged silently, like memories shifting to make room for his understanding.
From the floor, a single phrase emerged, burned in pale runes:
"Those who are silent remember more deeply than those who speak loudly."
And the way is open.
A staircase, spiraling downwards, carved from obsidian and bone.
Not descending into ruins but into truth.
Sora looked once more at the fading figure that was no longer moving.
Then, without a sound, he stepped forward.
And he descended into what awaited him.
Into the burden that he never said became.