Dust, old, stale dust, swirled lazily in the sunbeam that pierced a crack in the window shutter. No one had properly cleaned here in a long time. Or perhaps I hadn't cleaned. Did I clean yesterday? Damn. My hand twitched, trying to reach for something that was no longer there. The low bench creaked under my weight, a melody of old age and oblivion. Again. Again. And what was it again? I burned the bread. Again. That bread I bought... or maybe that girl. Yes, the girl. She had such strange eyes. Like two polished stones. No, like two stars. Or moons. Two moons. Yes, they were two moons in a pale sky. Like the one now hanging over the Echo Blight. Is it the same one? Always the same ones? Does the world simply repeat itself?
Images flickered through my mind. I saw the gleaming facades of cities where buildings seemed to sprout from living crystal, and the sky was crisscrossed by silver streaks of ships. Or were they... kites? No, ships. Definitely. They held beings with luminous faces who whispered of the end. Of the end of everything that had existed. No, it wasn't them. It was something else. Something I remembered from the library. The great library, where all Eons were arranged on shelves like old, yellowed tomes. But there were no shelves there. There were... rivers of information. And I was there. I! Elaraith. Yes. My name is Elaraith. I remember. For a moment. Then the name vanishes, dissipates like smoke.
"Collector!" I croaked. My throat was dry as old parchment.
The Clay Golem, a stocky figure of patched-up shards, stirred clumsily in the corner. He seemed preoccupied with something he considered immensely important: arranging glowing crystals on a rotting plank. He mumbled to them in a soft, incomprehensible clay-gurgle, as if they were his children. I didn't understand a word of his earthen babble. But he never understood anything, did he? And yet... he remembered where he'd put the bread.
"Did you bring the bread? Not the burned one, the new one. New! It tasted like... like those breads from the City of Great Whispers."
The Golem tilted its shapeless head, its single, gleaming eye, like an obsidian orb, seemingly fixed on me. With a gesture that only it understood, it pointed to the table. A loaf lay there. Fresh. Still warm. Not burned. It smelled of grain and sunlight.
Oh. I forgot. Again. A taste of dust suddenly filled my mouth. Dust from ancient worlds.
This pain in my knee... as if something hit me there. Or someone. A blow that toppled entire walls. No, it wasn't my knee. It was the whole world, crumbling. The one... the one with that... that black robe. And those symbols. Carved into the void. On the wall of my hut, a shadow crawled across the cracked clay, forming outlines only I perceived. The symbol of erasure. Of emptiness. The end. I saw it in dreams. I saw it when I woke screaming. Back then, when that... that one, who was my... my student? Teacher? I don't remember. He smiled. And then he vanished. Along with a fragment of my mind.
Once, this was my kingdom. A kingdom... Or perhaps a citadel? The Great Citadel of the Wanderers, where all Truths were stored. Truths from thousands of Eons. Like those the Collector gathers. From which Eon? Everything blends. The face of a young king who died in fire. And the face of an older king who fled from a library, carrying the last tome. Or was it me who fled? Yes, me. The Book of Signs trembled in my hands. Was it heavy? Or empty?
And now only these flies. Many flies. Lazy, buzzing, like fragments of old thoughts that refuse to leave. Or are they the echoes of those who vanished? A smell... of decay? Is it from me? Is it an old man decaying? Or is the world decaying? The sky outside the window, though bathed in the orange of two suns, seemed... tired. Like ancient parchment cracking at the folds. It reminded me of skin. My own skin. Full of wrinkles, cracks, a map of all the paths I never walked.
I picked up the quill lying next to the inkwell. Black, dried ink stains covered its surface, like old scars. I used to write. I wrote a lot. I chronicled... what? Important things. Very important. The chronicles of fallen worlds. The secrets of the Wanderers. The keys to the next cycle. But what? My hand trembled. I wanted to dip the quill in the inkwell, but the ink... had solidified. Like everything else. Like me. Frozen in time. Am I frozen? Or is the world standing still, awaiting the next Reset?
"Dreams..." I whispered. My own words sounded alien, as if spoken by someone else. "Dreams of old keepers. Keepers of what? The void? Oblivion? Dreams that aren't mine?"
I felt the pressure in my head. As if millions of voices were screaming at once, but I understood none of them. Chaos. Multiple Echo Syndrome. That's what they called it. Who called it that? Others? Those who tried to... fix me? I don't remember their faces. I only remember their fear. Fear of what they saw in my eyes. In my memories. In my madness.
Outside the window, an anomaly. Small, barely visible, like a crack in a mirror that had just appeared. But I'd seen it before. Hundreds, thousands of times. Like a shattered pane of water where the world's reflection flickers and vanishes. It spread slowly, like a shadow growing to consume everything. Unnoticeable at first. But it grows. Always grows. Devouring chunks of the landscape, turning stones to dust, and trees... they disappear. And I... I forget I see it. And then I see it again. A perpetual motion machine of forgetting.
And then I heard it. Not a whisper. Not a scream. Something like a quiet, ominous song, emanating from within the anomaly. A summons? No. A warning. It was a warning.
And the Golem, still babbling to his crystals, placed one of them on the table, right next to my solidified inkwell. It gleamed. Too brightly. With a blue, pulsating light. And it held... something. Something I remembered. Something that was true, though surrounded by an ocean of lies and oblivion. A fragment. A fragment of Truth. In one moment, I saw towers of living crystal within it. In the next – a burned library.
Was it a sign? Was it a key? Or just another dream of an old madman?
A fly landed on the crystal. It swirled. It vanished.
No, it wasn't a dream.
Something was coming.