Embers, embers in every direction. Blots of flame against darkness, a rising of ash amidst the nothingness. What is burning? In a world of nothing, what could potentially catch flame?

But now he was rising, ascending through the piling ash, the embers catching at the hem of his cloak and the scabbard of his blade. Arisen, yet once more, came this unkindled.

Mastus, yes, that was his name. Where did this name arise? Who had bestowed it upon him? Had he perchance had a mother, before….

Before what?

Settled on his feet once more, after an endless darkness, Mastus began to move. His mind was foggy, unable to think clearly, yet the sword in his hand felt right, as did the dagger in the other. He knew that this place, wherever it was, held a darkness like the one he had just departed.

Thick stone rivulets carved out of the ground, water up to his ankle. He looked up while walking and saw gnarled trees obscuring a pale sun. Surely the sun was brighter, and the sky bluer, no? Wasn’t that what Mastus remembered?

A croaking groan focused him to the path ahead. There stood a skeletal man, wrapped in a rotted, tattered cloak. His eyes sockets contained no eyes, but glowing orbs of light, purplish in hue.

Mastus tried to find words, but his gut forced a familiar awareness over his mind, the readiness of combat. Without warning, the hollow man darted towards Mastus, knife appearing in one hand, and lunged towards his heart with it.

Familiar instincts kicked in and Mastus rolled forward, coming to his feet behind the hollow and plunging the sword into its back. In that instant, a hundred memories flashed through his mind. A bright blue sky, a shining sun, golden light bouncing off the shield on his arm and the armor of those all around him. He could feel the cool breeze of the ocean passing across his cheeks, and knew a sharp hunger in his belly.

Mastus returned to this moment, ripped the blade from the hollow, and stepped back, shocked to a new awareness. This awareness revealed a truth that could not be denied.

Mastus had lived a life before this one, a life in a time before the one he was in now.

Who he had been, what he had done, he only had the vaguest sense of any of that. He looked to his blade, saw the hollows blood sizzle off of the metal and knew that whatever time he had lived in, it had long since passed.

One thing remained certain. He could still wield a blade.

The path was littered with more of these hollow creatures, and each of them fell to his blade like the others. Two of them were carrying strange flasks, each a brilliant and luminous color, and Mastus felt it wise to store them for later.

The path lead up to a cliff and there Mastus saw a strange sight. A small bonfire lay there, nestled away from the wind, with a twisting sword embedded in its center. The fire seemed to burn off of strange coals, each a brilliantly orange hue that shown brighter than wood. Mastus reached out to touch the handle of the blade and the flames below roared to life, flame reaching up from the coals to flick at his hands.

Whatever he was now, the tickling of these flames felt blessed, a reminder of the life that once flowed through him. Mastus was beginning to face the truth that he was most likely no longer one of the living. He remembered darkness, and was only awoken by the rising embers that had consumed that darkness. Now, feeling the loving touch of the flame, Mastus knew that he and it were a singular entity, parts of a much larger whole acting on their own according to the larger design of the gods.

Mastus froze looking over the vista of decay that lay sprawled before him. Massive walls of stone bricks crumbling into the dusty ground, buildings blasted open to the sky. The remains of whatever kingdoms lay claim to these heights had fallen back into obscurity.

Mastus felt maddened for a moment, unable to cope with the foreign knowledge that seemed to permeate his mind. How could he know any of these things, what could possibly linger in his mind after being burned asunder, into nothing but ash.

He broke from the reverie, looked beyond the bonfire to the path that lie ahead. Whatever stand in his way, he would find his way through it.

More hollow creatures, more slain and laying on the ground. He found strange glowing orbs, hidden in the pockets of the dead that lie calcified along his path. How long they had been there? Who could possibly tell, but they now were parts of the landscape that had taken their lives.

The pathway lead upward, towards a rounded building with one massive entrance guarded by hollows with spears. Mastus easily took them, moved through the entrance. There, below, was a sight like none this life or his previous had shown to him.

Impaled on one of the same twisted sword from the bonfire was a large knight, larger than any man that Mastus had seen before. He was in a kneeling posture and the blade ran directly through his chest, though how anyone had run it through such dense armor was beyond him.

He neared, felt a stirring in the air around him. It felt like the world was sighing, a warning against intervening.

But Mastus felt himself driven. His hand gripped the blade, a rumbling filling his bones. As he pulled it out, he could hear the sharp squeal of metal scraping against rusted metal, and soon the twisted sword was free.

The change in the knight was immediate. Jerking and shaking, he slowly came to his feet until he was towering over Mastus. He must have been triple his size. The knight looked down on him with dispassionate measuring, wondering who would be foolish enough to free him from the blade, perhaps?

A flash of imagery within Mastus. Echoing darkness, flames within white. A warrior of the gods smashing apart the earth.

Mastus shook his head, stepping back and drawing his weapons. He thought, “Avoid that which would break me.”

The knight kneelt for a moment, grabbing from the ground a halberd that itself weighed more than Mastus. When again he was standing, Mastus couldn’t help but see the brutish form of this warrior overlaid with a memory of a man in gold, a terrible fighter from a previous life.

This would not be an easy battle.