He woke up to the sound of rain.
Cold drops slipped through the broken roof of an abandoned building and hit the floor beside him. For a moment, he didn't move. He never woke up knowing where he was.
That part of his life was always missing.
He slowly sat up and looked at his hands.
They looked normal.
They never felt right.
Sometimes his fingers seemed a little too long. Sometimes his skin felt thin, as if it wasn't fully attached to him. When he stared at his reflection in shattered glass, his face felt wrong, like it had been assembled from pieces that did not quite belong together.
He knew one thing.
He had a name.
But nothing else.
The city was already awake when he stepped outside.
People passed him without noticing. Some brushed against him and then turned back in confusion, as if they had walked through empty air. A few stared at him for a second too long before looking away.
This always happened.
He didn't know why.
Fragments of memory drifted through his mind.
A girl laughing.
A sky that looked different.
Someone calling his name.
When he tried to hold onto them, they fell apart, like words he could no longer read.
At the market, he sat on a bench.
A vendor looked at him. "What's your name?"
He hesitated.
"…Kael."
The word felt real.
"And who are you?"
Kael opened his mouth.
No answer came.
"I don't know," he said quietly.
Pain suddenly tore through his chest.
He gasped and fell forward as the air around him began to shimmer. For a moment, another version of the street appeared on top of this one — different buildings, different faces, a different sky.
Then it vanished.
Kael was left shaking.
"I just want to stay," he whispered.
Something moved nearby.
A shape began to form from broken memory and unstable reality. It turned toward him, as if it recognized him.
Because it did.
They were both things the world had tried to forget.
Kael stood.
Whatever this thing was, it was coming for him.
And this time, he refused to disappear.