ECHOES OF THE FIRST WAR
Sleep did not come to Zarek easily.
It had not, for a very long time.
When it did come, it never stayed long enough to be mistaken for rest, and it never came without consequence, as though the act of closing his eyes had become an invitation for something buried deep within him to rise again, unbidden and unwelcome.
That night was no different.
He had not intended to sleep.
He rarely did.
But the body this body no longer obeyed him with the same unquestioned loyalty it once had, and at some point between thought and stillness, awareness slipped from him without permission.
And then
The past found him.
Not as a story.
Not as a sequence.
But as fragments.
Violent. Disjointed. Unfinished.
The sky burned.
That was the first thing.
Not with the steady glow of fire, but with something far more chaotic, as though the heavens themselves had been torn open and whatever lay beyond them had spilled through in jagged, uncontrolled bursts of light and shadow. The air trembled with power so dense it distorted everything it touched, bending space, swallowing sound, leaving behind a pressure that felt less like force and more like inevitability.
The battlefield stretched endlessly beneath it.
Or perhaps it only seemed that way.
There were no clear edges, no defined boundaries only movement, destruction, and the constant, overwhelming presence of something too vast to be contained within a single moment of memory.
Zarek stood at the center of it.
Whole.
Untouched.
Unchallenged.
Power did not gather around him it existed as him, responding not to effort but to existence itself, shaping itself according to his will with a precision that required neither thought nor restraint. Where he moved, the battlefield shifted; where he looked, resistance faltered. There had been no uncertainty then, no hesitation, no question of outcome.
Only dominance.
Only certainty.
And yet
Something had been wrong.
It lingered at the edges of the memory, just out of reach, like a distortion that refused to fully reveal itself.
The ground fractured beneath him, splitting open in violent, jagged lines that pulsed with energy, not of his making, but something else something unfamiliar, something that resisted him in a way that felt… deliberate.
Voices.
There had been voices.
Not commands. Not cries.
Something else.
Too distant to understand, yet too present to ignore, threading through the chaos in a way that suggested intent rather than reaction.
Then
A shift.
Sudden. Jarring.
The battlefield changed.
Or perhaps the memory did.
Zarek was no longer moving.
He was standing still.
Facing something.
Someone.
The details refused to settle, slipping away each time they came close to clarity, as though the memory itself resisted being fully seen, but the presence remained undeniable there had been someone there, close enough to matter, close enough to disrupt the perfect certainty that had defined everything before that moment.
The Orb pulsed.
That much was clear.
It had never been still not truly but in this moment, its energy surged in a way that felt… unstable, as though it were responding not just to him, but to something else within reach, something that called to it in a way that did not belong.
Zarek's hand tightened.
Not in effort.
In recognition.
Something was wrong.
The realization came too late.
The memory fractured again.
Light.
Blinding. Consuming.
Not the controlled, precise force he wielded, but something raw, something that tore through the battlefield without distinction, without allegiance, swallowing everything in its path as though the world itself had been caught in the aftermath of a decision that could not be undone.
For a moment
There was nothing.
No sound.
No movement.
No control.
And then
Absence.
The Orb was gone.
Not destroyed.
Not shattered.
Gone.
The space where it had existed remained, but the connection the seamless, unbreakable bond that had once defined his power had been severed so completely that it left behind something deeper than loss.
It left behind silence.
Zarek reached for it.
Instinctively.
Desperately.
For the first time
It did not answer.
The battlefield around him continued, but it no longer mattered.
Victory. Loss. Survival. Destruction.
All of it became secondary in that single, irreversible moment.
Because something fundamental had been taken.
Not stolen in the crude sense.
Removed.
Separated.
As though it had been claimed by something that had the right to do so.
The presence from before
The one that had stood before him
It lingered.
Not in form.
Not in clarity.
But in certainty.
Someone had been there.
Close enough to take it.
Close enough to matter.
And then
Darkness.
Zarek's eyes opened.
The chamber returned.
Cold. Silent. Still.
For a moment, he did not move.
The remnants of the memory clung to him, not as images, but as impressions pressure, absence, the faint echo of something that refused to fully fade.
He exhaled slowly, his gaze unfocused, as though the present required a moment to reassert itself.
The details were already slipping.
They always did.
He could recall the war.
He could recall the power.
But that moment
That precise moment when everything had changed
Remained incomplete.
Fragmented.
As though something within him resisted allowing it to become whole.
His hand shifted slightly at his side, the motion subtle, almost absent of intention.
Someone had been there.
He knew that much.
Not an army.
Not a force.
Someone.
Close enough to take the Orb from him.
Close enough to sever something that had never been meant to be broken.
Zarek's gaze hardened.
Whatever had happened
Whoever had done it
It had not been chance.
And it had not been beyond him.
Which meant
It could be undone.
The thought settled into him with quiet certainty.
Not as hope.
Not as desperation.
But as fact.
He rose from where he sat, the remnants of the memory already retreating into the depths of his mind, locked away once more behind the same barrier that had kept it incomplete for so long.
For now
It was enough.
Because one truth remained, clear and unshaken beneath everything else.
The Orb had not vanished.
It had been taken.
And anything that could be taken
Could be reclaimed.