Chapter Text
Unwelcome but Necessary: A Statement from the Narrator.
Dear Readers,
If we have met before -- perhaps in another mythic, another retelling, or another version of reality wearing a slightly different outfit -- hello again. It’s wonderful to see you. Genuinely. Even if you rolled your eyes the moment you saw a narrator speaking directly to you, and said something like “This again? Can’t we have one -- just one -- that doesn’t begin with metafictional rambling and some omniscient voice wringing its hands about trauma and inevitability?”
And to that I say: fair.
Also: ow.
What did I ever do to you besides deliver harrowing truths in digestible prose?
If you’re new here, welcome. It is not too late to turn back. You could close the tab, close the laptop, throw your phone into the sea, or simply pretend you never saw this work. Many have. And yet, here you are. Which means I must explain what we’re doing here, because that’s just good manners. A story should always start with a warning, a map, or the faint hope that someone else already made sense of it all and left behind helpful footnotes.
Now. The Narrator, which is me, is not the Author. This is important. Vital, even. The Author created the world. I was given the much less glamorous job of reporting on it. The Author remains seated somewhere behind the curtain, and, for lack of better terms, is fine with creating a story built out of trauma and longing and just leaving it there. They are omniscient, untouchable, and immune to criticism from me and has the luxury of not being critical of what goes on within the story. I, on the other hand, am very much here. With you. With her. With them. And unlike the Author, I am very much not immune to criticism or being critical of our lovely protagonists, which is deeply unfortunate for everyone actually involved here.
The Author will not be speaking to you in this story. I, tragically, will.
You may be tempted to skip these interruptions. You may call them diversions, filler, or unnecessary commentary from a narcissistic Narrator with a flair for melodrama and a questionable relationship with sentence structure. But please understand these digressions are not indulgent. They are bandages on a gaping wound. They are emergency instructions on a plane you boarded mid-crash. I do not lie unless I tell you first. I do not distort unless absolutely necessary. And I do not intrude unless I must.
And I must. Now.
Because this story is about remembering.
Not the kind of remembering that brings you comfort - like the smell of a childhood soup, or where you parked your car on level three. No. This is the kind of remembering that strikes like a splinter under the nail. Like realizing halfway through the flight that you forgot to lock the door. It’s the remembering that comes in a cold sweat, half dreaming, half screaming, with no one around to tell you it’s over.
It is remembering the way a corpse remembers warmth. Which is to say: not directly. But the absence still hurts.
Now, in the original version of this story - the one tucked inside a mobile game that, if we’re being honest, takes up far too much storage space - you might find her not remembering anything at all. No past life. No ancient grief. No deep sense of wrongness like a toothache of the soul. You might even think that’s romantic.
And if you, Dear Readers, believe that memory - especially the traumatic, metaphysical, existential kind - is a beautiful thing, then I salute your optimism. Truly. Your belief that the human soul can withstand a lifetime worth of heartbreak, without splintering like cheap plywood is… touching. Admirable. Deeply wrong, of course, but deeply admirable.
This is not romance. Not in the way you want it to be. This is a ghost story with a pulse. It is a love story nonetheless, and nobody is dead. But as one gothic horror streaming adaptation once said: aren’t all ghost stories, in the end, love stories? And aren’t all love stories, really, about haunting?
So. Let’s talk about her. Because you, Dear Readers, are her.
She will remain unnamed in what follows - not out of secrecy, but out of something else. Whether she is the sorceress or the Hunter or the girl with the eyes too wide and the thoughts too loud or the compulsion to scrub her skin until it bleeds - she is all of them. And now she is you.
Of course, this her is different. She is not the same girl you’ll find in other stories, or the one tucked politely into the corner of that mobile game on your device - the one who seems well adjusted despite everything, who forgets things neatly and loves on a timeline that makes good pacing, where she is easier to understand and less alarming to behold. No. This version of her - our version - is sharper. Stranger. She is not the brave-but-kind archetype, the one who flirts and fights and never once hallucinates the rotting inside her own skin. The Author (a lofty title for someone with an overactive imagination and an english degree), upon seeing the original telling, and loving it, still looked upon the “true” version and said: there’s no way she’s not traumatized, there is no world where she’s not profoundly unwell in some way.
And so, this version of her exists: volatile, unfiltered, intermittently cruel, occasionally radiant, mentally ill in ways that do not photograph well. The Author, for reasons that keep me up at night, also holds the radical belief that mental illness should not be charming or tragic or beautiful. Sometimes it is loud. Sometimes it is inconvenient. Sometimes it is screaming at shadows or swallowing glass or refusing help for reasons that don’t make sense to anyone but her. I, the Narrator, do not often agree with the Author. It’s a fraught professional relationship. But on this, I do. She cannot ever be anything but this, in this retelling. If this unsettles you - if you find yourself wishing she was softer, or sweeter, or simpler - that is alright. There are stories where she is. They are lovely and well written and compelling. They are not this one. And she is not that version of her.
Her memories will snarl around your ankles. Her griefs will press against your chest like a weight that will not lift. Her compulsions may unsettle you. And her logic may infuriate you. But I ask that you do not look away. Especially not when it is uncomfortable. Especially not when it feels like a mirror.
If you recognize her - if you’ve met her and have been her before - perhaps in another life with a birdcage and a Praedator that loved her (where you and I, Dear Readers, probably first met) - keep it to yourself. Yes, this is the same her, but keep it to yourself. She does not want your recognition. She did not ask to be seen. And yet you saw her. Perhaps you liked her. Perhaps you missed her. This would make her unspeakably uncomfortable, though she wouldn’t be able to explain why. Or perhaps you disliked her, perhaps you rolled your eyes at her volatility, her mood swings, the way she insists on making every story about herself. She would tell you to fuck off. Possibly mime choking herself. Possibly both at once. She would say you don’t know the half of it (though you will once you become her). She would be right.
We should all apologize, really, for not leaving her alone. But we didn’t. So here we are.
And now she remembers - not the mythical past life, but this life. This version. She remembers the fighting pits, the star-sick gravity of the planet, the boy who saved her in every possible way. She remembers being torn from him - experimented on while he was imprisoned.
This is where, of course, there might be a temptation to speak of Orpheus and Eurydice.
You know the story. Everyone does. You can’t have a story about love and loss and forgetting without someone bringing it up. And fair enough. The metaphor fits. Sort of.
Yes, he tried to lead her out. That was very Orpheus of him. Yes, she was taken from him. Very Eurydice. Except - wait. He was the one imprisoned. And she was the one sent away. So perhaps she is Orpheus too. And he is also Eurydice.
You see the problem.
Like most myths, this one collapses a little when you look too closely at it. And yet, the echoes remain: he reached for her, and she tried to follow. Neither of them looked back. This is where the comparison breaks down - or becomes truer than intended. Because the tragedy of Orpheus is that he did look. He looked because he loved her. That is the simplest and most damning explanation. He loved her too much to not turn around, not to make sure, not to feel that she was really there. And yes, there are versions of the myth where it was instinct - she tripped, he turned. She gasped, he flinched. He heard her call out, and forgot the rules. Love does that to people. It is not admirable, but it’s true.
And maybe you’re thinking: but Sylus didn’t look. She didn’t either. They just kept running, trying to escape. Let me say this now, as clearly as I can. That does not mean they didn’t love each other. It doesn’t mean they don’t still.
There are many kinds of love, Dear Readers. Some of them scream and turn on instinct. Some of them hold still out of trust. Some love is reckless, some love is quiet, some love is just too tired to turn back again. And what happened to Orpheus and Eurydice is a tragedy because he did look. What happens to them - our them - is tragic, yes. But not because they looked. Because they didn’t know what direction to face. Because they were never told if they’d get a second chance.
You may try to assign roles here. You may say, “He’s the Orpheus, she’s the Eurydice,” or the other way around. And maybe you’re right. Or maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe all stories of love and loss become the same thing at a certain distance. Two people, reaching. Neither of them looking back. And still, somehow, missing each other. Now, let’s leave this rambling metaphor and return to the “she remembers it all” of the story. I apologize for getting carried away.
She remembers. She holds this in her head and her heart and has no place to set it down. She walks through the world with a hole in her chest and wires tangled in her brain, unsure which ones are meant to connect and which were never meant to be exposed at all. And him? He never stopped waiting. He built something in the meantime - an empire, a zone, a kingdom no one else would ever control again. He made a place she could return to, return to him. She did not know where she was supposed to look. She finds him by accident.
This is where our story begins. But it does not stay there. It turns into a question. One I, the Narrator, must ask you now:
How do you tell a love story where the people already made each other better - and then were torn apart? What do you do when the most formative version of yourself was forged in the absence of the person who made you feel whole?
Dear Readers, if you are hoping for a resolution, for a moment where memory and love braid together like childhood friends exchanging bracelets - you will be disappointed. This is not that kind of story.
This is a ghost story. This is a love story.
Which, in the end, is the same thing.