I woke up in a gray stone room.

No, "gray" isn't the right word. It was... empty of color. As if someone had sucked away every shade, every hue, every trace of life, leaving only ash in its place.

My hands trembled as I raised them before my face. They were the only thing in that dead room that still had color. The skin glowed faintly, as if I had swallowed moonlight. A pale, silvery glow pulsed beneath the surface, synchronized with my heartbeat.

"Where am I?" I whispered.

My voice echoed against the empty walls, but the sound was... wrong. Muffled. As if the air itself was tired of existing.

I stood up. My legs gave out for an instant before stabilizing. How long had I been lying down? Hours? Days? Years?

I remembered nothing.

I tried to concentrate, to dig into my memories. There had to be something. A name. A face. A place. Anything that would tell me who I was, how I got here, why I felt so... empty inside.

Nothing.

Only a black abyss where memories should have been.

I looked at the room more carefully. It was small, perhaps four meters by four. No windows. A gray wooden door - or what had been wood, once - closed on the other side of the room. The walls were of ancient stone, covered with a patina of dust that seemed to have settled for centuries.

But there was something strange. When I focused my gaze on a specific point, for the briefest instant, I saw... something else. Like an image superimposed on reality. Walls that weren't gray but golden. Elaborate decorations. Colorful tapestries.

I blinked. The image vanished.

I approached one of the walls and touched it. The stone was cold, rough, real. But the exact moment my fingers brushed it, something impossible happened.

The light in my hands pulsed stronger. And where skin touched stone, the gray retreated like fog in sunlight. For an instant - just one, very brief instant - I glimpsed the gold underneath. Real gold, solid, brilliant. Then the gray returned, swallowing the light, erasing the color as if it had never existed.

I stepped back, my heart racing.

"What...?"

"Finally..."

I spun around. The voice had come from behind me. Or perhaps from inside me? It was hard to tell. Feminine. Sweet. Distant, like a whisper carried by the wind.

"Who's there?" I called, my voice trembling more than I would have liked.

No answer. Only the heavy silence of the room.

Then, more clearly this time:

"...you've arrived."

"Arrived where? Who are you?"

Silence again.

I clenched my fists. The light in my hands shone more intensely, casting flickering shadows against the gray walls. For a moment, those shadows took a shape. A figure. A little girl? No, it was too indistinct, too vague. But there was something there.

"You don't... don't remember..."

The voice seemed sad. Not frightened, not threatening. Just... sad. As if it had lost something precious and couldn't find it again.

"Remember what?" I asked, more gently. "I don't remember anything. I don't even know who I am."

A longer silence. Then:

"The kingdom... needs you... Guardian..."

"Guardian? What does that mean?"

But the presence - whatever it was - was fading. I felt it moving away, like a wave retreating from the shore.

"Find... the fragments... save..."

"Wait! Don't go! I need answers!"

But it was already gone. The room was empty again. Silent. Dead.

I leaned against the wall, trying to calm my breathing. Weaver. Fragments. Save. Words without context, pieces of a puzzle I couldn't see as a whole.

But one thing was certain: I couldn't stay here.

I approached the door. It was solid wood, or at least it had been once. Now it seemed older than possible - as if centuries of time had reduced it to a fragile shadow of itself. I tried the handle.

Locked.

Of course.

I placed my hand against the wood, frustrated. And again, that light in my hands pulsed. This time stronger. A warmth spread from my palm, through the wood, into the lock.

Click.

The door opened.

I stood motionless for a moment, staring at my hand with a mixture of wonder and terror. Had I done that? How?

On the other side of the door, a corridor stretched into darkness. More gray. More dust. More silence.

But there was something else too. A sensation. A calling. As if something out there was calling me, waiting for me to take the first step.

I took a deep breath.

"Alright," I whispered to myself. "One step at a time."

I crossed the threshold.

The corridor was long and narrow. The walls were covered with symbols I didn't recognize - or rather, that I almost recognized. As if they were written in a language I had known once, then forgotten. Some runes glowed faintly when I approached, responding to the light in my hands.

I walked for what seemed like hours, but was probably only minutes. Time seemed to work strangely here. Sometimes one step carried me far, other times I felt like I was walking in place.

Eventually, the corridor opened into a larger hall.

And there, in the center of the room, I saw it.

A throne.

It was made of gold - gray gold, dull, dead, but still gold. Very tall, elaborate, with symbols carved on every surface. Empty.

But the walls... the walls told a story.

I approached slowly, almost hypnotized. They were frescoes. Enormous, majestic, covering every inch of space. They showed a magnificent kingdom. Golden palaces shining under a warm sun. People laughing, dancing, living. Fountains of liquid gold. Gardens full of flowers that seemed made of light.

And at the center of it all, a figure.

A man.

Tall, with long dark hair and kind eyes. He wore scholar's clothing, but also bore a crown of light on his head. He held the hand of a little girl - a small blonde girl with a smile that lit up the painting.

I observed them for a long time. There was something familiar about that scene. Not in the faces - those were strangers. But in the emotion it conveyed. Love. Warmth. Home.

Then my gaze fell on the next fresco.

The same scene, but different. The sky was dark. The little girl lay on a bed, pale, motionless. The man was kneeling beside her, his face in his hands. Around him, hooded figures walking away, shaking their heads.

My chest tightened. Even without knowing who they were, I felt their pain.

The next fresco was even darker. The man was alone, surrounded by ancient books and magical symbols. His eyes were no longer kind - they were desperate, obsessed. In his hands, something glowed. An undefined object, pulsing with unnatural light.

And the last fresco...

The last showed the kingdom in flames. But not normal flames - gray flames, consuming color instead of matter. The man was at the center of it all, the light in his hands exploded into a wave of destruction. And around him, everything turned to ash.

An inscription was carved beneath the last fresco. The letters glowed faintly as I approached:

"When the light goes out, only the Guardian can relight it."

"Guardian," I repeated softly. That word again.

I touched the fresco of the desperate man. The surface was cold under my fingers. But the moment I touched it, the world around me changed.

I was no longer in the throne room.

I was in a different room. Smaller. Warmer. There was a bed, and on that bed...

The little girl. The same one from the painting. But she wasn't an image now - she was real, three-dimensional, as if I had been transported to the past. She breathed with difficulty, her chest rising and falling laboriously. Around her, doctors with grim expressions.

And the man. The man kneeling beside the bed, holding the little girl's small hand in his.

"Daddy," whispered the girl, her voice so weak I barely heard it.

"I'm here, Aura," answered the man, his voice broken. "I'm here."

"I... I don't want to go..."

"You're not going anywhere. I promise. There's always a way. There's always a way."

But the little girl - Aura - smiled sadly. As if she knew something he didn't want to accept.

"Promise me... that you'll be happy..."

"Aura, no. Don't say that."

"Promise me..."

The man closed his eyes, tears streaming down his face.

"I promise," he whispered.

But it was a lie. I knew it. I could feel it.

The scene dissolved. I blinked and found myself back in the throne room, my hand still on the fresco.

My face was wet.

I touched my cheeks, confused. Was I crying? For people I didn't know? For a story I didn't understand?

But deep down, in a place deeper than memories, I knew that story concerned me. Somehow. Not yet clear.

"You see..."

The feminine voice had returned. Closer this time.

"See what?" I asked, turning. "Who were those people?"

"My father... and me..."

My heart skipped a beat.

"You are... Aura?"

"I was... now I am... something else..."

"And your father? The man in the painting?"

A long silence. Then:

"Master Elias. The Guardian before you. The one who... broke everything."

"Did he do this?" I looked around the gray, dead hall. "Did he transform this kingdom into... this?"

"He didn't want to... he was just trying to... save me..."

Her voice was full of pain. Not for herself - for him.

"But what happened? What did he do?"

"He sought the Eighth Artifact. The forbidden power. He thought it could... bring me back. But he didn't understand. He didn't understand what it would cause."

"And me? Who am I in all this?"

Silence.

"Aura? Why am I here?"

"Because... you're the only one who can fix what he broke. The only one who can bring back the light. You must... you must find the fragments. The five Artifacts. And then..."

"And then?"

"...save my father."

"Save him? But if he did all this—"

"He's not a monster. He's just... broken. Like this kingdom. Like everything. Please... you must help him. You must help us both."

I wanted to ask more questions. A thousand questions. But the presence was fading again.

"Wait! I don't know what to do! I don't even know who I am!"

"You'll discover... one step at a time... Guardian of Light..."

And then I was alone again.

I stood there, in the empty throne room, surrounded by frescoes of a glorious past and a terrible destruction. My hands glowed faintly in the darkness, the only source of light in a world that had forgotten color.

I didn't know who I was.

I didn't know what it meant to be a "Guardian".

I didn't know how I would save an entire kingdom, let alone a man who had already destroyed everything for love.

But I knew one thing.

I looked again at the fresco of the little girl on the bed. That little Aura who had asked her father to be happy, knowing he never could be.

I knew I had to try.

"Alright," I whispered to the void. "I don't know what I'm doing. But... one step at a time, right?"

The light in my hands pulsed, as if in response.

I took a deep breath and headed toward the exit of the throne room.

The Golden Kingdom - or what remained of it - awaited me out there.

And somewhere, in all that gray, there was a fragment to find.

The first step of a journey I didn't yet understand.

But I was awake now.

And I couldn't turn back.

---

END OF CHAPTER 1

Continues in Chapter 2: "The Silent Palace" Complete Level 2 to unlock Key: 1074