The desert wind howled like a warning across the rust-colored plateau, scattering fine ash into the twilight sky. Selene stood still, her eyes locked on the two strangers who weren't strangers at all.
One of them—a lean, sharp-eyed woman with ink-black braids and a mechanical arm—stepped forward first.
"You've gotten quieter, Sel," she said, voice low but tinged with a brittle softness. "Not like you to hesitate."
Selene didn't flinch. But inside, her pulse hammered like a war drum.
Sel?
That name again. The second time in two days. It struck like a shard of memory just out of reach, sharp enough to hurt, but too blurry to grasp.
"I don't know who you are," Selene said flatly. "You've mistaken me for someone else."
The man behind the woman barked a laugh. "That's rich. After everything, you're gonna play dumb?"
He looked younger, but there was age in his eyes—loss, disappointment, something old and raw. A pair of broken aviator goggles hung from his neck like a relic.
"Careful, Kai," the woman warned, though her gaze never left Selene's. "If the Void really did take her memories, this isn't her fault."
Selene didn't move. Every instinct screamed that she should run—but her legs remained rooted. It wasn't fear. It was something deeper. Something cold, ancient, and coiled like a serpent in her bones.
"What's the Void?" she asked, not realizing how much weight the question carried.
The woman blinked, startled. "You really don't remember."
Kai muttered under his breath, but the woman ignored him and stepped closer.
"Name's Arin," she said. "You and I… we used to be part of the same cell. Ghost Division. Operatives trained to cross between Veils. We weren't just soldiers—we were myths." She hesitated. "Until you vanished. Until the Collapse."
Selene's jaw tightened. "I'm not part of your war. I didn't ask for this."
Arin's voice softened. "Maybe not. But it asked for you."
A flicker passed behind Selene's eyes—like glass cracking under pressure. A corridor of light. Screams. Her own hands drenched in something dark and sticky. A promise whispered in a dead language.
And then—gone. Like smoke in a storm.
Selene staggered back, disoriented.
"You okay?" Arin reached out instinctively, but Selene drew her blade in a breath.
"Don't touch me."
Arin froze, eyes narrowing but not in anger. "Same reflexes. Same edge. You're still you. Just… unfinished."
Kai scoffed. "This was a mistake."
Before Arin could argue, a pulse rang out in the distance—deep, bassy, like a warning siren from the sky. All three of them turned.
A line of lights ignited along the canyon ridge.
"They found us," Kai spat.
"Of course they did," Arin muttered. "We're standing in the open with a myth."
Selene glanced at them, blade still steady. "Who's 'they'?"
"Hunters," Arin replied grimly. "Voidbound ones. They want what's inside your head—even if you don't know it's there."
Selene gritted her teeth.
"Then they'll have to dig it out of my corpse."
Kai stared at her for a beat, expression unreadable. "There's the Sel we knew."
Arin smirked faintly. "She's waking up."
The wind picked up again. In the distance, metallic shapes broke from the horizon like beasts of war.
And Selene turned toward them—not to flee.
But to fight.