I lay there.

  Breathing was difficult. That is the most idiotic thing about returning—having to remember how the lungs pump air all over again. The whole process felt like some meaningless and exhausting chore. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

  I spent two days in that cave before the rhythm of breathing became automatic.

  A girl sat nearby. She was constantly writing something in a notebook, and whenever I opened my eyes, she would start talking. At first, it was just noise. A collection of meaningless sounds that flew past my ears. She saw my confusion and changed her timbre, changed her intonation, switched to other dialects. One language, a second, a fifth...

  Finally, something clicked in my head. The sounds began to turn into meaning.

  "Do you understand me?" she asked.

  I couldn't answer. Too complicated. I simply blinked.

  A new feeling was sparking inside me. Sharp, angry, demanding. I wanted to eat. That was the only thing that mattered in my empty head. The girl understood without words. She placed a bowl of something hot in front of me. The smell hit my nose, and not knowing what to do with my hands, I simply dipped my face into the food.

  Another day passed. The girl began pointing a finger at her chest, insistently repeating the same word:

  "Mira. Mira. MI-RA."

  I looked at her, trying to force my tongue to obey.

  "Mi... me... ra..." I squeezed out. My voice was hoarse and foreign.

  "No. MI-RA."

  "Mi... mi... Mira..."

  She smiled. A real, warm smile.

  "Yes. Yes, that's right."

  I looked at her and felt that the name "Mira" was pulling some other threads in the darkness of my mind. But as soon as I tried to tug on them, a dull ache started in the back of my head.

  Mira, I thought, closing my eyes again.

  I tried to stand up.

  My brain gave the command to my legs, but space decided that was too boring.

  POP.

  I teleported two meters forward, exactly where I wanted to step. I lost my balance, flailing my arms...

  POP.

  Another relocation. I was being tossed around the cave like a ball in a locked box until Mira caught me by the scruff of the neck and laid me back down.

  An hour later, she put a some kind of elastic ball in my hands.

  "Squeeze," she commanded.

  I squeezed. For a long time. For probably two hours, all I did was fight this rubber. At some point, my fingers flooded with a strength I couldn't control.

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  CRACK.

  The ball burst, splattering my hands with some sticky junk.

  I tried to stand again. A step—and the world tilted dangerously. To keep from falling, I instinctively propped myself up with streams of wind, creating invisible crutches. Thus, balancing on air cushions, I took my first honest step.

  By the next morning, I could already walk ten meters without slamming into a wall or jumping through space. A day after that, I was swinging my arms with all my might, returning the memory of movement to my muscles.

  Mira suddenly threw something red at me. I reacted on pure reflex—I caught it. But the moment my fingers closed on the object, it burst with a nasty squelch. It seemed I still had problems dosing my strength.

  Later, she brought me a lump of raw clay.

  At first, I just kneaded it, not understanding what to do with this mud. But Mira sat next to me and started showing me how to mold a human figure.

  A day passed, and something woke up inside me. My hands moved on their own. I knew how to press, how to pull the form, how to work out the details. It felt as if I had done this thousands of times. My fingers remembered what my head had forgotten.

  I sculpted all day, forgetting about food and sleep. And when I finished, warmth and joy suddenly flooded me... I grabbed the figure and ran to Mira. I pointed a finger back and forth between her and the clay doll.

  "This is... you!" I squeezed out, beaming with pride.

  I had sculpted her. Every fold, every lock of hair.

  Mira smiled—the way people only smile at those closest to them. She hugged me. We sat like that for a long time, maybe five minutes, and I felt her calm, living warmth.

  Then she pulled away, touched my cheek with her palm, and looked into my eyes.

  "I have to leave, Zen. I need to finish some business. Wait for me here. Don't go anywhere."

  I nodded obediently.

  I lay there and waited. There was absolutely nothing to do in an empty cave, so I entertained myself however I could: playing staring contests with the sun. But I lost every time. That arrogant yellow spot in the sky never blinked first, and my eyes would start to water.

  Sometimes I created a water lens out of the air and looked into it like a mirror. The reflection was frightening. Some stranger was looking back at me, a guy with black hair and impossible eyes, but I felt no connection to him. It was as if I were just a spectator trapped in someone else’s body.

  Every morning I woke up with the hope of seeing Mira, but she wasn't there. It was becoming lonely. To keep from going crazy, I took up the clay again. I sculpted everything I could see from the mouth of the cave: a crooked tree on the slope, some beast running past... My fingers lived a life of their own, creating a miniature world of mud while the real world remained closed to me.

  On the third day, she returned.

  Mira didn't waste time on greetings. She simply dropped something very heavy at my feet. A massive volume bound in old leather. The Book of Oblivion.

  "Place your hand on it," she ordered curtly.

  I obeyed. The moment my fingers touched the cover, I felt it: the book was alive. It didn't just lie there; it demanded. It wanted my mana, my essence, to open the locks. I gave it what it asked for.

  The world exploded.

  The book flooded with a blinding yellow light. I screamed, but there was no sound—only radiance bursting from my mouth and eyes. Glowing yellow lines crawled up my arm, sinking under my skin like white-hot threads.

  And it began.

  I was overwhelmed. I wasn't just seeing pictures—I was living other lives. Thousands of lives. Thousands of names I had once carried.

  A second—and I am unbearably sad, mourning someone on a snowy field. A second—and I feel good, I can taste pancakes and the warmth of someone’s palm. A second—and rage burns me from the inside; I want to turn everything living to ash.

  The yellow light of memory was suddenly replaced by a thick black fog. Darkness and Light—the two began to battle inside my head, replacing each other every second. Yellow. Black. Joy. Death.

  When the madness ended, I simply collapsed onto my back. My body was trembling, my lungs were burning, and the hum of a thousand voices still rang in my ears.

  I raised my hand, examining my fingers. The yellow lines were slowly fading, sinking beneath the skin.

  "Who am I?" I whispered, staring at the stone vault of the cave.

  I remembered everything. And at the same time, I remembered nothing. Now I knew I was Zenhald. I knew I was Greg. I knew about Alexia, about the mannequins, about the curse, and about tens of thousands of deaths behind me.

  But amidst this entire avalanche of information, I still couldn't find the answer to the most important question.

  "Who am I, really?" I asked Mira, but my voice drowned in the silence of the cave.