"Those aligned with death, know Asen'Tharalon guides the wayward souls,

"Death is not the end of all, or the end of one,

"It is the start, the rebirth, the cycle.

"Every soul lives a thousand lifetimes with a new meaning,

"Pain follows, but one will always live again,

"So long as one doesn't forget."

~ Passage Five: Dragon Soul of Rebirth

Orilion

Temple Island

Falora Tyvlon sailed them through the endless mist. Up close, the dormant lightning towers touched the twilight heavens of the Elder Crossing. Orilion sat at the back, lowering his gaze from the sight to examine his hands. Trembles wracked his fingers, so he clenched them to stop the discomforting energy from releasing itself into the world. Throbs stretched on either side of his spine, and he curled forward to try and escape its grasp.

I do not understand... He pulled for his wings, but there was nothing left of them.

A marble dock broke through the low-hanging mist. Cracks crawled up the pillars of celestial draconic architecture. Runes of welcome and safe travels lined their sides. Once they came closer, Falora hopped out with a rope at her side, wrapping it around one of the vine-covered pillars.

His knees buckled from sudden pain when he tried to get out of the seat, unused to the lightness of his other form. Why... it feels like it's been... ages... He lifted his head to Falora, who glared down at him. I did not want to think she was telling me the truth... I am displaced. He hauled himself out onto the marble dock, reaching out to trace the runes with his fingers. None of it pulsed with power. Dead. Yet somehow familiar. Energy snapped through the air, right into his soul as he released the runes, unable to fill them with his lackluster power. Falora walked down the dock, and he followed after her with no other options ahead of him.

His heart skipped a beat at the swirling sigil of a hurricane at the main gate. My symbol... yes. Mine. That I know. Air rustled through his hair in a caress of a gentle call, but he stopped when Falora whipped out a notebook when they drew past the gate.

"You can read the engravings, can you?"

Orilion stopped by a slab of runes. "You cannot?"

A sharp laugh escaped her lips. "Excuse me, sir... do I look like I know how to read celestial draconic?" Another chuckle slipped past as she walked past him, drawing the runes underneath his fingertips.

"You can't...?" Electricity flickered at the edges of his world as he focused on her heart. Ignoring the hot pain crawling up his back, he focused on the soul. Mist of a gentle purple ichor swirled around her. Full of a thirst for knowledge. What...? He stood up, causing her to jump back from him. "Are you sure?"

"I'm an artist. I just have a passion for history on top of that." Falora frowned at him. "Not a celestial draconic translator. Never had a need to learn before."

Odd. Orilion headed up the cracked marble steps to the ancient temple growing out of the island. Arches of rock crawled out of the ground to guide their way up towards the massive, hurricane marked doors. Between each one, ashen-filled braziers. It came closer, the truth behind the temple barrier. It had to lead him to the things he had forgotten.

What happened to me?

"Will you tell me if you feel different?" Falora's voice broke him out of his focus.

"I feel..." He stepped closer to the massive doors, releasing a heavy breath in time with the spinning of his temples. "Light headed."

Beautiful pillars held up lightning conduits, and Orilion frowned at the small crack in the door. Someone had opened it beforehand. Big enough to fit his true form. He narrowed his eyes, reaching his hand out to the darkness of the temple. Every step he took, Falora Tyvlon lagged behind to draw the starlit engravings on the giant walls. Moss grew between each marble tile, where great halls of colonnades led deeper into the heart of the building. Dragons twisted and twirled around the main five pillars, breathing flames. He came to a stop at a crumbled pillar, where there was nothing left of the engraving but a broken jaw.

Water dripped through his ear. Ancient energy hushed through the long hall. He reached his hand out to grasp the sensations, but it escaped from his grip.

"Is there something here?" she asked.

Silence spoke louder than words to the wind. He crept forward to the edge of the engraved corridor, into the seat of the gods.

None of it was familiar. From the multiple skylights releasing water into the divots. The arms of the hurricane spiraled into stone, their tips meeting the cascades. Leaves and debris filled the pools, where vines interrupted the cascades.

Shattered pieces of a statue littered the back of the sanctum. Pottery sprayed across the tendrils of the stone clouds. He dared to cast his eyes heavenward, where the lightning towers pierced the clouds. I don't... He sank on one of the steps, holding his head. Elders... why can't I remember? What was taken from me? His gaze rested on the large, platform throne, fit for a mighty dragon. Why is this familiar?

Falora stepped down the staircase, pointing at the eye of the hurricane. "What's that?"

He waited back as she stepped up to the weapon in the center. A lightning carved glaive. Everything is... on the edges of my memory... He reached out to clutch the shaft away from her, onto the energy time left behind. It crackled on his fingertips, pushing windy images into his mind. Flashes of lightning connecting with broken branches of light. Beaded arcs zapped from temple to temple, and he dropped the broken weapon to his feet. It clattered and echoed around the sanctum, causing Falora to whip around to face him from her examination and sketching of the stone feather, cast adrift onto the floor. Hand up against the side of his head, he frowned down at the crackling energy whisking down the glaive's blade.

"What is it?" she demanded. "Do you remember something?"

"No." He leaned down to pick up the broken pieces of the weapon again, but the lightning arcs never came back into his sight. Balanced on his fingers, his heart stirred at some familiarity, but it never bloomed in the heart of a storm. "I remember nothing."

"Well..." Falora's defensive expression changed into confusion. "There's got to be tablets in this temple. We should look around some more." Her gaze drifted to the burnt pieces of stone above her head, to the cracked, monstrous statue behind the dragon's platform with half its face burnt off. Mangled chipped teeth reflected the twirled horns. Wings shredded beyond recognition, as if something had taken several lashes against the stone. His back burned the longer he stared at the statue.

Orilion headed up to the small moat following the arms of a hurricane. One piece of stone stuck out of the water's edge. A feather. Shredded, burnt, and fallen from the wing it came from. He knelt down at its tip with a frown. His spine tickled in discomfort.

"Do you remember anything else?"

Orilion brought a hand up to his brow, the feather falling from a great height to land in the hurricane pool. "A blinding light...?" he mused to the world. "And then nothing at all." He thought long and hard at what his soul told him. Lashes of pain, striking his back. He flinched at the touch of the sun, tormenting his wings. Except he had no more wings. "There was a... storm, of some sort," he recalled, but it blinded him. No storm ever caused him grief. "Miss Tyvlon..."

"You can just call me Falora."

"Falora," he corrected before turning back to the dragon statue. Out of reach, and unfamiliar. "Where is Arth'lun? Do you have a map?"

"I told you Arth'lun was destroyed at the end of the Dragon God Age."

But that can't be. Orilion gazed at the painted images. Beautiful pictures of a golden city on the clouds. Dragonkin and dragon alike flew to and fro the metropolis, never ending in the heavens, watched over by the Elder Crossing with its speckled, starlit eyes. Touched by the colours of their dragon flames they sent down the darkest nights, to remind them of the world everlasting. In the haze, he tried to reach them. Reach out to touch them and experience freedom. Pain gripped his chest as he knelt forward into his hand. Burning. It burned, all of it.

I don't... understand.

"You said it was in the heavens?"

Orilion jumped at her voice, breaking through his faded memory. "It was in the sky — no, it was the sky." He turned to her. Deliberation crossed her features, and no small amount of disbelief. "It was so much more than what you must've been told in your..." He breathed out, trying to ignore the horrifying images within the book. His memory failed him, but he remembered his home. In the sky, flying among the clouds.

"I do have a map," Falora broke the silence. "But it's not an old one. It's recent."

Recent... recent? Orilion raised his head to the heavens, but his wings burned in unseen infernal brimstone. Aetheric age, that's what she said.

"What's on your mind, Asen'Orilion?"

The title again. "Just Orilion, if you will not allow me to refer to you by yours, you do not have to refer to me by mine."

Further hesitation crossed her features, swept by the sun. "Very well, Orilion. Most temples have some sort of annex of information right?" she questioned. "If the Celestial Templars haven't burned it by now—"

Orilion choked. "Burned it?"

Falora drew back, though he never raised his voice. "Yes... any texts found in temples were suspected to be used for cult magics. So..." She pressed her hands together. "They burned them. I'm not sure if they've checked this temple though. It's been surrounded by fog for as long as I can remember — at least... until I found you on the beach."

Lesinia... you allowed this to happen? Orilion moved up to a pillar to rest against it, trying to time his breathing with the wind. Every dark pocket of his memory failed him, but the things he did remember never added to what was in front of him. An age he missed. A temple he couldn't recognize, but was certainly his. It held his sigil everywhere he looked, but then the dragon of rotting scales haunted the corners. A broken statue, leashed by sun whips. His back burned, and he wanted nothing more to take flight and soar in the clouds.

"We can try to look for it though," Falora spoke up. "Maybe find an old map of Arth'lun." Doubt marred her tone, but she never wavered.

Arth'lun... has truly fallen? I can scarcely believe it. Orilion held onto the cracks in the pillar. No, I must see this for myself. The sky itself cannot fall. He faced Falora with a nod. "Very well. If you believe it has the answers to... my plight."

For my memory is doing me no favors. Oh, elder ones... where has it gone?

Orilion followed Falora into the dark, damp corridors. Mossy vines crawled along each marble stone. Pictures engraved in the tiles told stories he no longer recalled. Falora stopped by each one, drawing it in a small book, bound by tough leather. Driven and with purpose. "Apologies, Ase— Orilion," she said. "It's not very often anyone is... able to tread the old dragon god temples."

"Yet you walk its halls like you know it deep inside," Orilion pointed out, then turned to one mosaic of glass and stone. "I remember none of this."

"Not the stories on the walls?" Falora questioned.

Orilion walked along as the stone told its story. He stopped at one of the images. A swirling tempest, and a dragon falling through its eye as dark tendrils grabbed onto it. Purpose. Drive. He raised a hand up to it, where wisps of light flowed through the glass. "I... do not."

Falora stopped beside him to look upon the image of dread. "I suppose this is your fall."

Another thing to escape my memory, strewn to the Elder Crossing. Unable to look upon the images much longer, he stepped forward into the dark. Blue fire lit up in the sconces and braziers they passed. Electricity hummed in the air. This temple has been abandoned, but it still has power within it.

"Is this a door?" he heard Falora ask behind him.

Orilion turned to see her staring at a door with embedded glass swirling upwards, where two dragons met. "I..." He eyed it, but there was no visible handle. "Yes."

"You don't sound so confident about that." Falora pursed her lips, then pressed both hands against the carvings, and pushed. It never gave as she tried her hardest, Orilion bit on his tongue with a huff, and she snapped her head to him. "Don't laugh at me."

"I'm not laughing," Orilion said and raised his hands. "Truly, I think that is a door."

"Then I'm not opening it like this. This is your temple. You can probably open it."

Yes... it is my temple, I suppose.

Orilion took her spot in front of the door, where the dragons glared down at him. Their wings stretched to touch the sky in the ceiling. He steeled the storm in his soul, and raised both hands. He pushed the power within his veins through the glass, where it lit up and criss crossed into the dragon eyes. Stone groaned as the door shook open, scattering waterfalls of dust in front of them. Falora brought a hand to her mouth to block the cloud. Orilion waved the dust away with the help of the wind.

Orilion spread the blue flames into the braziers, and frowned at the stacks. Ash littered the ground, and Falora made a sound of pain.

"How?" she whispered as she stepped in. "They did burn it all... All the heretical texts."

"You... seem upset." Orilion walked inside, but kept to the corner. Far away from the loss of truth. "If I am truly... If I am a monster—"

Falora kicked a stack. "It doesn't matter. Knowledge is knowledge," she insisted. "I have never agreed with the Celestial Templars in how they treat heretical texts. There is still something to learn, even if people have used it for dastardly things."

Orilion blinked. "You... wouldn't happen to be a follower of Ase'Lesinia?"

"I am."

Ah... that makes sense. Orilion shuffled his boot through a pile of ash. "I am afraid we are not going to get anything from here."

Falora knelt down to crumpled parchment, which fell apart at her touch. "Deplorable..." she grumbled as the ash slipped out of her hands, the remainder of the life he led before. Before he was left behind in a dark history he couldn't remember. "You may have been a monster in the past, Orilion, but I do not agree with what they did to the information within your temples."

He sighed. "Maybe they do not want to remember?"

Falora hesitated, then eyed him. "You're not upset?"

"I'm not the deity of knowledge," he pointed out. "I'm the deity of..." He hesitated, then slunk further into the corner as waves of nausea weaved through his temples. "I do not like it here..."

"Do you remember something?"

"No. I just do not like it." His heart burned. Sun whips struck his back as he tried to press himself against the cold stone while the stone burned around him. It melted the marble. It dripped and burned those who took shelter inside. Bile rose up to his throat at the scent of burning bodies. He shook his head as the shadows flowed into his world. Death. Air full of death, and not the gentle touch of the Elder Crossing. Something inevitable and ending. and Falora turned in full to him. "No, this place is wrong."

"Wrong how?" she insisted.

"I do not know. I just... don't like this place."

Falora pursed her lips, but she jumped at the sound of rushing wind. Orilion lifted his head to the stone, but frowned when she gasped. "Aethergines!"

Aether—? Orilion jumped when she pointed at the door as the rushing wind came closer through the temple.

"Close it!" she hissed.

Orilion obeyed, closing the door behind them.

Again, stuck in a pot of the sun's fury and brimstone. Enclosed in the shadows.

Dying a mortal's death.

No... Asen'Tharalon... what happened here?

What happened to me?