When Layla awoke, darkness surrounded her.

Damp leaves brushed against her hands. A river murmured nearby, its voice mingling with the rustle of the trees. For a few moments, she remained motionless, waiting for any of it to feel familiar.

Where was she? How had she gotten there?

Who was she?

She sat up slowly and checked herself for pain. There was none. Inside her mind, her memory opened into a distorted emptiness. She searched for a name, a face, the echo of a voice. Nothing came.

At the riverbank, she knelt before the water. Her reflection showed a young woman with eyes as silver as the moon, black hair tipped in silver, and a red hood that, for some reason, felt more like hers than anything else in the world.

The sight of her reflection brought her a measure of comfort. She thought she was beautiful. Her gaze traveled over her lips, her nose, and her ears, searching every part of her face for a memory.

She found none.

The realization made her eyes sting even more.

She wanted to cry. She also wanted to find something that could explain why.

She made her way through the forest with her arms held close to her body, alert to every sound among the bushes. When a wolf stepped into her path, teeth bared and legs coiled to spring, the breath caught in her throat. The creature stared at her for a long moment.

Its eyes seemed to reach into her very soul. Then the wolf looked past her, toward something beyond. It hesitated, retreated into the woods, and vanished between the trees.

Layla kept walking without trying to understand.

About half an hour later, she spotted walls rising beyond the forest, guarding a city vast enough to fill the entire horizon before her. Something in her chest pulled her toward its gates. If answers existed anywhere, she would begin her search there.

Two guards barred her way.

“State your name and your purpose for entering Hogarion,” one of them demanded.

“Ho... Hogarion?” Her own voice sounded distant to her ears. “Where am I?”

The guards exchanged a glance. Suspicion hardened both their faces.

“What do you mean, where are you? Didn’t you hear what we just said? This is Hogarion, capital of Leruth’s Eastern Heart!”

Leruth.

The word spread a familiar warmth through her chest. Layla tried to hold on to the feeling and follow its thread back to some memory, but she found the same emptiness. Tears returned before she could stop them.

“I woke up in the forest, and I can’t remember where I came from.” Her voice broke. “Please, can you help me? I’m hungry...”

The questions came one after another. Where had she come from? Had she been traveling with anyone? How did she expect to enter Hogarion without even giving them her name? Layla tried to answer every one, even when they began to repeat themselves. With each silence, the disbelief in the guards’ eyes deepened.

She could have gone back to the forest. The thought tightened her stomach. Hogarion exerted a pull on her that she could not explain, a certainty buried too deep for her amnesia to reach. She needed to stay here. Here, she would begin rewriting her story, even if she had no idea what its first version had been.

The sound of wheels and hooves approached along the road.

“What is happening here?” a new voice asked.

The guards straightened. A carriage had stopped before the gates, and a figure watched the scene from within.

“It’s nothing, Your Majesty. Just a lost girl trying to enter Hogarion.”

The guard took Layla by the arm to pull her out of the way.

“If it’s nothing, why can’t she enter?”

The figure leaned forward, allowing the light to reveal his face. His skin was gray, almost pallid. His ears were pointed, and black slits marked his eyes.

An elf.

Layla recognized his race at once, and the realization frightened her. So many memories had vanished. Why had this one remained?

“Who are you?” she asked.

The guard released her arm. Neither of them dared interrupt, and the word spoken moments before echoed through Layla’s mind.

Majesty.

“My name is Nákias,” the elf replied with a warmth she had not expected. “And this is the city I helped build. As for you, what is your name?”

Everyone around them waited for her answer.

Layla opened her mouth, certain a name would come if she tried hard enough. She searched again, combing through the emptiness until her breaths grew short. No name surfaced. She had no answer to give the king.

Her legs gave way. She fell to her knees and covered her ears, as though she could keep the question from echoing inside her head. Tears streamed freely down her face.

A cold hand settled upon her hair.

Nákias had stepped out of the carriage and bent down before her.

“You truly don’t remember anything?”

Layla shook her head.

The king took the edge of her red hood and gently drew it back. Under the moonlight, silver strands gleamed among her black hair. When Layla raised her face, she found his eyes fixed on hers. Nákias touched her chin, as though weighing the girl kneeling before him, her fear, and everything she herself did not know.

It was the first time he offered her his help.

It was also the beginning of the friendship between Layla and the elven king.

Before he could say anything, Nákias lowered his gaze. A thin cord disappeared beneath the neckline of her clothes.

Layla followed his eyes.

She pulled on the cord and found a small pendant hanging there, letters carved into a circle of wood.

There was her first answer.

Carved into the pendant was her own name.

“Layla,” Nákias read aloud.

His voice anchored the syllables in the world. Lay-la. Two simple parts, light enough to fit within a single breath, yet hearing him pronounce them tugged at something inside her with the force of a storm.

“Layla,” she repeated.

The name left her lips softly, almost like a question. She touched it with her fingertips, tracing the letters carved into the wood. Her memory remained silent. The feeling came from somewhere else. Something settled inside her, a piece too small to fill the emptiness yet solid enough to become a beginning.

Nákias smiled.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Layla.”

For the first time since awakening in the forest, someone spoke to her as though her presence there were perfectly normal.

The guard who had grabbed her arm cleared his throat.

“Your Majesty, we still need to confirm where she came from. She may pose a risk to the city.”

Layla closed her hand around the pendant. The forest still waited behind her, hidden beyond the road and the night. The guards needed only to point in that direction, and she would be left without anywhere to belong.

“Then I will take responsibility for her,” Nákias replied.

His tone remained cordial. The reaction was immediate. Both guards stepped aside and bowed their heads, accepting the decision without another question.

Nákias rose and extended his hand.

“Come. You said you were hungry, and this conversation will be far more pleasant after some food.”

Layla looked at the elf’s long fingers. Should she trust him? The answer was lost among so many others. Nákias had been the first person to place his trust in her, and the girl in the red hood decided to return the favor.

She took his offered hand and allowed the king to lead her to the carriage.

The interior was spacious, lined with dark wood and cushioned seats. A small lamp fixed to the wall cast golden light over a travel basket. Nákias reached inside and took out a piece of bread, an apple, and a waterskin.

“A little modest for a royal banquet,” he said, handing everything to Layla. “Try to hide your disappointment.”

She almost asked whether he was serious, but the playful glint in his golden eyes had already answered her.

“Thank you.”

The first bite sent a deep ache through her stomach. The hunger she had ignored until then struck like an avalanche. Layla had to stop herself from swallowing too quickly. Nákias waited in silence as she ate, watching the movement outside and the way her fingers trembled around the bread.

When the carriage passed through the gates, Hogarion opened before her.

The streets bustled despite the late hour. Blue lamps hung from the building fronts, powered by small crystals that gleamed with an energy that seemed to permeate everything. Merchants called out offers of fabrics and metalwork brought from Brektel. The warm scent of spices from Slother drifted from colorful sacks and mingled with the smells of bread, fruit, and animals. At one corner, four travelers in light clothing argued about the situation in Meruga, each trying to speak louder than the others.