It wasn't until the first light of dawn that Cayn regained consciousness. The fire was extinguished but now unnecessary in the oppressive heat. The fugitive rose laboriously, hindered by the pain in his shoulder. With a vacant look, he watched the horizon shift from gray to yellow under the light of the rising sun in a desperately clear sky.

Gathering his wits and belongings, he slid his knife back into his belt, lingered for a moment, as if he could fill his vial with the sheer force of his will, then sighed and tucked it away in an inner pocket of his badly worn linen shirt. Cayn straightened up, left the shade of his rocky shelter, and exposed his features to the light of the emerging sun.

Despite the dirt scattered across his face, one could discern a fairly young man in his twenties. His brown eyes with greenish reflections were framed by two straight, bushy eyebrows, giving him a somewhat stern and vigilant appearance. His left cheek was marked by an almost straight scar, starting from his temple and stopping an inch from the corner of his lip, likely the unfortunate outcome of a battle. A budding, golden, and uniform beard surrounded his broad and square jaw. A drop of sweat began to trickle down his prominent forehead and onto his straight, broad nose. His blond hair had been shaved and sculpted to create strange cyclical and crenelated symbols on his head. On his slender and drooping shoulder now bore the mark of his blade surrounding the circle left by the arrow. Otherwise, he was a slender man of medium height who could easily blend into a crowd. However, he exuded a certain charm that could attract the favor of his peers. Or antipathy, if one refers to some recent events.

Without knowing exactly what to do, Cayn decided to cautiously return to the sinister crater. To his surprise, there were few traces left of the massacre from the previous day. Almost as if it had never happened. The sand had absorbed the blood of the hunters, and carrion-eating animals had likely already taken care of the small parts of their bodies that giant insects had overlooked. Only a few torn packs and broken weapons lay on the escarpment, not yet devoured by the desert.

Cayn carefully circled the sandy crater, taking care not to make any sudden movements or tread too heavily on the ground. When he reached the closest point to the remnants of the massacre, he observed more closely and from a distance the scattered equipment, looking for any macabre inheritances that might help him survive the desert. He spotted one or two water flasks, a small sword with a broken tip, and an arrowless yet intact bow.

Once he calculated his route as short as possible, the young man cautiously and circumspectly slipped towards the objects of his desire, convinced that any abrupt movements would give away his presence. Luckily, he also found two arrows and a torn bag into which he stuffed all his acquisitions before making a hasty exit. But nothing stirred or trembled. What once must have hosted a lush oasis was now nothing more than a dull cemetery without graves.

Back at his shelter, Cayn drank a few sips of water, thankfully contained in one of the flasks, before scanning the horizon again. To survive, his meager resources would have to be conserved. But which direction to choose in this vast, endless desert? Instinctively, the young man decided to walk towards the sun, thinking he would prefer it at his back in the afternoon when he would start to tire.

In the makeshift bag, briefly repaired with the cord from another broken bow, Cayn stowed the pouch containing his lighter, a few coals wrapped in a torn piece of fabric, his empty vial, and a flask. To protect himself from the sun, he tore off one of his sleeves to improvise a head covering, and almost instinctively, applied charcoal to his bare skin. The intact bow nestled across his chest, and the broken sword hung at his belt. The arrows went into a gap in his makeshift satchel, ready to be grabbed from the lower part of his back if needed. Mimicking this move, the injured man let out a groan of pain and wondered if his wound would even allow him to draw the bow.

Finally, turning towards the glaring and piercing light, Cayn took a deep breath and began his walk. In the night and the frenzy of the pursuit, his meager landmarks had been mixed up, which certainly explained why his steps were leading him straight to the region he had fled the day before.

After walking all day with an empty gaze and a vacant mind, it was at dusk that the ramparts of Valclair appeared on the horizon. In a nearly neurotic chuckle, Cayn collapsed in the sand. Panting, he watched as the small fort lit its first lanterns. The village was built around an oasis, offering a true haven in this hostile land. Encircled by thick walls of a saffron hue, likely a mixture of lime, clay, and sand, Valclair housed about thirty round houses made of the same materials that protected them. These dwellings shared space with a multitude of magnificent palm trees, some of which seemed to have a few platforms, probably installed for watchmen.

Facing this spectacle, Cayn struggled to gather his thoughts. This place was supposed to evoke memories that eluded his memory. Valclair was supposed to be the cradle of his childhood, or at least that of the previous owner of his body. For it wasn't by shoplifting or delivering a well-aimed kick to the authorities that he had incurred the wrath of the hunters of Valclair, nor by committing a murder. No, to the general horror, Cayn had awakened in the midst of a funeral ceremony. Through some strange sorcery, his spirit seemed to have inhabited the body of a deceased person who was obviously not his own, hence the strange funerary drawings in his hair. Worse still, he didn't understand why or how. How could he have committed this unnatural act? Was it truly his will?

Vague, fragmented, and painful memories pounded his perplexed mind. Some seemed not to be his own, others were incomplete and did not involve the same places or people. Cayn couldn't explain it, but deep down, he knew he was a stranger to this organism that should have been a corpse and remain so. An intruder but trapped. The reaction of the grieving crowd to this abominable resurrection was relentless and vehement. No one believed for a moment that their friend was returning from the dead; everyone seemed certain that he was already gone.

The entire funeral assembly, after a few moments of stupor, began to pour hatred and contempt onto this body returned from the dead. Except for the mourning family of the deceased and a huge, dark individual that Cayn barely had time to glimpse out of the corner of his eye, everyone else present then descended upon him. Beaten, drenched in spit, urged to leave this body that was not his, he was dragged into the street where he freed himself in a final spasm and fled into the cold night. Near the small golden wall, panicked and seeking an escape, he stole a small purse and a knife lying on a barrel. Hearing the villagers' shouts getting closer, Cayn clumsily climbed a curved and angular palm tree. Tearing most of his clothes in the process, which barely held together thanks to the ritual leather bands that adorned his body, he then jumped over the enclosure and ran for his life into the cold desert of Grisabois.

Cayn hadn't even taken the time to reflect on all of this, too focused on his survival, entrusting any potential reflection to the bitter sweetness of denial and forgetfulness. But now that he had begun his introspection, the borders of his lucidity began to waver. While everything seemed clear under the influence of fear and adrenaline, the more he thought and tried to make sense of his misfortune, to access his blurry memories, the more everything seemed to slip away. The only thing that remained was his name.

A dull anxiety gripped his heart. This body he was trapped in suddenly grew numb and seemed too small to contain his being. Madness was taking hold. Before his eyes, meanders of memories flowed, fragments of existences that seemed clear yet to which he couldn't give any meaning. Was it his past that he was witnessing? His own memories? Or those of the man to whom this body belonged? At times, he saw himself among the stars, on the deck of an ivory ship sailing on the clouds; at other times, he saw himself as a woman, a man, or an animal. Who was he if this body wasn't his own? How could one be oneself without a physical identity?

Madness began to caress the edges of his mind, insinuating itself with a hum and making every inch of his clarity tremble. His vision became blurry. Cayn desperately tried to calm himself, or else he would sink, definitively. He needed something to cling to, any mental anchor other than this oasis that reminded him of the absurdity of his existence. Something like that flickering light between two dunes behind him, a few steps away. A fire, a hearth from which to draw the comfort of gentle warmth? The tender caress of life? Stumbling, he approached that glow, now his only bulwark against madness, the lure offered to his attention to occupy his mind at the edge of the abyss. Cayn had to succeed now, no matter what. It didn't matter if he was heading straight for the blaze of his existence.

The spectacle he witnessed had, at least, the merit of abruptly halting his psychic torments, as the nature of the scene contrasted sharply with the gravity of his inner turmoil. The light indeed emanated from a fire, skillfully constructed, protected by a circle of flat stones embedded in the sand, shining with a thousand golden reflections under the flames' illumination. Above it stood a rudimentary spit made of a charred branch laid on two other dead twigs, impaling some sort of large lizard grilling away. A makeshift pallet was arranged near the crackling fire.

A bit further away, an odd, horned creature was ruminating, with a slender snout and narrow nostrils, scaly and cracked skin, and three humps along its back. From its six muscular legs, the bit hanging from its broad neck, and the saddlebags attached between each of its humps, one could deduce that it was an animal meant for riding and long journeys.

However, the most astonishing sight was not the beast but its rider, one arm buried in one of the deep pouches, cheek pressed against the flank of his mount, back dangerously arched to avoid falling. His bulging eyes, lips puckered on his outstretched tongue, and the gravelly grunts escaping from the depths of his being revealed his frustration at failing to grasp the object of his desire.

Cayn's astonishment had instantly erased his internal tumult to the point that he even let out a nervous laugh. In the blink of an eye, the rider's hand, emerging from the bag as swiftly as a serpent, sent a dagger flying that landed just two fingers from Cayn's nose, instantly dispelling any desire to laugh. His eyes, squinting at the weapon, refocused on the man brandishing another dagger, looking stern. He was too far from the fire for his features to be distinctly discerned:

"Who goes there? How many of you rogues are trying to rob me? I warn you, I can break a man with each hand!" exclaimed the startled scavenger in an exaggeratedly deep voice.