When he was made, he remembered flame. And silence. And a voice — nameless, cold — whispering:
You will stand until all is gone.
His mind was murky, still and dark like a stagnant pool. His body not wholly his own. There were chains — not of iron, but of will — that coiled around thought and movement alike.
He had not been born this way. He had been placed. In shadow. In stone. In waiting.
His former self — whatever it had been — was altered. Likely against his will. For who, in their right mind, would choose such an existence?
The years, or centuries — he did not know — peeled away what was left of memory. There was no time in the dark. Only long sleep, interrupted.
Each time the intruders came, the force returned — a presence like breath poured into a cold forge. Not fury. Not pain. Something simpler, heavier: do not let them pass.
Whether that purpose was his, he could not say. It felt like something grafted onto him. Yet even so… it gave shape to the emptiness. And in that shape, for a moment, he felt almost alive.
During those brief awakenings, he sometimes stole fragments of himself back — a glance at his own arm, the strange armor grown into skin. A feint thrown wide to provoke a wound, just to feel something in return.
He could not remember his face.
But sometimes — just before returning to stillness — he wondered if seeing his reflection would bring something back. Return enough of him to, if not break the chains that held him, at least recall the one who had made him into this unfeeling statue. So that he might name the one who did this to him — and curse them to the seven hells.