THE MEMORY THIEF Chapter 1: The Last Memory
THE MEMORY THIEF
Chapter 1: The Last Memory
The Royal Mage died at sunset.
The bells of Highreach rang thirteen times.
Once for each century he had protected the kingdom.
The people mourned.
The nobles mourned.
Even the king wept.
Because there had always been a Royal Mage.
For eight hundred years.
Generation after generation.
One mind.
One duty.
One secret.
When a Royal Mage died, their memories passed to the next.
Every lesson.
Every spell.
Every mistake.
Every secret.
Nothing was lost.
Or so everyone believed.
Far from the capital, in a fishing village on the western coast, sixteen-year-old Corin collapsed onto the docks.
A blinding pain exploded inside his skull.
The villagers panicked.
His mother screamed.
Corin fell into the sea.
And as darkness swallowed him, another life flooded into his mind.
Eight hundred years of memories.
Kings.
Wars.
Dragons.
Ancient cities.
Forgotten magic.
Thousands upon thousands of lives.
All becoming his.
Three days later, Corin awoke.
The village healer nearly fainted.
Because his eyes had changed.
One blue.
One silver.
The mark of the Royal Mage.
The mark that appeared every time the memories transferred.
The mark that proved who he was.
Or what he had become.
Within a week, royal soldiers arrived.
They knelt before a fisherman’s son.
And addressed him as "Master Mage."
Corin barely understood what was happening.
His head was full of strangers.
Full of knowledge he had never learned.
Yet somehow remembered.
He knew spells.
Languages.
Battles fought centuries before his birth.
He even knew the names of kings buried long ago.
But something felt wrong.
Very wrong.
The memories were incomplete.
At first, he thought he was imagining it.
Then he found the gap.
Every Royal Mage remembered the same event.
An event called:
The Night of Ashes.
The memory should have existed.
Every record mentioned it.
Every mage referred to it.
Yet whenever Corin tried to access it...
There was nothing.
A hole.
An empty space.
As though someone had cut pages from a book.
That night he opened the final journal of the previous Royal Mage.
A single sentence had been written on the last page.
Written only hours before death.
The handwriting shook.
As if the old mage had been terrified.
The message contained just six words.
Six words that changed everything.
Someone is stealing our memories.
Corin stared at the page.
Cold fear spreading through his chest.
Because the journals were protected by ancient magic.
Nobody could alter them.
Nobody except a Royal Mage.
A loud knock echoed through his chamber.
Three slow knocks.
The door opened.
A servant entered.
Pale.
Shaking.
Terrified.
"My lord..."
"What is it?"
The servant swallowed hard.
"The king requests your presence."
"Now?"
The servant nodded.
Then his voice dropped to a whisper.
"The royal tomb has opened."
Corin froze.
The tomb contained every Royal Mage who had ever lived.
Eight hundred years of dead sorcerers.
Nobody entered.
Nobody left.
Not ever.
The servant looked ready to faint.
Because there was one detail he had not yet mentioned.
One detail that made the situation impossible.
"The bodies are gone."
Silence filled the room.
Then Corin slowly closed the journal.
And for the first time since receiving the memories, he felt something none of the previous mages had ever allowed themselves to feel.
May you like
Fear.
To be continued...
