[ i refuse to forget ]

As an employee of the leviathan, I am in the business of acting first and asking questions later. I receive a job, and I do it. If I need to steal, I steal. If I need to kill, I’ll kill. If I need to bleed, I’ll bleed. At first, I thought it to be simple, completely black and white. I found some comfort in that, after spending so long living in shades of gray, an ephemeral zone between the pillars of morality in which I drifted aimlessly. I joined the leviathan in order to forget the life I had left behind, the lives I had taken, and the lives I had forever destroyed. For a while, it was an escape, and I enjoyed it. But the gods aren’t in the business of mercy. They never have been.
 
At first, the whispers of the past were subtle.
 
If you lived the life I had, you’d learn to be more perceptive than most. You’d learn that one fatal utterance from your mouth can set your father into a fit of rage, and the slightest furrow of his eyebrow would indicate whether or not you’d have to run and hide. You’d learn to memorize the slight tics and spasms your mother would exhibit when she was starting to have another one of her episodes, so you’d be prepared to call her helper. Even now, years after you think you’ve left that part of your life behind you, you still notice how people squirm.
 
I noticed that merchant woman, sitting across from me at that table in the bar, staring at me with a quiet disturbance, as if she could see the souls of those I have taken breathing down my neck. I noticed the slightest twitch in Nyx’s finger, slowly creeping upon the hilt of their sword whenever I raised my voice. I noticed the trepidation in my party member’s eyes, people I understood to be my friends, as I held that book in my hands after they began to learn what I did, after glimpses of my former self started to slip through more often than I’d hoped. Alton, a man I learned to be the son of nobles, consumed by darkness and was ultimately executed for it. The similarities were not lost on me.
 
When I ran, it was instinctual. I was angry, how could they believe me to be a danger? But could I blame them? No. I myself feared that I would one day repeat the same mistakes, a catastrophic haze of purple mist and tentacles, destroying everything around me and forever changing the course of history. At least then, I would have the foresight to off myself before it could happen again, or at least, run far enough away so I can’t hurt anyone when it happens.
 
As the world started to become more chaotic and complicated, the past became louder, and unbearably so.
 
When I sensed that Rowan was in danger, Rowan, who always somehow saw through my facade, I jumped in to try and help, only to be met face to face with the past once again. I saw him, Severin, my love from a past life staring me right in the eye, his father’s sickle in hand, a beastly glare in his eye, exactly how I remember him the last time we’d met. His cold blade plunged into my stomach. That bestial gaze fading away as I went limp. His trembling lips flooded with endless apologies, his tears pouring onto my skin like rainfall as I looked up at him. In that moment, as I was dying, I somehow felt at peace. In the icy cold vacuum of life after death, I wouldn’t have to comprehend the ramifications of what I actually did. The buildings I’ve destroyed, the homes I’ve burned, the twisting mass of entangled limbs that surrounded us, screaming and crying in a fit of insanity. With what I thought would be my final breath, I whispered to him, a whisper almost completely drowned out by the surrounding noise, that I loved him. Sometimes, I wish it stayed that way. Severin living as a hero and knowing that I loved him, and me, dead and forever ignorant.
 
I don't know why I act the way I do around him right now. I don’t know why I’m so cold towards him when he tries to speak to me, or why his endless apologies fill me with a deep, misplaced rage. I want to go back to the way things were, but I simply don’t think that is possible for us at this point. I am angry. Not only because he did what he had to do, but because of the fact that what could have been a simple life was ripped away from us. Even if we did reconcile, what would happen then? He would slowly wither away with age while I, by myself, still remain here? It is unfair. Why does it have to be so unfair?
 
No matter how hard I try to avoid it, trouble always manages to find me, and no matter how far I go, I can never seem to outrun the echoes of the past, echoes that fall upon deaf ears, all but my own. I did not understand how it was so hard for me to forgive myself and forget something that most people were unaware of even happening. I have lost all agency in my life. The ability to reconcile with the people I have affected, the people of my home town, has been stripped from my hands, taken away by the watchers. Taken away by the gods. I was given a second chance, but for what?
 
The logging town off the coast of Solveis, population 3,536 mortal lives, forever affected by a calamity in which I found myself at the epicenter. Me, alone.
 
I have spent my whole life repenting for my sins, my thoughts, my soul, my entire existence, and now I am done apologizing. I had spent a lifetime of pain and suffering only to be kicked down and forgotten. Am I not a victim? Those who remember or those who remain still hold the same ignorance towards my history and pain. I am looked at with disdain and mortification for what took place in Maven Peak that day, even if it was out of my own hands. My body and my mind were taken from me by my father, yet he is the one who lives in ignorance? It wasn’t only my town that was forgotten, but me, as I was casted out and tossed aside for something I was too young and naive to understand. Was Maven Peak not important enough? Am I not important enough? Why am I still here? Is this my punishment? Is this how I repent?
 
I was a child, groomed
and beaten
and defiled
invaded
and killed.
 
Amadeus was the one that MURDERED.
And RUINED.
And MAIMED.
And SPILLED.
 
AND STILL,
 
I AM FORCED TO REMEMBER,
 
WHILE THE REST OF THIS WORLD
 
FORGETS.
 
To be forgotten is a cruel fate. It is the universe’s way of telling you that you do not matter. That you are not important. That all of the pain you endured amounts to nothing. At least, that is how I felt whenever I remember that the mere utterance of my town is either met with a blank stare or a drawn sword. I am cursed to remember, a puppet stuck between a paradox of eternal scrutiny or invisibility.
 
Now, we found him. The shipment manager, mutilated and writhing upon a table, eyes dry of tears and without a mouth to scream. His appearance, as unfortunate and grisly as it was, was not as disturbing to me as what I found in his mind. Inside, I sensed only excruciating pain. Anguish. Torture. It felt familiar. Familiar to one of those souls I left atop Maven Peak. Although no words appeared in my mind, I could feel a deep sense of pleading. Pleading for the pain to stop. It has to stop. I want it to stop. He was suffering. I wanted to help him in the only way I learned could help hopeless cases. I could erase him, wipe him clean off his earth to end his suffering. But what would happen then? Would we just mourn him for a couple of hours before moving on to the next quest? Would his pain and suffering mean nothing to us at all? Will he just become a nameless faceless victim to a tragedy in a scheme he could not even begin to comprehend? NO. I cannot stomach the thought. We cannot just forget. I refuse to forget. I cannot forget any longer.
 
I am Mateus Brylamain. A revenant of a past the universe is actively trying to erase. I am the risen of Maven Peak. The prophesied unhallowed son. A nomad between life and death. A servant to my repentance. A pirate of the goddamn leviathan.
 
If I can’t forget these facts, then I can make sure that nobody else ever will.