The sound of falling rain, a permanent, subtle pressure around his head from bandages wrapped tight around his skull, a different one from within that feels fit to burst. He wanders the streets and flags down two sorcerers just on their way out of here, summoning a door. He asks them to take him with them, because he's one of them -- a sorcerer, just like them.

'Prove it,' they say. So he tries... but nothing comes out. No matter how hard he tries, he can't make any smoke, and the two of them look a mixture of mocking, insulted, and more.

'You fucking mocking us, kid?' they laugh. So they beat him until his consciousness goes black, right there in the streets, and leave his body to lay there rotting. The rain doesn't cease, and the torrent of corrupted rain washes down the gutter where his upper body lay, the acid eating away, corroding. Blackness, and nothing else.

...And then, it's like being in a strange dream, for who knows how long, 'til the next he groggily opens his eyes. Heavy rain again, even worse than he ever remembered. It seeps into the ground and soaks into his skin, and he shivers as the threads of consciousness gather together. He... he seems to be buried. So he crawls out of the ground, bursting from the mud and sludge --

...He's in front of a gravestone, halfway buried in the ground, his body all skin and bones.

Aimless and weak, he begins to wander. First towards home, but nobody answers as he rings the doorbell. He turns back and meanders the dirty city, but nobody sees him. Things had changed. Buildings he once knew were gone, events that once weren't suddenly were, and he recognised not a single face, and none of them in turn, him. Everything he once knew was gone, several years having passed. Not a single person sees him, and he walks through the city roads as if he were invisible. A mere ghost.

He stands there at the end of the road, mouthing invisible words, grown-out hair matting his front, drenched by the falling rain.

'...There's no one here...
...There's nothing here.'

He throws an empty, fresh coffin into the ground and flees, heading... somewhere.
██████████ is dead... so he should go to...

At that moment, a piercing headache seizes him, taking over. He rocks back and forth as the headache reaches unimaginable, unbearable levels, and then -- literally, his head splits. He can't fathom what he's looking at -- a second spine, a second head. He meets a pair of eyes, adorned with red crosses, and in that very moment, recognition hits him. No, not for who the face was, rather, what it was --