EPILOGUE: THE LEGEND OF A FORGOTTEN NAME

A boy wakes up.

The first sound is the rhythmic, lonely beeping of a heart monitor. The first smell is that of antiseptic and clean sheets. The first feeling is an enormous emptiness, an absence so deep and vast that it hurts more than any physical wound.

He opens his eyes to an unfamiliar white ceiling. He doesn't know who he is. He doesn't know where he is. The doctors tell him he had an accident, and he had total amnesia. But he knows that's not the whole truth.

At night, his hand instinctively searches his hip for a missing dagger. He feels the phantom weight of an earring in his left ear. And sometimes, in the silence, he thinks he hears the echo of a loud laugh or the whisper of a soft voice, but when he turns, there is no one there. He feels like he is missing something, or rather, he feels like he is missing someone, or maybe... a lot of people.Years have passed. 

Years have passed.

Asimil, the name he was given at the hospital, lives a quiet and solitary life. He never married. He never had children. He works in a small bookstore, surrounded by the stories of others, because his own he could never remember.

He is not an unhappy man, but there is always a melancholy in his eyes, a longing for a place he cannot name and for faces he cannot remember. His only companions are his dreams. Incredibly vivid dreams of a world with a purple sky, of battles against shadow monsters, of an ice queen with the warmest heart, of a fire warrior who was pure loyalty, and of a black-haired girl who was a storm of joy.

He is now a senior citizen. His hair, once black, is streaked with silver. He spends his afternoons in the park, sitting in his favorite wooden chair under the shade of a large oak tree. Neighborhood children, attracted by his kind and lonely aura, often gather at his feet.

And Asimil tells them stories.

He tells them fragments of his dreams. He tells them about a hero who was not strong, but who learned to be brave. He tells them about an alliance of heroes who faced a darkness that threatened to erase everything. The children listen, captivated by tales of magic and monsters.

One day, while he is in the middle of a story about a battle on a floating castle, one of the younger girls listening to him jumps up. — It's late already! — She says in her little voice. —Goodbye, Mr. Storyteller! —

She runs across the lawn to two women who were chatting sitting on a nearby bench. — Mama Noelia! Aunt Luce! — the little girl shouts happily, — The master was telling a story about a warrior with green flames! —

Names.

Noelia. Luce.

They pierce the air and strike Asimil like lightning.

He looks up and sees them. A red-haired woman, older now, her eyes softened by motherhood. Next to her, a black-haired woman, with a vibrant energy of joy, laughing as she listens to the girl. Those two... They live. They are happy. They are family.

The old man Asimil raises a hand to his chest. An enormous pain, incomprehensible and ancient, wells up from the depths of his being. He begins to cry. They are not loud sobs, but silent tears that run along the wrinkles of his face. He does not know why, but seeing that scene of perfect peace, he feels the loss of two loves, two lives, two worlds, all in an instant.

A little further away, sitting on a bench with an open notebook, a young man has also listened to these stories day after day. He is a budding writer, looking for an idea, a spark. He has seen the old man, heard his strange, epic tales. And now, he sees his pain. He sees that those stories aren't just stories. They are someone's life.

Shaken and with a fierce inspiration burning in his chest, the young man opens his laptop. He has a story to tell. A story about a weak boy who became a hero, about the friends who forged him, about the love he lost and the world he saved. A legend about a forgotten name.

He starts typing. And as the title of the first page, he types two words.

Lover Online.

The story was finally over. But the legends, one way or another, were about to begin.