You had lived in Altheria for many years or were born there, even if you
originally came from somewhere else. The city has been your home since the
coming of the Blight. You knew it and its people well. You had a life there,
maybe even owned property or a business. And then one day, without any
warning whatsoever, the Barrier suddenly failed. No one knew why, and there
was no time to understand. Shattered by some unimaginably powerful force of
the Blight, the city was caught completely off guard. All you could do was
stand and fight; there was nowhere left to run. You recall the vivid horror
of the twisted Beasts that broke through the city walls, destroying
everything you knew and loved. The Last Bastion had fallen, and in your
final moments, you saw the hope of the world vanish forever.
And then suddenly you awakened, as if from a horrific dream - but a dream
too real and too terrible to be anything but memory. Yet the Last Bastion
still stands. Strangely different from what you remember, people and even
places not what you knew them to be. Even the layout of the streets may seem
changed to you, but to no one else. And more baffling still, you were told
that you did die - but to some other cause altogether. Like others who've
miraculously come back from death, the healers attribute your confusion to
lapses in memory, forgetting or misremembering things due to the trauma
suffered by the soul as it was pulled back from the brink of oblivion. It's
as if you were one of the Lost, the Blight having eaten parts of who you
were while your mind tries as best it can to fill in what is missing.
Yet you cannot forget the calamity you witnessed befalling the city. And
unlike the Lost, your memories are intact, just subtly wrong somehow.
Whether your soul crossing over to the other side momentarily sparked some
latent precognitive ability, giving you a glimpse of what is to come, or
whether it was a vision sent by the gods, you do not know. But one thing is
certain: the sanctuary you have been living in is far more fragile than you
had realized. Haunted by this knowledge, you must move forward as best you
can.