Imposed Absentia

In order to find yourself, you have to get lost. Waking up with no language. No motor skills. No memory. Whenever death comes, he wakes somewhere else. A place without a sky. A place of endless darkness and sand where time has no meaning. He calls it Absentia. He has survived its isolation for thousands of years, each return leaving him with fewer memories of who he was before. Then he discovers he isn't alone. A woman has been trapped in Absentia for decades. Together, they find a way out. Before they part ways, she gives him one final promise to keep. “Don't wait too long to come back to me.” When they finally return to the world above, neither of them gets the freedom they expected. He has no name, no known race, no magic, and no idea why he keeps returning to Absentia. She has nowhere to go and a debt she cannot possibly repay. Their new lives begin in debt, surrounded by people who have their own reasons for venturing beneath the surface. And somewhere below them, the world is waiting. Because Absentia is not the only thing they don't understand. Written by a human in Iowa with no name.