The illusion shattered with a breathless silence, leaving Lucien kneeling amidst ash and ruin once more. The marketplace, the voices, the smiling version of himself—all gone like mist burned away by morning light.
But something had changed.
The pendant around his neck no longer pulsed—it throbbed, syncing with a deeper rhythm, something buried beneath the scorched earth. His glyph felt etched into his bones now, no longer just skin-deep. The taste of burnt iron lingered in his mouth, as if he'd swallowed a piece of memory too heavy to hold.
He stood slowly, brushing soot from his gloves, and turned to face what remained of Aventh Hollow.
What had looked like rubble now revealed structure. Foundations of buildings aligned in sigilic patterns. Craters forming concentric circles. The ruin wasn't random—it was ritual.
And it had been done deliberately.
Lucien moved through the wreckage, his boots crunching glass and bone, guided by instinct more than logic. Each step echoed louder than the last, not in the air—but in his mind.
This place remembers…
He reached the center of what must have once been a temple or tower. Half a spire jutted toward the gray sky like a broken finger pointing at gods long fled. At its base was a sigil—identical to the one on his skin, only far larger, etched deep into stone with gouges no tool could have made.
And in the center of the sigil stood a man.
Lucien halted. "Who are you?"
The man turned. He wore no coat, no insignia—only a robe of charcoal black, and over his face… a mask.
Polished silver, featureless. Except for the glyph carved into the forehead: an eye, split by a line.
The Eye Closed.
"You've come far," the masked man said, voice smooth, ageless. "But still not far enough."
Lucien's hand instinctively sought his pendant.
"I saw a version of myself in the illusion," he said. "Smiling. Younger. He called this place home. Why?"
"Because it was," the man replied. "You lived here, once. Before the Hollow burned. Before the gods silenced the Echoes."
Lucien's heartbeat stuttered. "That's not possible. I have no memory of this place."
"You wouldn't," the figure said calmly. "They took them. Ripped them out, fragment by fragment. But memories leave stains. Scars. You are one."
Lucien stepped closer. "Who took them?"
The masked man tilted his head. "Those who feared what you were becoming."
"And what is that?"
The figure raised a hand, and reality bent.
Ash rose in spirals. The sky trembled. For a moment, the world seemed to flicker between two images: a dead wasteland… and a thriving city of glowing glyphs and floating monoliths.
"You were a Weaver," the man said softly. "One of the last."
Lucien recoiled. The word stirred something primal in him. Not fear—but awe.
Weaver.
He didn't know the meaning. But his bones did.
"Your memories are not gone, Lucien," the man said. "They are sealed. And the seal is cracking. Every time you hear the Echoes, another lock breaks."
Lucien's fingers trembled. "Then why do I still feel like a stranger in my own mind?"
"Because you have not yet faced the worst of it." The man turned. "Come. It's time."
"Time for what?"
The man walked into the crumbling spire without waiting.
Lucien hesitated only a second before following.
Inside, the walls breathed memory. Not metaphorically—truly. He saw shapes dancing just beneath the surface, half-visible moments caught in stone: rituals, chanting, sacrifices, symbols that shifted when unobserved. The deeper he followed the masked figure, the heavier the air grew.
It wasn't just dust.
It was time.
Time layered on itself. Time bleeding through thin walls.
At the spire's heart stood a mirror—not reflective, but obsidian. Its surface shimmered with faint light, as though reflecting a moon hidden behind cloud and fog.
The masked man stepped aside. "Step through, if you dare."
Lucien's throat dried. "What is this?"
"Not a portal. A memory. One sealed within your own soul. You left it here for yourself. To remember when you were ready."
Lucien stared at the glass-like surface.
He saw… movement.
Himself.
No. Not quite.
Older. Eyes colder. Wielding glyphs like weapons. Standing before a council of robed figures. And behind him—chaos. Cities in the sky. Stars falling. A world screaming as something vast and broken clawed its way out of the void.
Lucien reached out.
And touched the surface.
It pulled him in.
Lucien staggered forward as the darkness released him, his boots landing on cracked stone etched with burning lines of crimson light. The air here was heavier—richer, almost metallic—and every breath felt like inhaling memory.
He stood on a bridge of obsidian that stretched into an endless void. Below, stars churned like liquid, flowing in unnatural patterns. The sky was wrong—too close, too curved, as if he stood inside a great sphere rather than beneath an open sky.
At the far end of the bridge stood a silhouette.
He recognized it instantly.
Himself.
But again—not quite.
This version of Lucien wore a mantle of woven starlight, his arms bare and covered in living glyphs that pulsed like veins. His eyes were luminous gold, and his expression was hard—ancient.
"You've come far," the figure said, echoing the masked man's words from earlier. "But you're not ready."
Lucien stared at the other him. "What is this place?"
"A memory. A possibility. One path among many."
"This is me?"
"It was. It might be. Or it never was. What matters is the truth buried beneath what you've forgotten."
Lucien stepped forward. "Why can't I remember?"
The other Lucien's eyes narrowed. "Because you chose to forget. You had to forget."
A pulse rippled through the void. The stars below recoiled, curling like dying serpents. The glyphs on the bridge flared.
"Something is watching," the echo warned. "This memory was sealed for a reason. The gods are not the only ones who silence."
Lucien clenched his fists. "Then why bring me here?"
"To choose." The echo raised a hand, and two symbols appeared—floating runes composed of light and shadow.
"One leads to the truth," he said. "The other to survival."
Lucien hesitated. "What's the difference?"
"To remember everything," the echo said, "is to invite what once hunted you. To remain ignorant… is to die blind."
Lucien stared at the runes. They pulsed oppositely—one with cold blue serenity, the other with chaotic scarlet flame.
He reached toward the red one.
Flame surged.
Pain knifed through his skull, and a thousand voices screamed in his ears—names, numbers, places he didn't recognize but felt deeply. Glyphs scorched across his vision, symbols cascading in infinite spirals. And at the center of it all:
A tower of bone. A bell that rang in silence. A name carved in unpronounceable syllables, echoing through the void:
Z'khaeral.
He collapsed.
When he opened his eyes, he was back in the spire.
The masked man stood before him. "You chose the echo of fire."
Lucien groaned, clutching his head. "What was that…?"
"A fragment of your past," the man said. "One you hid even from yourself."
Lucien blinked. "That name…"
"It is not one you speak. Only one you remember."
Lucien looked at his hands. The glyph on his palm had changed—no longer dormant. It shimmered, shifting between shapes, alive with purpose.
"Z'khaeral is not a person," Lucien murmured. "It's a force. A memory."
"A god," the masked figure corrected. "Or what remains of one. It speaks to those who have forgotten what they were."
Lucien stood, shaky but resolute. "So what now?"
"Now," the masked man said, "you decide what to do with what you've remembered."
Lucien looked around the spire. It no longer felt dead. The walls whispered. The floor hummed. Echoes stirred in every corner, drawn to him like moths to flame.
And he was no longer afraid.
The candlelight flickered erratically in the study, shadows dancing along the high, dust-veiled bookshelves as if reacting to Lucien's sudden burst of awareness. The map he had unearthed in the drawer—stitched from aged leather and etched with ink that shimmered faintly in the dim light—was no ordinary relic. Its surface pulsed with a strange warmth under his fingertips, and the symbols upon it twisted subtly when unobserved directly.
It was a fragment of a greater puzzle.
"I've seen this symbol before," Lucien whispered, tracing a finger along a jagged spiral scrawled near the map's edge. "It was carved into the stone outside the archives. And… in my dreams."
Madame Roselyn glanced up from a battered tome she had pulled from the shelf. "Then it is no coincidence. The threads are tightening around you."
Lucien studied her carefully. "You knew this would happen, didn't you? That I'd find this map? That I'd start… remembering."
"I suspected," she replied, carefully closing the book and placing it aside. "The path you're walking was not laid yesterday. It's ancient. Buried. And it is waking with you."
His breath caught in his throat.
"What exactly is this place?" he asked.
Madame Roselyn hesitated for a moment. Then: "You are in Ketherhollow. The edge of the last veil. This city was once the beating heart of the Old Order, before it was purged and sealed. Before the gods turned their faces."
Lucien's mind reeled. "And this Order—was it tied to the echoes?"
A silence thick with history fell between them. Finally, Roselyn nodded. "They weren't just tied to them—they housed them. The Archives were more than records. They were vaults. Prisons. Sanctuaries. The Forgotten Echoes were once studied here… and worshipped."
Lucien backed away slightly, the weight of the map suddenly too much. "Why me? Why am I seeing this? Hearing things?"
The candle's flame shrank, curling in on itself. A cold breeze brushed his cheek—though all the windows were sealed shut. The air shifted.
Roselyn's eyes were deep with sympathy, but resolute. "Because you've been marked."
The words struck like thunder.
Lucien felt it in his bones, a certainty threading into the marrow. The murmurs in the night, the shifting ink in the journal, the wounds that ached under moonlight—they weren't mere symptoms. They were signs.
Something had chosen him.
"The echoes…" he murmured. "They're sentient?"
"They are remnants of thoughts too powerful to die," Roselyn answered. "Memories that could not be erased, only hidden. And some… were not content with being forgotten."
She crossed the room and pulled another book from a shelf, one that was bound in dark green scales. When opened, it reeked of ozone and ink.
"These are called Echo Keys," she said, showing him the inner pages—each filled with looping calligraphy and strange notations. "Each one resonates with a specific class of echo. You, Lucien… you resonate with more than one."
He blinked. "Is that bad?"
"That's unheard of."
A knock echoed through the mansion—three sharp raps.
Roselyn's expression turned to stone. "Hide the map. Now."
Lucien slipped it into his coat just as a servant arrived, pale and breathless. "Mistress. The Inquisitors are at the gate."
Roselyn cursed under her breath.
"Come, Lucien. If they suspect what you carry, they'll burn this place to the ground just to silence it."
They exited the study through a concealed corridor behind a false bookshelf, Roselyn leading him down spiraling steps chiseled into stone. The air grew colder with each descent, and soon, the light of the candles could no longer reach the edges of the darkness ahead.
Lucien's thoughts were a storm of contradictions—he wanted to run, to demand answers, to fight back, to disappear. But most of all, he wanted to know.
Because for every step he took into the dark, something inside him stirred with familiarity.
"You once told me," Lucien said to Roselyn as they descended, "that the echoes remember more than we do. What if… what if I'm not just a host? What if I'm a piece of what was lost?"
Roselyn glanced back, eyes sharp. "That is exactly what I fear."
The stairs ended in a circular chamber carved with glyphs that pulsed like veins. At its center stood a mirror—blackened, cracked, and rimmed in bronze etched with symbols older than alphabets.
"This is the Threshold," Roselyn whispered. "One of the last true Veilgates."
She turned to him. "You can still walk away. Once you pass through… the echoes will know you again. They'll follow."
Lucien hesitated.
But the journal in his pocket warmed. The voices in his mind whispered not in fear, but in longing.
He stepped forward.
The silence that followed was not a pause—it was a held breath, a question etched into the fabric of reality itself. The air in the chamber pulsed with tension, heavy with the gravity of what had just been invoked.
Lucien slowly raised his eyes to the circle once more. The sigils were no longer merely glowing—they were trembling. Threads of energy crisscrossed in the air like a web tightening around something immense and ancient.
And then, with a sound like stone grinding against bone, something answered.
It didn't come from above or below. It came from behind the veil of the world—from a place where thought had shape and silence had weight. A single, distorted syllable echoed through the chamber, dragging a shadow in its wake.
Lucien's knees buckled. He barely remained upright as the sound washed through him. It was not a word spoken—it was a concept recognized. A primal truth, long buried, now awakened by the invocation.
Behind him, the shadows quivered.
"…You spoke its name," whispered Father Averyn, his face pale. "You reached where few dare. Do you know what you've done?"
Lucien's lips moved without conscious thought, forming the same syllable, again and again—each repetition drawing something closer, each intonation peeling back another layer of memory.
The echoes around the chamber began to shift. Not just sounds, but identities. Faces flickered in the dark, caught at the edge of perception. Some wept. Some watched. One reached for him.
Then, a voice spoke—not aloud, but within every nerve of Lucien's being.
"You are not lost. You are waiting."
He staggered back. The phrase repeated in his head, anchoring itself like a hook in flesh.
You are not lost. You are waiting.
"Waiting for what?" he whispered aloud.
The answer came not in words, but in a flood of images: A city beneath the sea, where time pooled like oil. A mirror that reflected not your face, but your sins. A throne carved from antlers and regret. And at the center of it all—a man with no name, no face, and a voice that broke the dead.
The Forgotten Lord.
Lucien blinked. His breath hitched.
Was it… himself?
Suddenly, everything went still.
The symbols in the circle flickered one final time, then dimmed into soot. Whatever force had been summoned… had withdrawn. But not without a mark.
Lucien turned to Father Averyn. The priest stared at him with hollow eyes.
"I warned you," he whispered. "You are beyond their reach now. The eyes that watch do not forget."
Lucien pocketed the notebook, pulse still racing. "Then I'll give them something worth remembering."
Without another word, he turned on his heel and left the chamber. The corridor beyond was no less grim, but the weight of the darkness had shifted. It no longer loomed—it watched. As if it now knew his name.
Back above ground, the fog had thickened. The streets were nearly invisible in the haze, the gaslamps casting halos instead of light.
Lucien kept his head down as he moved, but inside, something had changed.
He no longer feared the unknown.
He recognized it.
And it, in turn, had recognized him.
⸻
From rooftops cloaked in mist, shadows whispered in tongues long buried. Across the city, forbidden grimoires fluttered open to unread pages. Old blood stirred in veins sworn to silence.
The Forgotten Echoes had heard.
And now, they waited.