The morning air bit colder as they left Dust Village behind, crossing into the ragged wilds where the bones of the world lay cracked and silent. Evelyn glanced back once—at the towering arch of the dead beast's ribcage now crowned in soot-light—and then faced forward again, breath steady in the dry wind.
Torren limped beside her, leaning on a carved stave the healer had fashioned from fangwood. Vareth led the way with quiet confidence, his steps sure even as the path faded beneath shifting ash. The fourth member of their group, a quiet guide named Ren who joined at the healer's urging, spoke only in nods and gestures. His face was masked in lacquered bark, and his fingers tapped rhythmically against his satchel like counting time.
Their destination: the Echoed Pass.
"Why is it called that?" Evelyn asked once as they passed through narrow stone corridors draped in frost-laced vine.
Vareth didn't turn. "Because it remembers what shouldn't be remembered."
That was the last anyone spoke for hours.
As they ascended a low ridge that opened into a narrow ravine, the terrain changed. The dust grew thinner, giving way to raw stone laced with black iron veins. Trees—or what might once have been trees—jutted like rusted spears from the earth, their bark flaked away to reveal gray marrow. The wind no longer moved straight but curled and echoed back upon itself, whispering things no one had said aloud.
Ren paused first.
He held up one hand, fingers splayed, then pointed toward a distant overhang. Evelyn followed his gaze—and her breath caught.
There, etched into the wall of the pass, were the faint impressions of figures—hundreds of them—burned into the stone like shadows frozen mid-flee. Arms outstretched. Mouths open. No faces.
Torren stared. "What happened here?"
"Warden-fire," Vareth said. "Long ago. And something else."
Evelyn stepped forward, reaching out before stopping short of the stone. She felt something rise within her—the fractured core responding, humming faintly beneath her ribs.
They continued. The walls of the pass closed in tighter now, high and sheer on either side. The sky narrowed to a seam of pale gray. Every sound they made—boots, staff, breath—came back to them not as echoes, but as soft distortions, like someone imitating their movements just a second too late.
The first whisper came shortly after noon.
It was Evelyn's voice, but she hadn't spoken.
She froze. "Did anyone—?"
Torren nodded, his hand tightening on the stave. "Yeah."
Ren merely kept walking. His pace never changed, but he drew a blade of dull bone from beneath his cloak.
Vareth walked slower now. Watching the walls. Listening.
Another hour. Then a shape.
Not a beast, not quite. It stood like a man but too thin, its limbs too long, bent backwards at the joints. Its skin shimmered like flint, and it had no eyes. It turned toward them as they passed, but didn't approach. Just tilted its head as if curious.
"They watch," Vareth said quietly. "They don't always follow."
Evelyn stared at the thing, her heart steady despite the chill down her spine. She could feel the core now—not flaring, but attentive. It wanted her to notice. To mark this.
They made camp beneath a natural archway before sunset. Vareth declared no fire. "Light here brings watchers. Smoke draws songs."
Instead, they lit a covered glowstone from Ren's pouch—soft greenish light that barely touched the walls.
Torren sat heavily, his injured leg throbbing. Evelyn crouched beside him, checking the wrappings. The blackened veins had not spread, but neither had they faded.
"I'll carry you, if it comes to it," she said.
"You already have," he replied, voice quiet. "And I hate it."
She met his gaze. "I don't."
He looked away.
When sleep came that night, it came uneasily. Evelyn's dreams flickered like cracked glass. She stood once more in the field of silver ash, and the woman with the mirror eyes knelt in the distance, humming the same broken melody as before. The notes changed this time—twisting. Becoming more complex.
And then—
A word.
Not one she knew. But she recognized it.
A name buried under a mountain of ash and time.
She woke just before dawn. Her core pulsed faintly, and her fingers ached with the memory of fire.
By morning, the walls of the pass began to widen. Ren led them down a ravine splintered by what looked like a forgotten battle—rusted helms and shattered bone littered the ground. Torren stumbled once, nearly falling.
And then they saw it.
A shrine.
Half-buried, grown into the wall like coral fused with cliff. It pulsed softly—not visibly, but Evelyn felt it. A presence. Waiting.
"That," said Vareth, "is where we burn the wound clean."
Torren stared. "Looks dead."
"Most of what's alive out here does."
As they approached, the air thickened. The echoes stopped. The wind died. And Evelyn realized something terrifying and beautiful:
This place remembered her.
Not her name. Not her face. But her flame.
The shrine knew what lived inside her.
And it had waited.