The northern skies no longer bled violet. Peace had, for a moment, settled like dust on the halls of Ashveil Academy. But beneath the calm, a ripple—no, a smirk—threaded through the ley lines of the world.
Otoku had grown sharper since the Rift's trial. His magic had matured, his soul deepened, but something—someone—had begun to watch him. Not through scrying mirrors or warded sigils, but through the very air he breathed.
It began with whispers.
At first, Otoku assumed it was a side effect of bonding too deeply with the Rift's resonance. But the words... they weren't in the tongue of any known realm.
They were laughter. Childlike. Cruel.
Then came the Dream.
•
The Echo Fever
He stood in a garden of bleeding roses. Petals whispered as they fell: "Do you know who you are?" Over and over.
In the center stood a man with a stitched smile. His face was half-covered by a silver veil. His hands? Empty—save for a single silver thread that ran through the skulls of children like a macabre marionette.
"I've waited a long time, Otoku of Ashveil," the figure crooned. "So much potential. So little imagination."
Otoku tried to speak, but his voice echoed back as a child's cry.
"You play with blades. I play with dreams," said the man, gently wrapping the thread around Otoku's neck. "Come find me. Or I'll find your friends first."
Otoku awoke in a cold sweat, his window sealed, the air still.
But on his pillow lay a single violet rose.
•
Fragments and Foreboding
The Council of Threads convened before sunrise. Arthelia, pale, blindfold tight, read the residual dream echoes.
"There's a ripple in the Veil," she said. "Something crossed from the Echo Realm. Something once human."
"An Echo Lord?" Korrin asked, warhammer leaning against the rune-stone wall.
"No," Maeve said softly, "something worse. A dream-walker with no anchor. A mind too broken to be bound by the Loop."
Otoku's fingers tightened around the hilt of the Companion.
"He knew my name," he muttered. "He wanted me to find him."
Noctis shimmered into form, eyes narrowed.
"The Smiling Veil," the familiar said. "An old wraith legend. He turns memory into weaponry. He'll make you doubt who you are."
"Where is he?" Otoku asked.
"West," Arthelia answered. "Where the Wailwood twisted itself into silence."
•
Into the Hollow Grove
Their journey westward led them through spectral forests and haunted valleys. The Wailwood had once been sacred, a place of spirit communion. Now, the trees bent away from the light. Leaves whispered gibberish. Statues of forgotten gods wept black sap.
Otoku, Maeve, Iseri, and Korrin entered the Hollow Grove at twilight.
A circle of children's dolls, strung up by silver thread, awaited them at the clearing.
At the center: a mirror.
Otoku approached it slowly.
His reflection did not move.
It smiled.
Then it spoke.
"You're not the hero, Otoku. Just the most convenient vessel."
The mirror cracked—no, laughed—and exploded into black smoke. From the mist emerged masked figures, eyes hollow, moving like marionettes. Each wore the face of someone they had lost.
Otoku drew the Companion. "Stay focused," he barked, but Maeve was already falling to her knees, sobbing.
"It's my brother," she whispered. "He's… he's singing."
The marionettes moved as one.
Battle erupted—silent, brutal, mental.
Otoku fought not just the forms, but their memories.
Iseri screamed as a puppet wearing her late mother's face lunged.
Korrin gritted his teeth as a child-figure wrapped its arms around him and whispered, "You failed me."
Through it all, the laughter rang again.
"Come deeper, Otoku," came Vaelith's voice, echoing in the very marrow of the world. "Let me show you the real you."
•