Echo held the second marble tight against his palm, feeling its cold pulse synchronize with his heartbeat. The bedroom around him began to dissolve, edges blurring like watercolors left in the rain. The blindfolded boy with vine arms had vanished, leaving only a whisper that lingered in the air:
*"Some betrayals cut deeper than knives."*
The floor beneath Echo's feet rippled, and suddenly he was falling—not down, but sideways, through layers of memory that peeled away like rotted silk. He didn't scream. There was no point. He'd been through this process before, though the knowledge of it felt more like instinct than recollection.
When the world reformed, Echo stood in a ballroom unlike any in Nu'Ravin.
The ceiling stretched impossibly high, dotted with chandeliers made from crystallized tears. The walls were draped with tapestries that shifted scenes every few seconds—battles, coronations, executions, celebrations—all woven from threads that glowed with inner light. The floor was polished obsidian that reflected everything except the people who danced upon it.
And they were dancing.
Dozens of figures in elaborate masks swirled across the floor, their movements too precise, too synchronized to be natural. Their attire belonged to no single era—some wore feathered robes from the ancient dynasties, others the mechanical dresses of the modern Empire. All wore masks that covered their entire faces, each uniquely crafted yet bearing a common motif: a single black teardrop painted beneath the left eye.
Echo's mark.
"Welcome back to the Red Court," came a voice that made his spine go rigid.
He turned.
A woman approached, her gown the color of freshly spilled blood, moving like liquid shadow across the obsidian floor. Her mask was different from the others—silver and white, with spirals etched into the cheeks and no mouth opening. Instead, her voice seemed to emanate from the air around her.
Her fingers were stained with ink. Or perhaps blood.
"Thalia," Echo whispered, the name unfamiliar on his tongue yet heavy with significance.
She tilted her head. "You remember this place, then?"
"No," he admitted. "But I know you're important."
"Important?" A cold laugh escaped her, though the mask showed no change. "I suppose that's one way to describe what we were."
The dancers continued their elaborate patterns, never acknowledging the conversation. As Echo watched more closely, he noticed each dancer left faint red footprints that formed intricate glyphs on the floor. Spellwork in motion.
"What is this place?" he asked.
"The ballroom where you first showed me what you really were," Thalia replied. She stepped closer, and Echo could see his own reflection in her mask—but it wasn't his current face. It was older, sharper, wearing an expression of calculated amusement. "Where you gathered your collection of fragments and played your first real game."
The dancers suddenly froze. Every mask turned toward Echo.
"I don't understand," he said.
"You called them the Red Court," Thalia continued, circling him slowly. "Minds you'd... modified. People whose memories you'd rewritten to serve your purposes. Some were nobles, some were beggars. All wore your mark. All played your game."
Echo's breath caught. The silver key around his neck burned cold against his skin.
"They were pawns," he whispered, the knowledge rising from some buried chamber of his mind.
"Yes," Thalia confirmed. "But so was I."
A high, piercing note cut through the air. The dancers resumed their movement, but now with frantic energy, their patterns breaking down into chaos. From the center of the floor, a dais began to rise—a circular platform of bone and silver.
On it stood a throne.
And on the throne sat a figure that made Echo's heart stutter.
It was him—or a version of him. Older, dressed in robes of midnight blue embroidered with constellations that actually moved across the fabric. His face was uncovered, but his eyes were wrong—swirling with galaxies where pupils should be. A crown of silver thorns rested on his brow, each spike tipped with a tiny red marble.
The Mind-Eater King.
The dancers collapsed to their knees, masks pressed to the floor in perfect unison.
The King smiled, and Echo felt it in his own lips.
"Magnificent, isn't it?" the King said, voice resonating like cathedral bells. "A symphony of will. Each dancer a note. Each mask a phrase."
Echo couldn't look away. "You're me."
"I'm what you were," the King corrected. "Before she broke your game."
Thalia remained standing, the only one besides Echo who hadn't bowed.
The King raised a hand toward her. "My greatest creation. My most devoted hunter. Until she wasn't."
The marble in Echo's palm pulsed harder, growing warmer with each beat. Cracks began to appear across its surface, thin lines of light escaping.
"What did she do?" Echo asked, though part of him already knew the answer—could feel it forming in the back of his mind like a storm cloud.
The King's smile faded. His eyes narrowed on Thalia.
"Show him," he commanded.
Thalia's mask dissolved like smoke. The face beneath was beautiful, stern, and utterly familiar—the same face Echo had seen on the rooftop, but younger. Less weathered by time and hardship.
And across her left cheek ran a scar that mirrored the one beneath Echo's eye.
"I gave you everything," the King said softly to her. "Purpose. Power. A place in my design. And in return?"
Thalia met his gaze without flinching. "In return, I did what no one else could."
She raised her hand. In it gleamed a dagger made of pure memory-ink—solidified thought given razor edges. The blade was black, but veined with red light that matched the marble in Echo's hand.
"I killed a god," she whispered.
And plunged the dagger into the King's heart.
The ballroom exploded in silent chaos. The dancers screamed without sound, their masks cracking and falling away to reveal faces contorted in agony. The tapestries on the walls burned, images writhing as they disintegrated. The ceiling wept blood.
Echo fell to his knees as pain lanced through his chest—phantom echoes of a betrayal he'd lived but couldn't remember. The King on his throne convulsed, black fluid pouring from his eyes and mouth. His hands clawed at the dagger embedded in his heart.
"You cannot kill me," the King gasped, voice distorting. "I am written into the fabric of this city. Into your mind."
Thalia leaned closer, her expression not triumphant but sorrowful.
"I'm not trying to kill you," she said quietly. "I'm trying to save what's left of the boy beneath the monster."
The King laughed—a terrible, broken sound.
"There is nothing left to save," he hissed. Then his eyes locked with Echo's across the chaos. "Remember this, fragment. Remember her betrayal. She will destroy everything we built."
The dagger sank deeper.
The King screamed.
The throne shattered.
And reality collapsed.
Echo gasped awake on cold stone, the now-empty husk of the second marble crumbling in his palm. He was back in Nu'Ravin—the real city, not the memory—lying on the steps of what appeared to be a temple. Above him, the cracked sky had grown worse, with fissures spreading like spiderwebs across the heavens.
His chest ached where the dagger had struck in the memory. The silver key around his neck pulsed with renewed urgency.
"She killed me," he whispered into the night air. "Thalia killed me."
"No," came a familiar voice.
The blindfolded boy stood at the top of the temple steps, his vine arms folding across his chest.
"She killed what you became," he corrected. "Not who you were. There's a difference."
Echo struggled to his feet, mind reeling from the revelation. "I don't understand."
"You will," the boy said, extending his hand. In it rested the third and final marble, this one pulsing with a rhythm that matched Echo's heart precisely. "But only if you're brave enough to face the final Red Memory."
Echo stared at the marble, knowing that once he touched it, there would be no turning back. The last piece of the puzzle would fall into place. He would remember everything—who he had been, what he had done, and why Thalia had driven a dagger of memory-ink through his heart.
"What will I see?" he asked quietly.
The boy's expression softened behind his blindfold. "The beginning."
Echo reached for the final marble, hand trembling.
"And what happens after I remember?" he asked.
"Then," the boy replied, his voice fading as Echo's fingers closed around the cold glass, "the real game begins."
The world dissolved once more as the third Red Memory awoke.