The Curator's voice faded into the hollow cathedral like the last echo of a funeral bell.
Zara's fingers hovered over the blood-stained page, but she didn't read further. Not yet. Her pulse thundered in her ears, drowning out the rising whispers from her Echo. The dagger at her hip vibrated—not with hunger this time, but with caution. As if it feared what was written in that book.
Noel said nothing. He stood beside her like a silent monument, his presence steady but distant. He hadn't moved since the Curator had spoken Calen's name—her father's name.
Zara finally broke the silence.
"You said my father was the Echo-Keeper. What does that mean?"
The Curator stepped down from the altar, each movement deliberate and heavy, as though the air itself resisted him. His golden veil shimmered faintly, casting brief glimpses of the ruinous face beneath it—lips stitched with silver thread, eyes glowing faintly behind chains.
"It means he was the last to carry the First Voice," the Curator intoned. "Before he betrayed it."
Zara stiffened. "Betrayed it? You mean he betrayed the Echo?"
"No," the Curator said, stopping just in front of her. "He betrayed himself. And in doing so, fractured the bond that kept the Gate closed."
Zara's eyes narrowed. "What gate?"
"The Gate of Echoes," Noel answered quietly. "The one beneath Aeroth. The one Mother sealed."
The room tilted slightly as Zara processed the words. Her parents—both bound to the Echo cult. One a rebel. One a keeper. Both liars.
"Why me?" she asked, voice tight. "Why am I the one they want dead?"
The Curator reached out and placed a thin, withered hand over the open book. The text shimmered briefly before fading, revealing a new page beneath—blank, save for a single sentence written in jagged crimson script.
"The daughter shall sing when the world forgets how to scream."
Zara read it aloud.
A chill ran through her.
"She is the final resonance," the Curator continued. "Born of rebellion and preservation. You are both seal and key. And the Circle knows this."
Zara backed away from the altar, heart hammering. "I don't want any of this. I never asked to be… whatever this is."
Noel watched her carefully. "No one asks. But when the world starts tearing itself apart to find you, you stop pretending you're ordinary."
She rubbed her arms, the scarred tattoo of the Echo mark pulsing beneath her sleeve. "And if I refuse? If I walk away?"
"You can," the Curator said. "But the Hollowed will not stop. The Circle will not stop. And the Voice inside you? It will keep screaming. Until it breaks free… or breaks you."
Her thoughts spiraled. She wasn't ready for this—for prophecy, for gates, for bloodlines etched in screaming. She had spent years hiding from the past, from the shadows of her parents' sins.
Now the shadows wore her face.
A sudden noise snapped her attention to the far end of the chamber—a dry, scraping echo like bone dragged across stone.
Noel's hand went to his blade.
Zara reached for hers—but the dagger was already in her hand, summoned without thought.
The air shifted.
From the far alcove, a new figure emerged.
This one wore no mask, no veil. She was tall, dressed in tattered crimson robes stitched with black runes, and her eyes were covered in bandages soaked through with dried blood.
Zara froze. Something about the woman pulled at her chest like an old dream. Familiar. Wrong.
The Curator bowed his head. "Ah. The Seer arrives."
"The Seer?" Zara echoed.
The woman stopped a few feet away. "I am what remains of the Oracle's line," she said, her voice raspy, as though pulled from a throat long unused. "I saw your scream before you were born, Zara Lune. I heard it echo through the bones of time."
Zara swallowed hard. "What do you want from me?"
The Seer tilted her head. "Nothing. I come only to warn. The Circle moves faster than we predicted. They've unearthed the second Gate. And they've begun to feed it."
Noel cursed under his breath. "Already?"
"What's the second Gate?" Zara asked.
"A twin to the one beneath Aeroth," the Seer replied. "But this one opens inward—not into the world, but into you."
Zara's chest tightened. "They want to… open me?"
The Seer nodded. "You are the final vessel. The bloodline of Echo and Silence. If they cannot kill your body, they will breach your soul."
The Echo inside her stirred—no longer whispering, but weeping.
Something ancient and broken was waking.
Zara gripped the altar's edge to keep from falling. "How do I stop it?"
The Curator and the Seer exchanged glances.
"You must remember," the Seer said.
Zara clenched her jaw. "I remember enough."
"Not yet," the Curator replied. "You remember pain. Rage. Pieces. But there is one memory still sealed."
He pointed to the altar. The book's pages turned on their own until they stopped on an image—a bloodstained door, a crib, a sigil burning on the floor.
Zara's knees buckled.
She saw the room from her dream.
The night of the fire.
The night her mother died.
And at the center of the room—a figure standing in shadow, watching the flames.
A voice echoed in her mind.
"Before the world screamed… you did.
***
Zara staggered back from the altar as the memory clawed into her mind like glass dragged across bone.
She was five years old again.
The crib wasn't hers.
It held someone smaller.
A child wrapped in black silk, crying not in panic, but in rhythm.
A song.
The room had burned. Her mother had screamed—not in fear, but in fury. And standing behind it all… was her.
No. Not her now. Not her then.
Another Zara.
A shadow of herself. Taller. Eyes burning white. Lips curled in satisfaction as the flames consumed everything.
The Echo split that night, the Curator had said once, in the voice of a dream she didn't remember. One half burned. The other survived.
Zara collapsed to her knees.
Noel was beside her in a heartbeat, gripping her shoulders.
"Zara—" he started.
"I saw me," she breathed, fingers trembling. "I saw myself… watching it burn."
Noel's expression darkened. "The fracture runs deeper than I thought."
"It wasn't just a memory," she whispered. "It was real. A version of me… another me was there. Older. Watching. Smiling."
The Seer stepped forward, the bandages over her eyes writhing with unseen motion. "She is the Shadow Echo. A remnant that escaped through time when your father shattered the bond. A piece of you that never stopped burning."
Zara couldn't breathe.
"I'm going mad," she whispered.
"No," the Seer said. "You are becoming whole."
The Curator's voice cut through the thick silence. "This is why they hunt you, Zara Lune. Not because you are fractured—but because if you remember who you were meant to become, the world must kneel or shatter."
Zara stood slowly, eyes glassy. "And if I don't want to become her?"
"Then she will become you," the Seer said simply.
The dagger at her side vibrated—violently now, not in hunger or fear, but anticipation. It had sensed something. Someone.
Zara turned to Noel.
"You knew," she said flatly. "You knew about the Shadow Echo."
He didn't deny it.
"I thought she was locked away," he said. "Buried. Sealed in the time fracture your mother made during her final scream. But that fire… it tore the boundary."
Zara stared into the flames that danced above the vaulted ceiling. Boundaries. It was always about boundaries. Between life and death. Between past and future. Between the Echo and herself.
"Is she alive?" she asked.
The Seer tilted her head. "Not in the way you know life. She walks in borrowed time. But her power grows stronger every moment you doubt who you are."
Zara's fists clenched.
"No more doubt," she whispered.
Suddenly, the walls trembled.
The ground split with a deafening groan as the obsidian altar cracked. Flames sputtered above, dimming into a sickly green.
The Seer gasped.
"She's here."
The light blinked out.
From the far end of the cathedral, footsteps echoed.
Not hurried.
Not stealthy.
Confident.
Measured.
Zara turned, blade ready, heart thundering in her chest.
From the darkness, she stepped forward.
Her twin.
Her shadow.
Her Echo.
She wore Zara's face—but carved in stone, emotionless and predatory. Her eyes were voids. Not black, but utterly empty, like holes in the world's fabric. She wore a crown of broken bone, and her fingers dripped with golden ichor that hissed when it touched the floor.
"Hello, me," the Echo said. Her voice was smooth. Calm. And unmistakably Zara's.
Noel raised both blades. "Back," he hissed to Zara.
But the Echo only laughed.
"You can't protect her from herself, brother. You should know that better than anyone."
Zara's mind spun. "How are you here? You're… a memory."
"I'm a memory made whole. The version of you that never hid. The you that embraced the Echo completely." She stepped closer. "I am what you were always meant to be."
Zara stepped forward, trembling but unflinching. "And what is that? A monster?"
The Echo smiled. "No. A god."
Without warning, she moved.
Not a blink. Not a blur.
One step, and she was at the altar.
The Curator raised his hand—but the Echo grabbed his throat and lifted him off the ground with casual ease. His chains burned away, his veil falling to the floor.
His face was a ruin—half flesh, half bone, held together by glyphs. His eyes pleaded, but the Echo's were merciless.
"You betrayed the old pact," she said. "You let her forget."
She crushed his throat with a twitch.
The Curator disintegrated into a storm of ash and blood.
"No!" Zara cried, lunging forward.
The Echo raised a hand—and Zara froze mid-air.
Literally.
She hovered above the ground, limbs paralyzed, unable to scream. The dagger in her hand flickered with pale fire but could not break the hold.
"You're not ready to face me," the Echo said. "But you will be."
She leaned close, whispering against Zara's ear.
"Soon."
Then she vanished.
The paralysis broke.
Zara collapsed, coughing violently.
Noel caught her, voice shaking. "Are you hurt?"
She wiped blood from her mouth.
"No," she rasped. "I'm done hurting."
The Seer stumbled back, bleeding from beneath her bandages.
"She's broken the seal. She will hunt the remaining Gates. If she finds the Third, the First Voice awakens fully."
Zara's jaw set. "Then we find it first."
Noel nodded. "It lies in the Deep Archive. Beneath the ruins of the Arcanum."
Zara looked to the dagger—its blade now etched with a new rune.
One she hadn't carved.
One that hadn't been there before.
Resonance.
She rose, eyes burning.
"I'm done waiting for the past to find me. If the Echo wants war—" she paused, gaze cold, focused—
"—I'll show her how I scream."