They emerged from the depths of the Arcanum at dusk.
The ash-choked sky bled crimson across the shattered ruins of Aeroth's southern district, casting everything in the hue of dried blood. The city hadn't quieted—it had only learned how to scream without sound.
Zara stood beneath the broken spire of the old Arcanist library, the cursed book clutched to her side like a wound she refused to let close.
She didn't speak.
Neither did Noel.
There was nothing to say.
The memory had changed everything. The fire. The crib. The child. Herself. She wasn't just running from shadows anymore.
She had become one.
And the truth branded her thoughts like molten metal: she wasn't the vessel the Circle feared—she was the origin of the scream they had tried to silence.
Zara brushed ash from her cheek, eyes flicking toward a flickering glyph embedded in the ground nearby.
A ward.
Fresh.
"They're tracking us," she muttered.
Noel nodded. "Wards this close to the surface mean they know where we went. We'll need to shift routes. Fast."
"Do we have time?" she asked, her voice low. "If they find the book—"
"They won't," he interrupted. "Because we're not heading back to the safehouse."
Zara narrowed her eyes. "Then where?"
"The Singing Grave."
The name twisted something in her chest.
She didn't know why.
But her Echo stirred.
Softer than usual.
Almost… mournful.
"What is it?"
Noel looked off into the distance, where the old catacombs sprawled beneath the bones of the Empire's first king.
"A place buried before the city was built. The last sanctuary for Echo-bearers who refused the Circle or the cult. It's where their memories were buried—so they wouldn't be used."
Zara frowned. "So… a graveyard?"
"Not just. The Grave sings to those with the Echo. If you survive it… you leave with more than memory."
She exhaled slowly. "What happens if I don't survive it?"
He looked at her then. Really looked.
His eyes were tired. Haunted. But resolute.
"Then the Echo finds someone else."
They walked for hours, sticking to forgotten tunnels and shadowed alleyways, until the scent of death became familiar again.
Zara tried not to think about the pit. The mirror-memory. The way her child self hadn't cried as the flames grew.
She tried not to think about 43B.
But every time she blinked, she saw her other self.
Not screaming.
Smiling.
By the time they reached the catacomb mouth, night had fallen.
The entrance to the Singing Grave was marked by an arch of bone. Not symbolic carvings.
Real bones.
Woven with silver thread and hung with wind chimes made from teeth.
Zara felt her Echo retreat inward.
It didn't want to go in.
Neither did she.
But she had to.
Noel motioned toward the entrance. "You'll have to go alone."
"Of course I will," she muttered.
He gave her a small, almost-smile. "I can't protect you from what's buried inside your own bloodline. That's the whole point."
Zara stared into the tunnel.
Darkness pulsed from it—not lightless, but alive. Like ink with a heartbeat.
She stepped forward.
The moment her foot crossed the threshold, the world changed.
Sound vanished.
Smell vanished.
Even gravity felt optional.
And then—
She fell.
Not down.
Inward.
She landed hard on her feet in a vast, silent plain beneath a sky of shifting memories. Stars flickered with the faces of the dead. The wind howled without moving. In the distance stood a structure shaped like a cathedral, but breathing like a lung.
Zara took a shaky step forward.
The ground beneath her responded.
It sang.
A single, discordant note echoed through her chest.
Another step.
The song shifted.
Each movement composed part of a melody that wasn't hers—but was shaped by her memories.
The Arcanum.
The fire.
Her mother's face, mouth moving without sound.
The dagger in her hand began to hum in harmony.
Not violently.
Not hungrily.
But reverently.
The path led her to a door of bone. It opened before she could knock.
Inside, the world bent sideways.
She stepped into a memory that wasn't hers.
A girl—maybe fifteen—stood at the altar of the Echo cult, carving the mark into her own palm.
A voice boomed from the pulpit: "Sing for the silence, child."
The girl screamed—and from the scream, came light.
Zara blinked, and the vision vanished.
She walked deeper.
Another vision.
A man, older, blindfolded, singing a lullaby made of death. Echoes spilled from his mouth, crawling across the floor like shadows with teeth.
Zara stepped past him, deeper into the cathedral's center, where a well of obsidian waited.
The heart of the Grave.
The final test.
A figure rose from the well.
Cloaked in her father's robes.
Face obscured.
Not an illusion.
Not a Skin-Painter.
Something else.
Something worse.
"Who are you?" she asked.
The figure said nothing.
Instead, it stepped aside.
Revealing a mirror made of bloodglass.
In it—
She saw not her reflection.
But the moment she had screamed for the first time.
As a baby.
Not out of fear.
But out of command.
A doctor had tried to take her blood.
She had screamed—and the man had bled from every orifice before collapsing.
The Echo hadn't been given.
It had been born.
She staggered back.
The dagger fell from her hand.
The figure finally spoke.
"You are not the last Echo. You are the first True One."
Zara's heart slammed against her ribs.
"What does that mean?"
"It means the Circle does not fear your potential."
The voice deepened—becoming legion.
"They fear your memory."
The cathedral shuddered.
The mirror cracked.
The melody shifted again—becoming a harmony of screams.
Screams she recognized.
Hers.
Noel's.
Her mother's.
The figure stepped into the light.
And revealed its face.
Not her father.
Not the Echo.
But a version of Zara with empty eyes and a mouth sewn shut.
"Your silence," the thing whispered, "was never yours."
And then the mirror exploded.
Zara screamed—
But this time, the scream didn't come from her throat.
It came from the blood in her veins.
It was a name.
It was a key.
And it had just unlocked something buried far beneath the world.
She collapsed to her knees.
And the Grave began to sing back.
***
Zara's scream echoed through the cathedral—not from her mouth, but from the marrow of her bones. The Grave had unlocked something ancient inside her, something that had never been touched by words or memory. Her limbs convulsed, her heart stuttered in rhythm with the growing chorus beneath the earth. All around her, the floor of bone sang louder, harmonizing with her blood.
Then, silence.
Not emptiness—but the kind of silence that came before a thunderclap.
Zara gasped and collapsed to her side. Her fingers scraped against the smooth black stone as the echo of her own voice faded into the air like steam from a cooling blade. The bloodglass mirror was gone. So was the figure that had worn her face. In its place, the obsidian well now overflowed with a strange, iridescent light—neither fire nor magic, but memory, thick and pulsing.
She pushed herself up, trembling. Her dagger lay beside her, no longer humming. It was inert. Hollow.
But she wasn't.
Her ears rang with the aftertaste of a thousand screams, and as she stood, she realized she could name every one of them. Their stories. Their regrets. Their final words.
They weren't just echoes.
They were hers now.
The moment she stepped away from the well, the entire cathedral shifted. Not physically—but perceptually. It had changed in the way a person changes after revealing their darkest secret. Every pillar, every pew, every rune on the ceiling bent slightly inward now, facing her.
Like a congregation.
Waiting.
Zara stumbled forward until she reached the center dais beneath a canopy of bone lilies. There, resting atop a pedestal of melted prayer stones, sat a single object: a mask. Smooth. White. Eyeless.
But it pulsed.
As if it was breathing.
Her instincts screamed to walk away.
But her hands reached anyway.
The moment her fingers brushed the surface, a flood of memories surged through her spine like lightning.
She saw the founding of the Echo cult—not as prophecy, but as rebellion. Refugees from the Circle. Mages who had unlocked voices inside their minds that didn't belong. They'd gathered here, beneath the surface, to resist the Empire's ritual silencing. They weren't monsters.
They were martyrs.
And then came the betrayal.
By one of their own.
By a man called Calen.
Her father.
The vision twisted.
She stood now in her mother's body, arms raised, voice bleeding power as she locked the Gate with a final scream. The Gate that Calen had opened.
Not to awaken the Echo.
But to bind it.
And yet… it hadn't worked.
Zara staggered back, heart pounding. The mask still pulsed in her hands.
"The first scream was never a warning," she whispered to herself. "It was a key."
The chamber flickered again. Across the walls, new markings emerged—etched in flickering light.
A circle of names. A pattern.
Each one bearing the mark of a different bloodline.
Zara stepped closer.
At the center of the circle, a phrase repeated.
Twelve Voices. One Truth.
Her fingers brushed the inscription. Immediately, pain lanced through her temples, sharp and precise.
A whisper threaded into her thoughts.
> "She was never meant to scream alone."
Zara jerked back. The mask cracked in her hands.
She looked down.
A fracture had formed across the surface of the mask.
From the fracture, a single black tear spilled—liquid, not painted.
It hit the floor.
And the earth trembled.
She turned to run—but the cathedral wouldn't let her go. The doors sealed themselves behind a veil of spectral light. The well overflowed now, not with memory, but with something else.
From its depths, a hand emerged.
Then another.
Clawed. Charred. Wrapped in tattered red.
Zara took a defensive stance, dagger raised. But the weapon felt different. Quieter. As though it too was waiting for something.
The figure pulled itself free—emaciated, broken, but unmistakably alive.
Or once had been.
Its face was obscured by a veil of braided hair and teeth. Its chest bore a ruined Circle crest, scorched through by searing lines of Echo glyphs.
A failed vessel.
The being rasped once, then pointed at her with a skeletal finger.
"You," it gurgled. "You are the thirteenth voice. The forbidden note. The discord that unravels the song."
Zara's pulse thundered. "What are you?"
"I was what you are becoming," it said, voice shredded by time. "I was the last bearer of the Hollow Symphony. Until I sang it wrong."
The mask in her hands throbbed again. Louder.
"You came for it," the creature hissed, its eyes finally visible—two black stars. "But it's not a mask."
Zara looked down.
It had changed.
The white mask had unfolded into a complex lattice—like a blooming flower of bone and thread. Beneath its petals, a circular disc pulsed.
A phonograph.
Not for listening.
For recording.
She stared at it. "It records screams."
"It records the true voice," the creature croaked. "Each bearer leaves behind their final aria. It is the only way to know who broke… and who ascended."
The meaning struck her like a blade.
This was a test.
Every bearer before her had stood here, in this place. And every one of them had been asked the same thing:
Sing your truth—or be consumed by the lies you were taught.
The creature's body shook violently, spasming as it dropped to its knees.
"Take it," it rasped. "Sing to the Grave. Be the last voice, or become another forgotten echo."
Zara reached for the phonograph.
The moment she touched it, her vision dissolved again.
But this time, there was no memory.
Only silence.
Black.
Total.
And then—
A heartbeat.
Her own.
It echoed once.
Twice.
Then fractured into twelve counter-beats, like a chorus of distant drums.
Twelve others.
Twelve bearers.
Their final screams layered over hers—each one unique. Each one raw.
Zara inhaled slowly.
And then, with nothing left to lose, she opened her mouth and screamed.
She screamed her truth.
Not the Circle's lies.
Not her father's edits.
Not the cult's rewritten prophecy.
She screamed the fire.
She screamed the crib.
She screamed the silence.
The phonograph pulsed with light as it absorbed her voice. The petals began to close.
And when it sealed…
The Grave fell still.
Zara collapsed to her knees.
And as the mask fell silent, her Echo did not return to its cage.
It walked forward.
It took her hand.
And merged.
The cathedral doors flung open.
Noel stood waiting, his eyes wide.
She stepped through, breath ragged, eyes glowing faint violet.
Noel took a step back. "You… did it."
Zara nodded slowly. "I remembered."
"What did you see?"
"Enough to know the Circle isn't trying to stop the collapse."
She looked toward the north.
"They're trying to finish it."
And this time…
She was going to stop them.
Even if it meant becoming everything they feared.
Even if it meant becoming the scream that broke the world.