"In the silence, even truth can scream."
The Gate did not open with a door nor dissolve like mist. It simply ceased to be a barrier.
Aelric took the first step, and the world turned inside out.
He expected sound—thunder, voices, echoes. But what he met was absence—a void so absolute that the beat of his heart roared in his ears. The space beyond the Gate of Echoes was not darkness, not light, but a vast and echoing in-between, where reality hummed like a taut wire stretched over infinity.
The others followed, each altered by the moment of passing. Liora's blade dimmed. Thalin's runes whispered against his skin. Nyara paused and sniffed the air, her ears twitching as if she sensed something just beyond the veil of time.
Then the stars blinked.
And the world reshaped.
The Wound Beneath Time
They emerged on a plain of smooth, iridescent stone, stretching forever in every direction. Above them hung no sun, no moon—only a vortex of spiraling light and shadow, churning like a storm made of ages.
"The Astral Scar," murmured Thalin, reverent and afraid. "I thought it was myth. A place where all echoes of what has been and what might be collapse into one."
Aelric knelt and placed a hand to the ground. It pulsed faintly—not with heat, but with memory. A cry, a song, a whisper—overlapping. Ancient and unborn.
"What is this place?" Liora asked.
"It's... all of them," said Nyara softly. "All places. All moments. Stripped of sequence."
They walked in silence, shadows stretching and twisting unnaturally behind them. Shapes danced at the edges of their vision—phantoms of possibilities, echoes of battles never fought, of cities never built.
One echo showed Aelric standing alone atop a ruined world, a sword of starlight plunged into the ground.
Another showed him laughing with comrades who had died long ago.
He closed his eyes. "Don't trust what you see."
The First Guardians
As they ventured further, a great fissure opened in the stone—no wider than a corridor, but so deep it reached down through layers of space and memory. From within rose a structure—part cathedral, part machine. It pulsed with runes too ancient for Thalin to translate.
But Nyara stepped forward.
"These are not the words of mortals. They are the language of intent. The First Flame left this behind to warn us."
"Of what?" asked Liora, already at the ready.
"To remind us that even stars can lie," Nyara said grimly. "And that the Echo does not simply repeat—it evolves."
Inside, they found what remained of the First Guardians—the beings who had once stood between the realms of memory and reality. Shards of armor. Preserved silhouettes burned into crystal. One, however, remained.
A figure cloaked in white-gold stood beneath a suspended ring of stars.
"You have come," she said, voice echoing in Aelric's bones. "Too soon. Or far too late."
"Who are you?" Aelric asked.
"I was once Vaelra, Keeper of the Final Threshold."
"What is the Gate of Echoes?" Liora demanded.
"A choice. A mirror. A key." Vaelra turned her gaze to Aelric. "And you are the lock it was meant to open."
The Trial of Soundless Flame
The companions stood in the cathedral of broken echoes as Vaelra extended her hands. From the void coalesced six orbs of starlight, each orbiting Aelric.
"Each one carries a choice made—or not made. You must face them."
Without warning, Aelric was pulled into a whirlwind of visions. He stood in the courtyard of his childhood home, his father standing before him, alive. No war. No death. Just peace.
"Would you trade your legacy for this moment?" the echo asked.
He refused.
Next, he stood atop the Celestial Spire, crowned and robed, ruling Eldoria in peace—but his companions were gone, scattered, forgotten.
"Would you trade love for unity?"
Again, he refused.
Each echo offered temptation. Power. Peace. Immortality. The last orb whispered:
"Would you trade truth for happiness?"
This time, he hesitated.
Then he saw Liora, Thalin, even Nyara—fighting in distant echoes, never knowing why.
And he chose truth.
The cathedral vanished in a burst of light. Aelric stood again with the others, and the orbs shattered into silver mist.
Vaelra smiled. "You are the echo that defies the past."
The Collapse
The Gate had never been meant to stay open. The world beyond—this place of tangled timelines and voices—was not meant to sustain itself. Already, cracks began to form across the plains of memory. The vortex above churned more violently, and thunder began to echo.
But it was not natural thunder.
It was names.
Spoken.
Chanted.
Screamed.
Kael'Ruun returned, his cloak torn by winds not of this world. But he did not come to fight.
"They found me," he said. "The true Echo. The First Voice."
And from the vortex descended a figure.
It bore no face.
It wore no form.
It simply was.
The First Echo, the original reverberation of existence, born before time had purpose.
It did not attack. It merely approached.
Where it walked, memory unraveled.
Aelric stepped forward.
"No more riddles," he said. "If this is the source, then I end it here."
The Echo paused.
Then it spoke—not aloud, but into every mind at once.
"Will you become me, and forget yourself?"
The Final Decision
Aelric turned to his friends.
Liora stood with her sword at her side—not to fight, but as a promise.
Thalin's runes burned across his skin—his spells unspoken, but ready.
Nyara said nothing, but her eyes reflected every star in the sky.
"No," Aelric said to the Echo. "I will not become silence. I will remember."
And with that, he thrust the broken half of his amulet—now bound with the threads of every choice he had made—into the heart of the Echo.
For a heartbeat, the world went still.
Then sound returned.
Aftermath
The Gate collapsed behind them, sealing the realm of Echoes forever. The vortex faded. The stars above realigned, one by one, until the sky resembled a map once more.
They emerged not where they had entered, but in a new part of the world—an unfamiliar horizon rising before them. Strange trees. Twin suns. A sky of shifting constellations.
"We're not home," Thalin said.
"No," Nyara whispered. "We are in a world that remembers us."
Liora placed a hand on Aelric's shoulder. "Where to now?"
Aelric looked ahead. Something stirred at the edge of the sky—a new realm. New threats. New songs.
"The stars are watching," he said.
"But we walk forward."
~to be continued