There were no stars beyond the Echowound.
Only pressure.
The world beyond the scar was not a place but a compression—a knot of unfinished truths and unrealized futures crushed into form. It bent under the weight of memory unclaimed. It breathed like a dying god.
And the warriors who had walked through it were no longer only warriors.
They were witnesses.
Mimus stood at the edge of a broken ridge where the stone ran like melted wax, the ground humming with latent Echo. His blade was sheathed, but his Echo—calmer now—circled his limbs in pale smoke, looping in slow, quiet revolutions. The others stood in silence behind him.
Rhesk's hammer was planted in the ground like a warning. Olyra's cloak no longer fluttered with wind; the air here was too thick. Neren sat cross-legged in a circle of flickering ash. Ilyan stood apart, head tilted skyward. And Caldrin... Caldrin stood close enough for her silence to be felt.
They had survived the Echowound.
But survival had never been the point.
---
The message came with no sound.
Just a shift.
The sky above them—what little sky there was—folded in on itself, like a fabric being inverted. And through that fold came the scent of emptiness. Not death. Not decay. Something worse: erasure.
Then came the footsteps.
Soft. Methodical. Like someone walking across a memory not theirs.
Out of the fold stepped a woman wrapped in white.
Her body was blurred at the edges, like she existed in several versions at once. Her Echo didn't ripple—it unraveled. Wherever it touched, the land dimmed. Her face was partially veiled, but her eyes burned gold, ancient and bored.
"I am not here for your deaths," she said. "Only for your names."
They didn't draw weapons.
There was no need.
They knew who she was.
The First Forgotten.
The one who had given up her identity to become the Curators' silence.
"You've come to erase us?" Ilyan asked, Echo pulsing lightly around their voice.
"No," the woman said. "I've come to see if you're worthy of remembering."
---
Mimus stepped forward.
"I carry a glyph that isn't mine," he said. "I remember someone the Curators tried to bury. So if you're here to weigh that—fine. Weigh it."
The woman tilted her head.
"I know the name you carry," she replied. "But I'm not here for Vesyr."
Her eyes fell on Mimus alone.
"I'm here for yours."
She raised one hand.
And Echo collapsed.
---
The world shattered into fragments.
Mimus was alone.
He stood in a circle of mirrors—dozens of them, each showing a different version of himself. Mimus the coward. Mimus the tyrant. Mimus who never awoke. Mimus who betrayed. Mimus who bled out beneath a tree while Rynor lived on.
Then the voice came again.
"You think carrying others makes you noble. It doesn't."
The First Forgotten stepped into the circle. Her reflection was missing from every mirror.
"You are still running. Still hiding beneath the story of someone stronger."
"I've never claimed strength," Mimus growled.
"No," she whispered. "But you've begged to be remembered."
He turned, drawing his blade. It formed slower this time, dragging with the weight of recognition.
"You want to test me?" he asked.
"I want to strip you down."
She stepped forward.
And attacked.
---
She didn't strike with a blade.
She struck with absence.
Her touch removed parts of him—briefly, surgically. One blow erased the memory of his mother's voice. Another erased the shape of Rynor's hands. A third almost stole his name—but he held onto that one, gritting his teeth until blood dripped from his nose.
His counterattacks were slow, grounded in grief. He struck with guilt. With truth. With weight.
But she floated above such things.
"You are loud," she said. "But you are not anchored."
She drove her hand into his chest.
And for one sickening moment, Mimus forgot why he was fighting.
---
Then—
Something changed.
A second Echo stirred.
Not Vesyr's.
His own.
It rose like a tide, slow but relentless, fed not by pain—but by choice.
"I do remember," he gasped.
"What?" she asked, narrowing her golden eyes.
"My name."
It echoed through the mirrors, louder than steel.
"Mimus."
The glyph on his shoulder flared. The ashlike spiral ignited.
And the world snapped back.
---
They stood once more in the shattered valley. The mirrors were gone. The First Forgotten stood across from him, breathing heavy for the first time.
The others had not moved.
Time had frozen them. This trial was his alone.
The woman lowered her hand.
"You kept it," she whispered.
Mimus nodded. "It's mine."
She turned.
And vanished into the fold.
---
Time resumed.
The others blinked.
Caldrin stepped forward, drawing close.
"What happened?" she asked.
Mimus stared at the air where the First Forgotten had vanished.
"They tried to unname me."
"Did they succeed?"
He turned to her.
"No. I remembered too loudly."
---
Far above, in a place where Curators kept silent counsel, something cracked.
And a new glyph was carved into Varellen:
"He Who Refused the Silence."