By midday, the forest stopped pretending.
Where once Breachwood twisted in uncanny ways, it now bent with deliberate intent. Trees grew in spirals instead of lines, their trunks forming massive arches that hummed when walked beneath. The earth sloped subtly uphill even when the horizon appeared flat. Shadows bent away from the sun. The birds stopped calling.
Even the Riftlight changed. What had been a faint shimmer on the edge of sight now cast pools of shifting color across the ground—iridescent, like oil on water, ever-moving. It outlined Haraza and Lyssira as they walked, as though it remembered their shapes.
And then, it stopped.
They reached a clearing where the trees grew no further. The grass was short and silver, the air warm and still. In its center stood the Gate.
It rose two stories tall, built from the same jagged, black-veined stone as the shard Haraza had found in Tarn's Hollow. A ring of impossible geometry, floating an arm's length above the ground, rotating ever so slowly. Runes in Old Weave danced along its surface, constantly rewriting themselves, never repeating. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
No.
It pulsed his heartbeat.
Haraza stepped forward. The glaive whispered. The rook-cloth fluttered in wind that did not exist.
Lyssira remained behind him, fingers tracing a ward across her forearm, watching.
("It's tethered to you,") she said. ("That means it'll open only for you.")
("What if I choose not to enter?")
("Then the Rift closes. The path ends. And we return to the old way.")
He stared into the center of the ring. It showed nothing. Not sky, not trees. Just absence. Not a void—something worse. A place not meant to be seen from the outside.
He stepped forward again. The stone thrummed. Words echoed in the back of his skull—ancient, incomprehensible. But he felt them. A question shaped like a door.
-Who are you when memory is undone?-
He gripped the glaive tighter.
("Haraza Genso,") he said aloud. ("Jack of all trades. Storm-borne. Rift-marked. I don't know who I am beyond that—but I'll find out.")
The Gate split open with a soundless fracture. The air bent. The space inside the ring filled with light too bright to bear, then inverted—becoming shadow without darkness. It reached for him.
He stepped through.
He expected pain. He expected cold, or heat, or nausea.
Instead, he felt weightless.
Then—
Impact.
Haraza hit the ground with a thud that knocked air from his lungs. Stone beneath. His glaive sparked against it. He rolled, came to his feet—blade drawn, eyes wide.
He stood in a hall made of memory.
It stretched in all directions, walls formed not from stone or wood, but moments. Scenes flickering across their surfaces—his first job back on Earth, the first time he'd burned his hand learning to weld, his brother handing him a phone, a goodbye. Tarn's Hollow. The Ironthread. The child who sang by the river.
He was surrounded by himself.
Lyssira was gone.
He turned—but the Gate behind him had vanished. Only more corridor. More walls of memory.
A whisper tickled his ear.
You must walk the Echo Hold alone.
The glaive dimmed. No more heartbeat-pulse. No more guidance. Just cold steel.
He walked.
-The first memory he passed was simple: a conversation with a stranger in a café. He hadn't thought of it in years. But here it was—full, intact. He saw himself talking, laughing, nervous. A young woman with bright eyes asking what he really wanted from life. He hadn't known.-
The scene froze. The woman's eyes turned hollow. The echo of her voice asked:
And what have you done with what you were given?
He looked away.
The hall shifted.
-The next memory: standing beside the Rift for the first time. The sky broken. The roar. The pressure. But in this version, he saw himself running. Leaving Tarn's Hollow behind. Fleeing. The villagers screaming.-
That didn't happen.
That never—
-Did it not? the echo asked. Or do you only remember the version where you were brave?-
Haraza swung the glaive in fury.
The memory shattered.
But as it broke, he felt something tear inside his chest. Not pain. Doubt.
The corridor grew darker.
He passed more echoes—some true, some false. Some twisted with guilt, others with pride.
One showed him as a king.
One showed him dead, forgotten.
One showed him walking away from the Gate, returning to Earth, empty and whole.
They all spoke.
-You are not ready.-
-You are only shape, not substance.-
-Turn back.-
But he kept walking.
When he came to the center of the Echo Hold, he found no door, no prize.
Only a mirror.
It stood ten feet high. Its surface flawless. It showed him as he was—cloaked in ash-stained leather, the glaive on his back, rook-cloth fluttering. But behind his reflection stood hundreds of others.
Other Harazas.
Some wearing crowns. Some crawling. Some burned. Some monstrous.
The mirror spoke with all their voices:
To walk further, choose. Not who you were. Not who you are. But who you must become.
He stared at himself.
At the others.
He gripped the glaive.
And he said:
("I choose the one who fights.")
The mirror cracked.
Light burst outward. The echoes screamed—and vanished.
He stumbled forward.
And emerged into a new place.
The Gate closed behind him. No echo followed. Only silence.
Haraza stood on a plateau of dark stone, beneath a sky where stars flowed like rivers. Before him stretched a landscape he did not recognize—valleys made of glass, mountains floating in air, great machines turning without hand or purpose.
At its center, a spire of light pierced the heavens, wrapped in chains of silver script.
And he knew, somehow, that that was the Vault.
And the Rift was only beginning to speak.