The bells of Lavender rang without wind.
Kael stood in the morning mist just beyond the town's edge, his breath hanging in the air, the path behind him all but swallowed by fog. He hadn't planned to come back so soon. But the report Nathaniel brought—of a glyph that hadn't been written yet—couldn't be ignored.
Echo moved quietly beside him, fur faintly aglow, her presence grounding.
"You're certain it's a child?" he asked.
Nathaniel nodded. "Eight years old. Girl named Sera. Lives with her grandmother. No known psychic ability. Never left Lavender."
Kael's brow furrowed. "And she dreamt of me?"
"She dreamt your story," Nathaniel corrected. "With details you haven't written down. And one part you haven't lived yet."
Echo whispered into Kael's thoughts. "We're not the only ones remembering now."
The house was small, nestled between old gardens and the base of the Tower hill. A woman answered the door — gray hair, weathered hands, eyes that had seen too many seasons pass.
"You're him," she said simply, stepping aside.
Sera sat cross-legged on the floor by the hearth, a pile of crumpled drawings around her. When she saw Kael, she smiled faintly — not in recognition, but in quiet certainty.
"You came from the broken sun," she said.
He froze.
Echo tensed.
Sera held out a piece of paper.
Kael took it carefully.
The sketch was crude, drawn in soft charcoal strokes. But it was clear: the circle of glyph-stones from Threshold Prime, and Kael standing at its center, a ribbon of light spiraling from his chest.
And across the bottom, a second image.
A door.
Split in the middle.
Not open.
Not closed.
Just… waiting.
"She's been drawing them every morning," her grandmother said. "Doesn't remember the dreams themselves. Just wakes up and puts them on paper."
Nathaniel crouched beside Kael. "This second part—have you seen it before?"
"No," Kael said. "Not in visions. Not in dreams. And not in my father's notes."
Echo leaned in close to the paper. "But it knows us."
Kael looked at Sera.
"Why are you dreaming this?"
Sera tilted her head. "I don't choose the dreams. They come from the middle."
Kael frowned. "The middle of what?"
Sera's expression didn't change.
"Of you."
The fire cracked gently.
Kael sat across from her, the paper still in his hands.
Sera picked up a piece of chalk and began drawing again.
Another path. Another glyph. One that Kael had never seen — but that felt true.
It coiled like a spiral, but ended in a loop.
Echo whispered, "That's a path that repeats itself."
Nathaniel stood slowly. "She's drawing recursive memory. Not psychic transmission — retained future experience."
Kael blinked. "She's remembering something that hasn't happened."
Sera looked up, smiling softly.
"Not yet."
They left the house in silence, the last of the fog burning off in the rising light.
Kael carried the drawings in a folder under his coat, each page heavier than parchment had any right to be.
Nathaniel walked beside him, quiet until they passed the old graveyard wall.
"She's the first," he said. "But not the last."
Kael looked over at him. "How do you know?"
"Because she responded instead of remembering," Nathaniel said. "And when response begins, stories stop being contained."
Echo padded ahead. "It's spreading."
"Good," Kael said.
Then softer: "Let them remember."
That night, they made camp on the ridge above Route 10. The wind carried the scent of dry pine and old stone.
Kael sat by the fire, reviewing Sera's final drawing again.
The door.
Split in the middle.
Not broken.
Not open.
Just waiting.
Echo sat beside him, her voice soft in his thoughts.
"It's not a place."
He turned to her. "The door?"
She nodded. "It's a decision. One you haven't made yet."
Kael exhaled.
"Do I go forward and become more than just myself?"
"Or turn back and remain a memory?"
Echo didn't answer.
Because she didn't need to.
Kael stared into the flames.
Sera had drawn a map of something he hadn't done.
Which meant…
The story was moving on.
With or without him.
He tucked the drawings away, wrapped in oilskin, and looked out toward the horizon.
"Whatever's on the other side of that door…" he whispered, "I'm going to open it."
Echo's tail brushed his side.
"Then I'll be right there when you do."
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A/N: I'm starting a P@treon account so I'll be reducing the chapter schedule to 9ch a week for stockpiling.