[Northern Trail Outside Fangwood]
The mist clung low like a second skin, curling through the gnarled trunks of ancient pines. The trees grew denser here—roots like claws, branches interwoven like prison bars.
Jumong adjusted his hood, walking beside a creaking wooden cart pulled by a weary-looking hill-elk. Brenna leaned lazily on its side, whistling off-key. Kirr trailed behind, eyes scanning the woods. His breath fogged with each step.
Their client, a lean merchant named Orlin, sat at the front of the cart bundled in a coat of stitched lizard-hide. He barely spoke.
They were headed toward the edge of the Gravepine Weald—old land where Veinstorms once ruptured and bled magic into the earth. A place marked red on Lodge maps. Not forbidden. But not favored.
"Why here, of all places?" Brenna asked the merchant. "Trade routes don't touch this stretch for a reason."
Orlin didn't meet her eyes. "The forest has…old places. Useful relics. If one knows where to look."
"Or die," Kirr muttered, fingering the hilt of his skinning blade.
Jumong said nothing, but he watched. The man's boots were too clean for someone who claimed to be a salvager. His voice too steady.
Ashwing circled overhead once, then returned to his shoulder, feathers bristled.
[Ruined Shrine]
They came upon it at noon—a collapsed stone structure wrapped in thorned vines and fungi-glow. Statues broken. Walls carved in spiral runes none of them recognized.
The merchant halted the elk. "This is it. Won't be long."
Kirr narrowed his eyes. "We're not just babysitting while you loot ghost bones."
Orlin said nothing.
But Jumong saw his hands tremble slightly as he lifted a satchel—inside, vials of dust that shimmered like dying embers. One dropped.
Jumong caught it mid-air.
"Vein-sand?" he asked, brow furrowing.
Orlin hesitated. Then: "Yes. Traded for it in Kaelmoor. Said it could… reveal things. Forgotten things."
"Vein-sand doesn't reveal," Kirr said coldly. "It remembers. And it pulls."
Too late.
The merchant sprinkled the dust over the cracked shrine floor.
The stones began to hum.
___
In the age before the Hollow Wars, the Old Orders created Echo Relics—objects imbued with fragments of memory drawn from the world-veins. When exposed to Vein-sand, they react by bleeding those memories into the present.
It's not time travel.
It's worse.
It's remembering something that should've died.
___
A low wind stirred. The temperature dropped.
Suddenly, the world shifted—just slightly. The trees around them shimmered, their branches replaced by spiked pikes, their trunks scarred with blade-marks.
They stood in a memory.
Figures marched across the field—ghostly outlines in ash and bone armor. One raised a great glaive—marked with the same spiral runes.
Jumong's knees went weak.
"Brenna," he whispered. "Do you…see them?"
"I do," she breathed, hand on her weapon.
"They're not real," Kirr said. "Not yet."
The merchant knelt in reverence. "This is what I came for."
And then one of the ghostly figures turned.
And looked at them.
Not through them.
At them.
The shriek came not from a throat—but from the stone itself.
Cracks rippled along the shrine floor. A humanoid figure began to rise—bones cobbled together with blackened roots and rusted mail. Its eyes burned with pale orange.
[Echo Revenant: Class—Specterborn]
Strength Index: C+
Vein Residue Rating: Stable Corrupt
Tactic: Possession of ancient arms, draws power from nearby memory structures.
Jumong leapt back, pulling his shortbow free. "Ashwing, mark!"
The hawk shot upward, flaring her wings.
Brenna dashed to flank. Kirr circled with daggers drawn.
Jumong loosed [Piercebind Shot]—the arrow sparked but passed through.
"It's not physical!" he shouted.
"No," Kirr said. "But the glaive is—watch it!"
The Revenant struck—crushing a stone where Jumong had just stood.
The battle turned to attrition. They couldn't harm its core—but they could destroy the relic anchors that fed it.
Jumong noticed the spiral carvings glowed with each Revenant move.
He shifted focus.
"Cover me!" he shouted.
He rolled beneath a swing and stabbed the first rune with his blade—cracking it. The Revenant screamed.
Brenna whooped. "That did it!"
Jumong ran for the second. Kirr flung a dagger to draw its attention. The fight became a dance.
With each rune destroyed, the Revenant grew slower. Duller.
Until finally, with the fourth shattered, it crumbled into dust and silence.
Orlin wept.
"You don't understand," he said. "That Revenant… that was my ancestor. General Yeth of the 7th Flameguard."
He looked to Jumong, pleading. "I had to know what happened here. I had to see it."
Jumong didn't reply.
He just turned and looked out over the trees.
Ashwing landed on his shoulder.
"Let's go home," he said quietly.
Back at the Lodge, Harken listened to the report.
"No bounty," he said flatly. "No reward. You weren't meant to tamper with Echoes."
"But…" Brenna started.
"But," Harken added, tossing Jumong a small iron medallion, "you survived. And you adapted. That counts."
Jumong opened his palm.
A symbol of a broken ring etched in flame.
"You're on the path to Cinder. But don't think the fire won't burn."
Deep beneath the cracked shrine, something else stirred.
Not bound to memory.
But waiting for a name it hadn't heard in centuries.
And that name… was Jumong.