The wind picked up as they stepped outside Maera's cottage, the sky bruised with incoming storm. Revan held the scroll tight against his chest, the wax seal still intact—tar-black and etched with the same spiral as the mark on his arm.
He could feel it thrumming.
"Do we open it here?" Cassie asked, glancing up at the shifting clouds.
Revan shook his head. "No. Not until we're clear of this place."
They didn't go far—just beyond the first ridge, where a crumbling watchtower gave them shelter. There, beneath broken stone and rusted iron, Revan knelt and slowly cracked the wax seal.
It didn't just peel away—it bled.
A thin trail of dark liquid seeped from the spiral, vanishing into the parchment.
Revan and Cassie exchanged a glance.
"Now that's comforting," she muttered.
He unrolled the scroll carefully. It was stiff and old, but the moment it was open, symbols began to swirl across its surface—like ink remembering where it belonged.
Not written in ink, but shadow.
It formed a map—not to a place, but to a memory.
What the Scroll Reveals
The parchment displayed no mountains or rivers—only moments.
Fragments.
Revan blinked as images danced across the surface like ripples in water:
A massive gate, its arch built from bones too large to be human, standing in the middle of a moonless wasteland.
A tower half-swallowed by sand, and within it, a circular chamber filled with whispering statues.
A child with eyes like obsidian stars, standing over a pool of black water.
A phrase burned across the bottom of the scroll in script neither of them recognized—until the mark on Revan's wrist glowed, and the letters twisted into comprehension:
"To find the First Key, follow the Echo.
But beware: the Echo hears you too."
Cassie whispered, "What does it mean?"
Revan stared at the last image now surfacing—one not of a place, but of himself.
Older. Changed. Eyes glowing with shadow, standing in front of the gate… with his hand resting on the door.
He rolled the scroll shut, breath shaky.
Cassie knelt beside him. "You saw it, didn't you?"
"I was opening the gate," he said. "Or… about to. I don't know if I was trying to stop it or—"
He didn't finish the thought.
The wind howled through the ruins, kicking up ash and dust.
Cassie reached for the scroll. "Then we find the Echo. And we figure out what kind of future that was before it becomes real."
Revan nodded slowly.
But inside, the mark whispered again.
Soon.
They traveled for two days beyond Kallzara, cutting across forgotten trails and frostbitten hills. The scroll guided them, not with direction, but sensation—a faint pulling in Revan's mark, like a compass forged from memory and shadow.
The deeper they went, the stranger the land became.
Birdsong faded. Grass grew grey. Trees leaned away from the path as if afraid of what passed beneath them.
Cassie wrapped her cloak tighter around her shoulders. "This is wrong."
Revan didn't disagree. The mark on his wrist had gone cold—numb, like a limb falling asleep. He couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching them from behind their own footprints.
By the end of the third day, they found the ruin.
The Hollowstone Archive
It stood like a corpse clinging to the edge of the world.
An ancient stone structure half-swallowed by a cliff, vines strangling its towers, windows shattered like broken eyes. Stained murals flaked from its outer walls—depictions of a kingdom that never existed, ruled by a queen with no face.
"This wasn't on any map," Cassie murmured.
"It wasn't meant to be," Revan said. "The Echo led us here."
A faded archway marked the entrance. No door. Just darkness, thick and unmoving.
They stepped inside.
Inside the Ruin
The air was still. Stale. Heavy with dust and silence.
The stone floor had been scorched by something—centuries ago, perhaps—and the walls were lined with half-rotted books, their covers sealed shut by cobwebs and decay. But the deeper they walked, the less real the ruin felt.
Time stuttered here.
Candles lit themselves and then blew out in the same breath.
Cassie turned toward a corridor, then blinked—Revan was gone. A heartbeat later, he stood where he'd always been.
She touched his arm. "Did you feel that?"
"Yeah," he said. "This place is... folding."
The mark pulsed, and Revan stumbled forward—pulled. He followed it instinctively, down a spiral stairwell choked with ash, into a chamber buried beneath the ruin.
The Echo Chamber
They stepped into a round room carved from obsidian stone. In the center stood a mirror.
No frame. No base. Just a perfect sheet of darkness standing upright, like a doorway suspended in air.
Their reflections weren't their own.
Cassie's image was turned away from her. Her shadow was missing.
Revan's showed him older—again—with eyes fully black, face pale, lips moving silently.
He's whispering. But only to himself.
Revan stepped closer.
The mirror rippled.
A voice—his voice—spoke softly, directly into his mind:
"The first key is regret. Where the light left you. Return."
Revan staggered back.
Cassie caught him, her eyes wide. "What did it say?"
He didn't answer right away.
Instead, he turned to her and whispered, "It showed me the orphanage. The night I ran. The place I left behind."
Cassie's face paled. "You think... that's the key?"
"Not just a memory. Something buried there. Maybe a piece of the gate... maybe something worse."
As they turned to leave, the mirror cracked—just once—spidering from top to bottom.
And from the corners of the chamber, a low rattling rose—metal on stone.
The walls began to move.
Cassie grabbed Revan's hand. "Time to go!"
Behind them, shadows peeled themselves off the stone—forms made of smoke and voice, whispering the names of the dead.
The moment the mirror cracked, the temperature plummeted. The obsidian floor groaned beneath their boots. Then came the whispers.
At first, they were disjointed. Mumbled nonsense. But as the shadows peeled from the walls—shapes with no faces, no feet—they began to speak with clarity.
"Thief of memory…"
"Daughter of frost…"
"The gate remembers."
The figures lunged.
"Move!" Revan shouted, yanking Cassie toward the stairwell.
One of the shades slid between them and the exit, its limbs stretching unnaturally long. Cassie thrust out her frost crystal, and with a sharp cry—"Glacial bolt!"—a jagged spear of ice burst from her hand, pinning the creature to the wall.
It didn't scream. It didn't bleed.
It just flickered, then melted into smoke.
More were coming.
Revan's mark burned. He could feel it pulling at the edges of the room, responding to the magic in the ruin. His shadow writhed at his feet like a living thing, wanting out.
"Cassie—cover me!"
She nodded and sent another burst of ice down the hall as Revan slammed his palm to the floor. The mark ignited—dark, glowing, alive—and a second shadow spilled out of him, rising into a decoy that sprinted toward the creatures, drawing their attention.
They chased it like moths to flame.
"Nice trick!" Cassie yelled, breath fogging in the cold.
Revan didn't answer. He was focused—his magic strained, the new shadow harder to control, more hungry than before.
They bolted up the spiral stairs, taking two steps at a time.
The ruin fought them.
Doorways vanished behind them. Corridors bent in impossible angles. Books flew from shelves, their pages fluttering like wings, screeching with inked screams.
One tendril of darkness reached for Revan's ankle—he sliced it clean with his dagger, but not before it left a sizzling burn on his boot.
Cassie spun and released a blast of frost that froze the floor behind them solid, causing a pursuing shade to slip and shatter.
They burst into the main hall, only to find the entrance gone.
Revan skidded to a stop. "No—no, it was right here!"
The walls groaned again.
Cassie looked up. "Then we make our own way out!"
She pointed to the stained-glass window above the collapsed altar. Without hesitation, she hurled a charged shard of ice—CRASH.
The glass exploded outward.
Revan summoned his shadow to leap ahead—testing the path—and it passed clean into the open night beyond.
"Go!" he shouted.
Cassie launched herself through first, cloak flaring. Revan followed, rolling into the snow-covered stone beyond the ruin.
They didn't stop running.
Not until the ruin was a speck behind them—silent again. Watching.
Aftermath: Campfire Edge
Later, camped under a jagged overhang, Revan sat with his back to the fire, eyes on the scroll, which now glowed faintly at the edges.
Cassie handed him a flask. "That thing back there—those shadows—what were they?"
Revan looked at his hand. The mark was darker now. More defined. It pulsed slower—but deeper.
"Not just echoes," he said. "They were memories. Twisted ones. They were trying to rewrite us."
Cassie didn't speak for a moment.
Then softly: "What happens if they succeed?"
Revan looked into the dark.
"They won't. Not if we find the next key first."