Kael's footsteps echoed as he climbed out of the Deadveil Line. The tunnel's maw sealed behind him, and with it, the weight of what he had claimed. The chill in his bones lingered—the price of binding the Eye of Silence—but beneath that, a fire had been lit.
Three Echoes.
Each more complex than the last. Each demanding more than just strength.
He stepped into the lightless alleys of the Scar Quarter, where the only law was silence and the only currency was violence. There, under flickering signs and rusted walls, Kael was no longer just another Forsaken.
He was becoming something else.
Something the city wouldn't be able to ignore much longer.
---
He didn't head home.
He didn't have one.
Instead, Kael made his way to an old safehouse he'd used during his courier days—an abandoned observatory hidden between shattered high-rises. It was barely standing, glass dome cracked open to the sky, but it still had walls. And more importantly—privacy.
Inside, he lit a fire and slumped against the cold stone.
His thoughts turned to what he'd seen in the Eye's domain. His reflections. The rage. The fear. The void.
What disturbed him most wasn't that they existed.
It was how close they had felt. How easy it would be to become any of them.
> "To wield power, you must know what you'd give up to keep it."
The Eye's words still rang in his skull.
---
Hours passed. Dawn never really came in Dravemire. Just a slow lightening of the toxic sky.
Kael was about to doze off when the mark on his arm burned.
He sat bolt upright.
The burn wasn't hostile—it was a signal. A pulse.
A warning.
Someone was watching him.
He stood slowly, reaching for his blade, Echoes pulsing just beneath his skin.
"Don't bother," a voice said from the shadows. "If I wanted you dead, you wouldn't have heard me."
Kael spun—and froze.
A woman stood atop the broken stairwell, draped in black and silver, a mask of glass and bone covering her face. Her posture was relaxed, but every inch of her radiated control.
Her presence rippled like a coiled serpent in still water.
Another Echo-user.
Stronger than him.
Far stronger.
Kael kept his tone even. "You followed me."
She didn't deny it. "You've been touching things you don't understand. Binding Echoes that should have broken you. That gets attention."
He raised an eyebrow. "And you're here to what? Recruit me? Kill me?"
"Neither."
She stepped forward, slowly.
"I'm here to test you."
Before Kael could react, she moved.
One moment she stood across the room. The next, she was inches away, blade pressed lightly against his throat. Not a physical one—a blade of pure pressure. Psychic, heavy, silent.
The Eye of Silence instinctively flared inside Kael—nullifying the ambient sound in a ten-meter radius.
The pressure vanished.
The woman blinked, surprised.
"Interesting," she murmured.
Kael stepped back, breathing hard. "You're Dream-Marked."
She nodded. "Just like you. Only older. Sharper. And with a cause."
"Which is?"
"To survive the coming purge."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "What purge?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she reached into her cloak and tossed him something.
A silver emblem. A fragment of a stylized eye, broken down the center.
"I represent the Shrouded Pact," she said. "We track Echo-bearers before the city burns them. Or worse—before the Dream claims them."
Kael frowned. "You think I'm worth saving?"
She tilted her head.
"No. I think you're dangerous. The Pact keeps things like you from blowing holes in the world."
Kael laughed, bitter. "And if I say no?"
The masked woman turned to leave.
"Then you'll be alone. And hunted. Like all the rest."
She vanished into the fog.
---
Kael stared at the silver emblem in his hand.
The Shrouded Pact.
A faction? A cult? Something more?
He had no answers. Only a dozen new questions—and a fresh layer of threat atop everything else.
But deep down, something inside him welcomed it.
Let them come.
Let them test him.
He would not break.
He would ascend.
---
End of Chapter 6