The silence that stretched between them after the Unwritten Vault was no longer just the absence of sound. It was a wall. Kaelan walked behind Morwen, his body moving on autopilot, his mind still echoing with the absolute, hungry silence of the void. The destruction of the peaceful, golden memory felt like a different kind of loss—not the surgical removal of his past, but the violent murder of a beautiful, borrowed thing.
Morwen had not asked again. She had processed his failure, filed it away, and moved on. Her silence was not contemplative; it was strategic. He could almost hear the calculations whirring behind her pale eyes. The Scribe is unstable. The asset is higher risk than anticipated. Adjust parameters.
They descended from the suffocating silence of the petrified forest into a new region. The air began to thrum with a new frequency, a low, rhythmic, almost melodic pulse. The obsidian ground gave way to a strange, spongy moss that glowed with a soft, bioluminescent blue. Great, arching structures of what looked like polished bone rose around them, curving into delicate, interwoven lattices that caught the strange light and fractured it into rainbows.
"The Chorus," Morwen said, her voice cutting through the hum. It was the first thing she'd said in what felt like an age. "The resonance here is stable. Harmonic. It attracts less aggressive echoes. We can rest here."
Rest. The word felt alien. He wasn't sure he remembered how.
She led him to a small, natural alcove formed by two curving bone-white arches. She slid her pack from her shoulders with a soft grunt, a gesture of fatigue he'd never seen from her before. The constant vigilance, the weaving, the walking—it was draining her, too. Just in a different way.
She didn't look at him as she pulled out a wrapped packet of something that looked like dried, pressed lichen. She broke off a piece and offered it to him without a word.
He took it. It was tasteless and chewy, but it eased a hollow ache in his stomach he hadn't even registered. They ate in silence, the rhythmic pulse of the Chorus a strange lullaby.
"Why are you really here, Morwen?"
The question left his lips, quiet but clear, shattering the fragile truce of silence. He wasn't asking about the mechanics of her arrival. He was asking about the hole in her story.
She stilled, the piece of lichen halfway to her mouth. Her grey eyes lifted to his, and for a fraction of a second, he saw past the Weaver, past the strategist. He saw a flicker of something raw and surprised. It was gone in an instant, shuttered behind a wall of ice.
"That is not a useful question," she said, her voice flat.
"Isn't it?" Kaelan pressed, a strange courage born from exhaustion and despair fueling him. "You know what I am. You know the cost. You talk about this place like it's a equation to be solved. What did it take from you to become that?"
Her expression didn't change, but the air around her grew cold. "The Echoing takes from everyone. It is the first and last law of this place."
"But it didn't take your memories," he said, the realization dawning on him. "You said it yourself. Weavers bend what is already here. It tires the soul, but it doesn't erase. So what did it take? What are you looking for in these vaults?"
Her jaw tightened. The careful, clinical distance was gone, replaced by a sharp, defensive anger. "You think because you've lost a few cherished moments, you understand sacrifice? You weep over laughter and a father's face. Cute." The word was a dagger. "Some of us lost things far more concrete. Some of us had our world taken before we ever set foot here."
She looked away, her gaze scanning the harmonic arches, but he could tell she wasn't seeing them. "I had a daughter."
The statement hung in the air, simple and devastating. It was the last thing he expected.
"The Collapse took her. Not the Echoing. The world before. The one that was crumbling while people like you were preserving its wedding vows." The bitterness in her voice was acid. "The governments called it a 'systemic resonance cascade.' We called it the end. One day, the sky tore open with a sound that could shatter cities. The next, we were here. I held her hand when the world unmade itself. I did not let go. I did not let go."
She turned her gaze back to him, and the raw, unvarnished pain in her eyes was more terrifying than any Shard-Hound. "But when the screaming stopped, my hand was empty. She was just… gone. Not dead. Unmade. Erased from the narrative of reality itself."
Kaelan could only stare, the piece of lichen in his hand forgotten. His own losses felt suddenly, shamefully small. He had lost memories. She had lost a person.
"The Echoing didn't take her," Morwen continued, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "But I believe it remembered her. I believe when a soul is unmade in that way, its echo has to go somewhere. It has to leave a mark. The deepest vaults, the oldest scars… I believe they hold the echoes of the lost. Not just memories, but… signatures. Imprints. I will find that imprint. I will find a trace of my daughter. And if a Scribe can read it…" She trailed off, the fanatical light returning to her eyes. "Then perhaps a Weaver can learn to weave it back."
The revelation was a seismic shift. Her ambition wasn't for power. It was for resurrection. Her coldness, her ruthlessness, her willingness to use him—it was all fueled by a grief so vast it had frozen into a single, driving purpose.
He was not just a key to a vault. He was a potential brush to paint her daughter back into a universe that had deleted her.
The transaction was no longer just about knowledge for power. It was about his soul for her ghost.
Before he could form a response, Morwen's head snapped up, her entire body going rigid. The raw pain vanished, replaced by instant, hyper-alert tension. "Something's wrong."
The rhythmic pulse of the Chorus was changing. The harmonious hum was distorting, sharpening into a discordant, screeching whine. The gentle blue glow of the moss began to flicker erratically.
"What is it?" Kaelan asked, scrambling to his feet.
"Weavers," Morwen spat the word like a curse. "But not like me. Reavers. They don't weave resonance. They break it. They're jamming the Chorus."
From the twisting bone-white arches above, three figures dropped, landing in a loose semicircle that blocked their exit. They were clad in mismatched, scavenged leather and metal, and their faces were hidden behind grotesque, hammered-metal masks that were scored with deep, chaotic grooves designed to disrupt resonant patterns. In their hands, they held jagged, hooked instruments that hummed with a violent, dissonant energy.
The lead Reaver took a step forward, his masked head tilting. The voice that emerged from behind the metal was a distorted, grating buzz.
"Little Weaver. You're a long way from your quiet corners. And you've brought a friend." The masked head turned to Kaelan. "He doesn't smell like a Weaver. He smells… blank. What are you, little blank thing?"
Morwen had already shifted into a fighter's stance, her dark-metal dagger in one hand, the other hand already spinning threads of defensive indigo light. "He's nothing. An echo-rat I'm using for scut work. Let us pass. There's nothing here for you to break."
The Reaver laughed, a sound like grinding glass. "You're here. That's something. Weavers always carry such pretty, polished trinkets." His gaze locked onto the pouch at her belt where she kept the crystallized tear. "And you, little blank thing… you're coming with us. The Master likes to collect new scents."
The transaction had changed again. Morwen had just thrown him to the wolves to save her prize.
Kaelan stood frozen, caught between the woman who saw him as a tool for her grief and the monsters who saw him as a curiosity for their collection. The fragile understanding he'd just grasped shattered, leaving him more alone than ever.
The lead Reaver raised his jagged instrument, its dissonant whine rising to a piercing shriek.
The ambush was here.