Chapter 3 – Echoes Don't Lie, But They Omit
Narrator: Lei
---
We are born, we live, we die… and then some of us wake up in a temple carved out of dimensional bedrock, holding rings older than time.
Lucky us.
My twin brother Rui thinks our reincarnation is a blessing. He says things like "second chances are nature's best comedy." I think it's something else—a test, a pattern, a spiral looping through realities until someone breaks it.
I intend to break it.
---
The Whispering Echoes
The Ring of Echo isn't flashy like Rui's Script Ring. It doesn't let me float or fight with fancy glyphs. What it does, however, is remember.
The moment I meditate, the ring draws in dimensional residues—fragments of souls, echoes of decisions, broken thoughts. They fill my ears like overlapping whispers, sometimes in ancient languages, sometimes in screams.
The power system of Echo works like this:
Tier 1: Soul-Tether – Perceive recent emotional imprints from objects, people, and places. Passive.
Tier 2: Echo-Anchor – Temporarily bind a memory to a location or person.
Tier 3: Ghoststep – Replay a scene or battle through echoes; learn from past users or even fight with their memories.
Tier 4: Memory Override – Use an echo to influence others or mask reality. Dangerous.
Tier 5: Echo Construct – Create semi-real projections of the past to interact with the present.
It's not just about listening. It's about choosing which truth to believe.
Because echoes… they don't lie.
But they also don't tell you everything.
---
The Map of Before
It started during training with Rulekeeper Vara. She blindfolded me and dropped me into the Chamber of Hollow Steps—a massive underground vault that remembers everything that ever happened inside it.
I fell into a memory.
Not a vision, not a dream—an actual memory echo. It enveloped me like water.
I was someone else. A tall figure with a jagged ring on their hand, walking across this chamber centuries ago. His name flickered into my mind—Vaelrix. A wielder of the Ring of Gates.
He opened a portal with a single breath and whispered:
> "The Fractured Ring must never be complete. Not again."
The portal faded—but not before I glimpsed a map carved into an obsidian tablet. It looked like a star map wrapped around a spiral. Coordinates. Gate symbols. And at the center… the sigil of Unity.
When I awoke, I was panting. Vara was watching.
"You're beginning to see," she said, "that Echo is not just memory. It is prophecy in reverse."
---
The Dimensional War
We asked Master Kuro that evening about Vaelrix, and the Fractured Ring.
He sighed and summoned a cup of tea that reeked of moonlight.
"There were once Five Great Rings," he said. "Crafted by the Arcanon, ancient beings who believed no truth should be forgotten."
"Let me guess," Rui said. "They forgot something important?"
Kuro smiled sadly. "They remembered too much. The rings began to bend the users' will. One by one, ringbearers fell—not to enemies, but to themselves. They sought to combine the rings, to become gods of memory, law, motion, story, and time."
"What happened?" I asked.
"They succeeded," he whispered. "And the world broke."
---
The original Fractured Ring was a fusion of all five. It nearly erased the multiverse in its instability. The Arcanon were lost to dimensional storms. But fragments of the ring survived—and reincarnated into bearers like us.
Like me.
And Rui.
And others still hidden.
---
Reincarnation as a Curse
That night, I meditated again—and the ring pulled me deep. I saw visions:
A battlefield under black suns.
Rui and I, in other bodies, fighting side by side… then against each other.
A golden child with six eyes screaming in rage.
And a voice—my own—saying:
> "I will die again. But next time, I will remember faster."
My heart thundered. I wasn't just Lei in this life. I had been Vaelrix. And maybe others before him. This wasn't our first loop.
No wonder I could feel echoes so strongly.
No wonder the ring trusted me.
We weren't just reincarnated warriors.
We were repeating mistakes—with slightly better tools.
---
An Unexpected Invitation
The next morning, Rui burst into my room with a scroll bouncing behind him like a kite.
"Hey brainboy, guess who got us kicked out of training?"
I blinked. "You?"
"Obviously. But also—guess who got us invited to the Trial of Rings?"
I sat up. "The what now?"
"It's a tournament. Kind of. Also a pilgrimage. With traps. And monsters. And old gods who want to eat your memory. And apparently we're already signed up!"
He grinned.
I sighed.
Then I smiled back.
Because for the first time in two lifetimes… it felt like destiny was expecting us.