Varellen breathed differently now.
Something had changed in Mimus. He felt it in the way the ground responded to his steps—less resistance, more recognition. His Echo no longer flickered erratically. It pulsed beneath his skin, coiled and responsive, like it knew he had chosen something real. Something costly.
The sound of her voice was gone.
He tried, once, to recall it—his mother's lullaby—but only the shape of it remained. The notes were there, faintly, but hollow. Like hearing wind blow through a broken flute.
He didn't speak of it.
Caldrin led him into a new region of Varellen. The terrain here was jagged, spined like the back of a long-dead beast. Trees—or what might once have been trees—stood twisted and black, their branches curling in on themselves. The wind carried whispers again, low and splintered.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
Caldrin didn't look back. "To find a Warden."
"A what?"
"Guardians of thresholds. Of Echo Gates. They bind parts of this realm together. Kill one, and you open a path forward."
Mimus frowned. "So the Tournament's started, then."
She slowed, her limp more pronounced now. "It was never paused."
They camped beside a rift that night. Not for warmth—there was none—but for silence. Mimus sat cross-legged while Caldrin built a smokeless fire from memory-branches. They burned blue.
He watched the flames, then spoke.
"You've been here a long time."
She looked up. Her eyes glinted orange in the firelight. "Too long."
"Why stay?"
She didn't answer for a while. Then:
"Because if I leave, I forget who I became here. And she's the only one who forgave me."
Mimus didn't press. But her words clung.
Forgiveness wasn't offered in Varellen. Not freely. Maybe not at all.
The next morning, they found the Warden's mark.
It was carved into the side of a cliff, spiraling inward—lines of Echo-script that shifted the longer he stared. It wasn't written in words. It was written in feeling. Every pass of the glyph reeked of judgment.
"Is it alive?" he asked.
"Some Wardens are echoes of gods," Caldrin said. "Some are the gods themselves. Doesn't matter. It knows we're here."
The air thickened.
Mimus felt the shift first: a pressure that settled in his lungs. The cliffside trembled. Stones rose from the ground like teeth.
Then, with no warning, the Warden stepped from the wall.
It had no legs. Its lower body was mist and shrapnel. Its torso was wrapped in chain-blood and grief-iron, and its face was a cracked porcelain mask. Around it, Echo spiraled like a cyclone.
Mimus took a step forward. His blade pulsed in response, forming in his hand like breath.
"Don't speak to it," Caldrin warned. "It lies like memory. And it hurts like truth."
The Warden spoke anyway.
"You wear silence like a crown."
Mimus's knuckles whitened. He didn't answer.
"You buried a voice to wear power," the Warden crooned, drifting closer. "You call that a sacrifice. But was it hers to give?"
Caldrin threw a blade of Echo-light. The Warden batted it aside like dust.
Then it lunged.
The ground exploded into fractured Echo, distorting the space around them. Mimus leapt, blade flashing, meeting the Warden's strike midair. Their clash sent a ripple through the terrain—stone turned to water and back again.
The Warden fought with illusions. At every strike, its form shifted—into Rynor, into his mother, into a thousand regrets Mimus had never named. The blade in his hand trembled, but held.
He struck not at the body, but at what it represented.
"I carry what she gave," he snarled.
"No," the Warden whispered, "you carry what you took."
Its chain-wrapped arm wrapped around his midsection and threw him into a column of bone. He crashed hard, air knocked from his lungs.
Caldrin screamed something. He didn't hear it. Blood filled his mouth.
Then—
Clarity.
A flicker of the voice he'd given up. Not in words. In warmth.
The lullaby was gone. But the feeling?
Still there.
He roared. His Echo surged, and the blade transformed. Not longer. Not sharper. Just truer. It glowed with threads of every memory he hadn't let rot.
He moved with purpose now. Each strike pushed the Warden back.
Caldrin joined the assault, flanking the creature, her own Echo twisting into twin crescent blades. They moved like a single storm: coordinated, relentless.
The Warden staggered, fractured, reformed.
"Enough," it hissed.
And opened its chest.
Inside: a mirror.
A thousand Mimus faces screamed back at him—each version that failed. Each one that chose silence. Cowardice. Rage. The sight cracked something in him.
Then—
"I choose what I carry."
The mirror splintered.
Mimus lunged, Caldrin behind him.
The blade sank deep.
The Warden didn't scream. It folded, like a book closing. Then scattered into ash and memory.
---
They stood in silence.
Mimus's blade dissolved. His chest heaved, sweat and Echo mingling on his skin. Caldrin wiped blood from her chin.
"You just killed a god," she muttered.
"No," he said. "I killed a fear."
The cliffside groaned. A doorway formed where the Warden had emerged. It wasn't a gate. It was a wound—ripped open, glowing faintly.
Beyond it, Mimus could hear voices. Not speaking. Singing.
"What's in there?" he asked.
Caldrin looked uneasy. "Another layer. One few ever reach."
"Will you come?"
She looked away.
"I'm not ready."
Mimus nodded.
He stepped through.
---
The world bent.
Light split. Wind screamed.
And then—silence.
The new realm was darker. Colder. Not physically—but emotionally.
The very ground whispered doubts.
Mimus stood alone now.
But his Echo was brighter than ever.
And far above, something ancient stirred.
Watching.
Waiting.