The name still glowed where they carved it.
The One Who Remembered Too Much.
It shimmered faintly on the rootless tree, a final echo etched into the Vale's shifting bark. No tomb. No ashes. Just a name. That was all anyone got in Varellen. And sometimes, not even that.
The others had gone—Rhesk and Olyra to scout the northern canyon; Neren to speak to the fire that still followed him like a starving animal. Ilyan disappeared into silence, as they often did.
Only Mimus and Caldrin remained.
"You should rest," she said softly, watching the glow fade.
"I can't," Mimus replied.
"You burned yourself too hard."
"He was wrong," Mimus muttered. "Derrin. He said we couldn't win. That there was no version of this where we leave whole."
"And?"
Mimus turned to her. "He might've been right."
Caldrin didn't argue. She just sat down beside him.
Together, they watched the light dim.
---
That night, Mimus dreamed.
But in Varellen, dreams were not what they seemed.
He stood in a corridor of doors—each one marked by a glyph. Each glyph felt familiar, yet unreadable. He reached for one carved from bone and sand, but before his fingers could touch it, the door opened.
A child stood inside.
Not more than five. Cloaked in threadbare black. Its eyes were covered with linen, but its face turned toward him, as though it could see through memory itself.
"Are you the one who carries the name?" it asked.
Mimus opened his mouth, but no words came.
"You took something not yours," it said. "And now it's growing inside you."
The child lifted its hand.
From its palm rose a miniature throne—identical to Mimus's Ashlike Oath seat, but fractured, pulsing.
"What you buried will find you."
Then the child vanished.
And the doors slammed shut.
---
He woke breathless.
His Echo pulsed wildly under his skin, out of rhythm. Like it was trying to speak. Trying to warn him.
Mimus looked around. He was still in the Vale. Caldrin was gone.
But he wasn't alone.
Something stood at the edge of the tree line.
Tall. Silent. Veiled in a robe of smoke and braided time. No footsteps. No sound. Just presence.
Not a Curator.
Not a Resonant.
Something else.
Mimus didn't move.
The figure raised one hand. In it: a stone etched with his name.
MIMUS.
Then it shattered.
And the world bent.
---
He found himself somewhere new.
The sky was red. Not like fire. Like wound.
He stood on a bridge made of voices, stretching endlessly between two unseen shores. Beneath it: a chasm of names being forgotten. Every time a name faded, the bridge shook.
Ahead, someone waited.
Not a threat.
A question.
It was her.
Vesyr.
Not as a fragment. Not as a trial.
But whole.
"You called me back," she said.
"No," Mimus replied. "I carried you forward."
She smiled, faintly. "That's why the Curators fear you."
He stepped toward her. "Are you real?"
"Real enough to leave something behind."
She touched his chest.
His Echo flared.
And a second glyph burned into existence beside his original mark.
Not overwriting.
Joining.
"You're not just oath-bound anymore," she whispered. "You're becoming a keeper."
"A what?"
"A vessel of remembrance."
"I didn't ask to be."
"No one ever does."
She stepped back.
"You need to go. Something's coming. Something hungry."
Then she faded.
And the bridge began to collapse.
---
He woke gasping, covered in ash.
This time, the ground around him had changed. Where he had slept, a circle of blackened names had burned into the dirt. His blade pulsed in warning.
Caldrin reappeared at the ridge, sword drawn.
"You felt it too?" she asked.
Mimus nodded, rising slowly. "Someone—something—marked me again."
"You were gone for hours. Time's different when dreams are layered."
He blinked. "Layered?"
"This place stacks memory over itself. Like bricks. The deeper you fall, the more you carry."
Mimus looked at the second glyph now seared onto his forearm. It glowed faintly. Vesyr's mark.
"I need answers," he said.
Caldrin nodded. "Then we find the Scribes."
---
They traveled west.
Past the roots of the Vale, into territory where few Resonants tread. The air here was sharper. It smelled like old ink and lost time. The sky overhead flickered with runes instead of clouds.
The Scribes were a faction even the Curators rarely touched. Not warriors. Not architects. Not judges. But keepers of Echo's raw form. They documented everything Varellen tried to forget.
They didn't speak.
They wrote.
Mimus found them beneath a buried amphitheater—twelve of them, hunched over floating parchment, quills made of glass, their hands moving in silence.
He didn't know how they noticed him. But they did.
One looked up.
And wrote his name.
The air around him shivered.
Then, without looking, the Scribe tossed him a page.
He caught it.
On it were words he hadn't spoken aloud:
> "He gave up her voice. Then carried the name of a dying light. And now, he is both. The past he refused to remember… and the future he dares to define."
— Mimus, Ashlike Keeper, Unwritten Thread
"Is that me?" he asked.
The Scribes didn't answer.
He bowed, slowly.
Then they returned to their work.
---
Later, by the fire, Caldrin finally spoke.
"You're changing too fast," she said.
"I don't feel like I'm changing fast enough."
She laughed bitterly. "That's how you know you're already gone."
He looked at her.
"You're scared," he said.
"Of you?"
"No. Of what I might do."
She didn't deny it.
Instead, she leaned back and looked at the stars—or what passed for stars here: memories of stars long dead.
"We all come into this thinking we'll play the game. That we'll fight, survive, maybe win. But the deeper we get, the less it's a game and the more it becomes... something else."
"What do you think it is now?"
She looked at him, tired.
"A story."
Then, softer:
"And stories don't care who they kill."
---
Far away, in a hall of mirrors that didn't reflect, a Curator watched a shard of parchment burn.
One line remained.
"Ashlike Keeper."
The Curator turned to another figure.
"Send the Harrowers."
A pause.
"To him?"
"No. To the others."
"Why?"
"Because the Keeper must not yet be broken. But he must learn what breaks."
---