The valley had not stopped echoing.
Even after the First Forgotten vanished, even after Mimus returned to the others, the air carried a strange hum. Not loud—but constant. Like a thought you couldn't shake. It pulsed in the bones more than the ears.
Varellen was changing again.
---
"What did she take from you?" Olyra asked as they regrouped beneath a ridge warped by residual light. Her voice was soft, not gentle—like someone asking where the arrow landed.
Mimus didn't answer right away. He looked at his hands. Flexed his fingers. Remembered the burn behind his ribs when the First Forgotten struck his chest.
"Nothing," he said finally. "She tried to take my name."
"She's failed before," Ilyan muttered, "but never like this."
Neren was crouched by the ash-ring again, feeding it with bits of flame and torn parchment. "If the Curators are sending her, we're closer to something they don't want opened."
"Like what?" Rhesk asked.
Ilyan answered without looking up. "Like the next gate."
---
It arrived by storm.
The wind picked up just after sundown. Echo gusts tore at their cloaks, flinging grit across the ridge. The sky—what was left of it—peeled back like cracked vellum, revealing a jagged seam of prismatic color above the horizon.
A waterfall of light poured from the tear.
Not water. Not flame. Not Echo.
Memory.
Thousands of falling moments, shimmering as they collided and fused into a structure below. It looked like a tower at first, but it grew in loops and bridges, branches and archways, all made of the same falling essence.
"The next gate," Caldrin said, shielding her eyes. "But not built—falling into place."
"Echofall," whispered Mimus.
---
They approached the structure slowly.
It was larger than anything they'd seen in Varellen—a spire-tree-temple grown from condensed memory. The surface changed texture the closer you looked. One moment, stone. The next, scrolls. Then scars. Each section whispered different voices. Some pleading. Some defiant. One was just breathing.
Even Rhesk—solid, immovable—walked more carefully now.
At the edge of the gate, a curved platform extended from the center, opening like a petal as they neared. Words carved themselves across it:
Those who pass must give what roots them.
Everyone stopped.
"What does that mean?" Neren asked.
"It means sacrifice," said Caldrin. "Not pain. Truth."
Mimus stepped forward. "Not just what we love. What we stand on."
The spire pulsed.
It was listening.
---
Each warrior approached in silence.
Olyra gave the sound of her heartbeat—the one she used to steady her strikes.
Rhesk gave a shard of his father's voice, the one that once told him when to lift a hammer.
Ilyan gave a mirror fragment that had shown them their first Echo. Their fingers trembled as they let it go.
Neren gave the first flame he ever conjured—the one he swore never to use again. It screamed when it left him.
Caldrin stepped up last before Mimus.
She placed a lock of white-gold hair on the platform. "The last piece of my sister," she said. "She died believing I could be more than a weapon."
For a moment, no one moved.
Then the gate shimmered.
And accepted them.
---
Then came Mimus.
He stood before the spire.
"What do I give?" he asked aloud. Not to the group. To the gate.
It didn't answer.
He thought of Ikenar. Of the ruins. Of Vesyr and the weight she gave him. Of Rynor, who had shaped his past and vanished into the silence.
Of the versions of himself he never became.
And in that moment, he understood.
"I give what I could have been," he whispered.
He drew his blade.
And whispered his name into it.
The blade glowed.
Then cracked.
A thousand versions of Mimus shattered into the wind—echoes of choices unchosen. One wept. One burned. One never existed. One was still holding Rynor's hand.
Each fragment passed the others silently.
And vanished.
The gate flared.
He stepped through.
---
On the other side, there was no ground.
Just a sky flipped inside out.
They stood on platforms of stitched memory, suspended across a vast space where gravity bent toward emotion. Every step was a story. Every breath triggered fragments of unspoken prayers.
This was not a battleground.
It was a judgment.
The platforms shifted beneath their weight. A misstep didn't fall you—it rewrote you. Olyra faltered and blinked, suddenly older. Neren steadied her. Rhesk caught a glyph midair and crushed it in his fist.
"This place wants to change us," Ilyan said.
And ahead, atop the final platform, stood a figure in black robes, face obscured by a crown of glass.
The air around them twisted.
The others froze.
Mimus stepped forward.
"I think that's a Curator," he said.
"No," Caldrin whispered. "It's worse."
Ilyan's eyes widened. "It's a Witness."
---
The Witness raised a hand.
And the platform beneath them began to dissolve.
Then came the voice—deeper than thought, etched in Echo:
"One among you remembers too clearly."
"One among you will be tested."
The Witness pointed to Mimus.
His Echo flared in response.
And the platform vanished beneath him.
He fell—not through space, but through stories.
Through every moment he had almost lived.
Through every memory he had taken from someone else.
And below it all, a new voice whispered:
"Show us who you are when no one remembers you at all."