They arrived in the village of Veridan as dawn tried and failed to break through the clouds. But even without sunlight, Kaien knew something was wrong.
There was no wind. No birds. No smoke from chimneys. Just silence.
Elias halted at the entrance. The others followed suit, eyes scanning the eerily still houses. Kaien reached for his shadow instinctively — it responded like a nervous dog, curling around his boots, alert.
Solryn narrowed his eyes. "This place hasn't been abandoned. It's been… silenced."
They walked in. The streets were clean — too clean. No bodies. No signs of struggle. Just strange imprints on the ground and walls. Shapes that looked almost… human. Like shadows burned into the earth.
Iria knelt beside one of the markings, brushing her fingers across a charred outline of a child's handprint. "Whoever did this… erased them."
"No," Elias said, stepping into the village square. "Not erased. Distorted."
Kaien approached a large, cracked statue in the center — or what remained of it. A twisted humanoid figure stood mid-turn, face warped, as though it had tried to scream through stone.
Then the air shimmered.
A ripple passed through Kaien's vision, like water on glass. For a moment — just a moment — he saw something else:
Children laughing. Merchants calling out in a bright market. The scent of bread, the chatter of a crowd. Life.
Then, silence again. A heavy, smothering void.
Kaien staggered back. "This village is stuck in a memory."
Solryn walked into the town hall — the only building with its door still intact. The others followed. Inside, the floor was scorched, and the walls were covered in unfamiliar sigils — burned deep with a black, unearthly flame.
At the far end of the room, something glowed faintly beneath shattered floorboards.
Solryn knelt, brushing away debris to reveal a crystal embedded with pulsing runes. He touched it, and ice spread outward in defensive reaction. The crystal fought back with static pulses of heat.
"Don't," Elias said quickly. "That's a memory anchor. A dangerous one."
Solryn rose slowly. "It's been tuned to overwrite emotional states. Someone turned this whole village into a lie."
Kaien stared at the burned symbols. "They weren't trying to kill the villagers."
Iria glanced at him. "Then what?"
"They were trying to replace them."
The shadows along the wall shifted — not Kaien's this time. Something was watching. Waiting.
Elias turned to the squad. "We leave now. This isn't a battlefield. It's a graveyard of realities."
"But what about the people?" Iria asked.
Elias paused. His eyes — so often unreadable — flickered with something almost human.
"They're not people anymore. They're echoes."