The mark on Karael's hand burned cold.
It wasn't a wound, yet it throbbed like one—a faint pulse behind the eye-shaped symbol seared into his flesh. Each beat echoed through him like a memory not yet remembered.
He rose on shaky legs.
The stone beneath him felt warmer than it should have been. The chamber—the living grave where he had awakened—had gone still. The walls no longer pulsed. The breath of the unseen had ceased.
The silence was too complete.
Even his own footsteps didn't echo.
It felt… intentional. As if the place no longer wanted to be perceived.
And yet, the brand on his palm hummed—an anchor to a reality that was trying to forget him already.
He stepped beyond the monolith's ruin. Its shards whispered as he passed, curling into dust that shimmered like bone turned to snow. Something in them tugged at him—a half-thought. A song he almost knew.
But the world beyond the chamber pulled harder.
A narrow corridor stretched ahead, ribbed with the bones of architecture that once followed rules. The walls were curved, bent inward, shaped like the inside of a throat. Moss clung to the ribs. Veins of light pulsed beneath the stone, running like nerves.
Karael walked.
He didn't know where he was going. He only knew he couldn't stay here.
Behind him, the monolith gave a final breath.A low sigh, like the end of a dream.
And the door he hadn't seen before slammed shut, vanishing into the wall behind him.
He walked for what felt like hours.
Time didn't behave here. The veins of light in the walls dimmed and brightened irregularly. Sometimes they flickered as if laughing. Sometimes they shivered like prey.
Eventually, the corridor opened into a vast, circular antechamber.
It was hollowed into the side of a mountain, with a ceiling so high it vanished into shadow. Strange stone platforms hovered in the air above, drifting slowly like thoughts half-formed.
But what caught Karael's attention was the statue in the center.
It wasn't carved from stone, but grown from something darker—obsidian muscle twisted into the shape of a towering humanoid figure. Its head was bowed. Its hands were cupped together, as if offering something. Or catching something.
The moment Karael stepped into the room, the eye on his hand flared.
He stumbled, clutching his chest. Something inside the statue had noticed him.
"Witness," said a voice—not aloud, but within the bones of the room. "You have drawn breath where none was granted. You have opened what was sealed."
Karael backed away.
"You wear the mark of stolen memory. You have trespassed into the Hollow That Remembers."
He fell to his knees, gasping.
"What are you?" he rasped aloud.
The statue did not move.But its shadow bent wrong. It leaned toward him as if listening.
"You are Echoborn. Now, so are we."
The world tilted.
Karael felt his body collapse, though he never hit the ground. Instead, he sank into a flood of images—memories not his own:
A man screaming as tendrils erased his face.A child laughing in a tower made of mirrors that never reflected her.A creature with a hundred mouths praying into its own skull.
"You will feed us what you steal," the voice whispered. "And in turn, we will let you remain."
When Karael woke, he was outside.
No longer in a stone cathedral or a memory-wound chamber, but a desolate cliffside that overlooked a grey valley of drowned forests and broken cities.
The sky above him churned with too many moons. They moved in directions he couldn't track.
His hand still bore the mark.But something else had changed.
He could feel it.
A second heartbeat. A presence beneath his skin, coiled deep behind the ribs. A silent, alien intelligence. Not sentient. Not friendly. Not cruel.
Just there.
Waiting.
Karael wandered the cliff path until the sun—if that's what the thing in the sky was—began to bleed.
That was when he saw her.
A figure crouched near the edge of a crumbled bridge, stabbing something with a jagged spear made of fused bone and glass.
A creature writhed beneath her.Black fluid hissed from its skull as it screeched.
It had too many legs. And no mouth.
Karael hid behind a broken pillar.
The woman turned.
Her skin was pale but smudged with ash and blood. She wore no armor—just a cloak made of scavenged threads and dried moss. Her eyes were gold, bright as coins buried too long.
"You're not from this Fold," she said.
Karael flinched. "What?"
She stood, spear dripping, gaze fixed on him.
"You smell like dust and memory," she said, stepping closer. "You've been Marked."
She could see it—his hand.
"I don't know what that means," he replied.
She nodded. "You will."
She knelt beside the twitching corpse. "This one was Echo-fed. A husk drawn back by hunger."
"You killed it."
"I fed it back into the Hollow," she said, casually, as if explaining how to start a fire. "It'll rot better there."
He looked again at the corpse. It had begun to wither rapidly—skin shrinking, bones cracking, black steam rising.
"Who are you?" Karael asked.
She stood, spear resting across her shoulders.
"Your first companion," she said, smiling with too many teeth."Name's Raleth. I was reborn three Folds ago."
"Folds?"
"This world's layered like a cracked mirror. You'll see. If you survive."
They moved together after that.
Not out of trust, but necessity.
Raleth knew how to find shelter. Knew what not to look at. Knew how to avoid "Echo pools," whatever those were. She taught him to keep his left side always in shadow, and to never speak while crossing bridges.
Some of the rules made no sense. Others did, but he wished they didn't.
As they traveled, Karael saw the world unfold.
Ruined cities with no names. Forests of stone trees that grew in reverse. Rivers made of reflection. And always—always—the feeling that something was watching him from behind the sky.
Sometimes they found others.
They didn't last long.
A girl who wore the face of someone Karael had once known—until it peeled off. A merchant of clocks who asked riddles no one could understand, then burst into flame when answered.
And worse things.
Hunters with teeth made of memory. Hounds that barked regrets.
Some they fought.Others they ran from.
And some, they simply forgot.Because forgetting was safer.
One night, as they sheltered inside the ribcage of a fallen god-statue, Raleth finally asked:
"How'd you wake up?"
Karael stared into the campfire—though it gave no heat.
"A monolith," he said. "Covered in symbols. I touched it."
Raleth nodded grimly. "An Echo-anchor. It marked you."
"It said I had stolen from the forgotten."
"You did."
He looked at her. "What does that mean?"
Raleth tapped her temple. "You'll remember. The Echo always collects."
He hesitated. "You're like me, aren't you?"
She held up her palm.
Her mark was different—shaped like a spiral fracturing inward.
"There are many kinds of Echo," she said. "Many kinds of theft."
The wind howled outside.
Karael couldn't sleep.
He stared at his hand, at the mark that shimmered faintly even in darkness. He could feel it now—calling. Not outward, but inward.
It wanted something from him.
Something lost.Something buried.
And in the distance, beneath the skin of the world, something answered.