Chapter Five: Shadows Before the Spark
Part Nine – Zephryn Unlocks Echo Flare
Date: Maelis 27, Year 204 PCR
Location: Shattered Pulsewar Basin – Scarline Center
Time: 05:41 Veil Standard
The silence after the final strike was not victory.
It was recoil.
The kind of stillness that comes not from peace—but from the air realizing it had been holding its breath.
Pulse threads crackled weakly across the scarred basin, twisting upward from shattered Riftborn remains. They weren't bleeding. They were forgetting—their forms dissolving into fragmented memory, spiraling out of existence the way old dreams vanish upon waking.
But the scar they came from—the one Thrynn had etched into the ground?
It hadn't closed.
It had widened.
—
The ∞ glyph floated behind Zephryn's shoulder again, trembling.
Bubbalor hovered beside him, wings flickering erratically, still recovering from the earlier override.
And at the far edge of the scar, where the earth curled into itself like torn sheet music—
The Rift pulsed once more.
Not a full emergence.
Just a rumble.
A warning.
And from it—
A shape began to rise.
Not full-bodied. Not formed.
Just eyes.
Red.
Burning.
Familiar.
Zephryn staggered.
He had seen those eyes before.
—
Solara's memory hit him.
Not a soft flash.
A strike.
He saw her—standing in the flames of their shattered home, hand extended toward the Veil as the Choir closed in. She had whispered a phrase into the fracture—
One he'd forgotten.
But not anymore.
"Echo it. Even if they silence you."
—
The Riftborn shape opened its mouth—but no sound came.
Zephryn heard his own voice, echoed back.
A scream from when he was a child.
A sob from the night he thought Solara died.
A laugh he didn't remember laughing.
All of it came back.
Not through ears.
Through glyph.
—
The ∞ glyph began spinning faster.
Faster.
Then—
Stopped.
It compressed.
Collapsed.
And entered his chest.
—
Selka shouted his name—
"Zephryn!"
Too late.
He dropped to one knee.
Veins glowing.
Breath stolen.
Pulse scattering like broken rhythm.
The air trembled.
Yolti turned in panic. "What's he doing?!"
Kaelen reached forward—couldn't get close.
The hum pushed him back.
—
And Zephryn whispered one line.
Not to anyone around him.
To the Rift.
To the one watching.
"I never forgot."
Then stood.
And his body lit.
—
Not flame.
Not lightning.
Not sound.
Memory.
It burst from him like a wave.
The glyph returned—but wrong.
It was cracked.
Fragmented.
Like it had survived something.
It pulsed once.
Twice.
And then:
Echo Flare.
—
A ring of inverted pulse erupted from Zephryn's body, sweeping outward in a radius of thought.
Not just light.
Not just sound.
Emotion.
It hit the Riftborn form mid-rise.
And reflected.
The entire basin flashed with memory recoil.
—
Everyone saw something different.
Kaelen saw his father—dying in the Garden War, hand raised in a silent goodbye.
Selka saw the night Zephryn disappeared. Her blade clenched tighter.
Torr saw a girl's voice—one he never named—singing under moonlight.
Elari saw her mother. Crying. Not from grief. From love.
Sylie saw a battlefield she'd never spoken of.
Luma saw nothing—and wept.
Mino felt his own cast techniques unravel, rewritten by something older.
And Zephryn?
He saw Solara.
But not dead.
Standing.
Smiling.
Saying—
"They'll always try to forget us. But you—"
The Riftborn exploded.
—
The pulse wave collapsed in on itself, and Zephryn dropped.
This time he didn't rise.
His pulse was stable.
But his glyph?
Gone.
Only a shimmer remained on his forearm—faint, fading.
But the Rift?
Closed.
And the memory?
Stayed.
—
Thrynn's final scream echoed in the void that followed.
Not aloud.
In the pulse.
"We tried to forget you!"