The bells of Umbracairn tolled not with chimes, but with whispers. A trembling resonance echoed through the black marble halls of the academy—low and grating, as if somewhere in the deep, a chain was being dragged across stone.
Solan Maelvaran awoke in the dormitory, breath fogging the air. The Mask of the Forsaken Tongue rested cold beside him, its surface slick with dew, though no rain had fallen.
He hadn't dreamed of the Labyrinth this time.
He had dreamed of someone else.
A boy in a glass room. Pale-skinned, etched with flame-shaped glyphs. Muffled voices beyond the walls, arguing in the Forgotten Tongue.
You are the last ruin, the voice of the dream mother whispered. The last unbound shard. Your sleep must remain sealed…
When Solan opened his eyes, a new mark pulsed on his left wrist. A rune, spiraling inward like a thorned eye. Not his own. Not from any system rite. He knew every Veilcraft pattern he'd etched into his soul—and this one did not belong.
It felt like a scar someone else had earned.
Across the chamber, his system interface flickered, uncertain—then went dark entirely. The rune could not be registered. It wasn't a skill. It was a memory.
—
By first light, the faculty had summoned him.
Instructor Feralin waited alone in the antechamber of the Inner Cloisters. Her robes were black and amber, her arms lined with mirrored plates that shimmered when she moved.
"Maelvaran," she said, without looking up from her silver grimoire. "What do you know of the Fifth Echo?"
Solan stiffened. "Nothing. I heard that phrase once. A whisper. During my first Reckoning."
Her eyes flicked toward him, sharp and unreadable.
"That's impossible. The Fifth Echo is… sealed. Not spoken of. Not accessible unless you share blood with the Tower Founders. And yet—" She tilted the grimoire toward him. On its page was a rune identical to the one now burned into his wrist. "You bear the Mark of the Hollow Flame."
"I didn't forge this," Solan muttered. "It was given. Or… leaked. Through a dream."
"Then you're not the only one being breached," Feralin said darkly.
She closed the book with a snap and waved her hand toward the high door.
"Go to the Dueling Cloister. You're to spar with another Veilwalker. An advanced student—Kaelir Thorne."
—
The dueling courtyard was sunless, its ceiling veiled in stormglass. Around it, masked instructors observed from blackened alcoves, silent as statues.
Kaelir Thorne waited at the center of the ring.
His hair was ash-white, eyes ember-red. The rune fire that coiled across his skin moved like molten ink—alive, like serpents made of truth. He wore no armor, only crimson wraps that bared his arms and chest, exposing the brand of a Crown-tier Soulchain curling over his ribs like a second spine.
"You're the one," Kaelir said, stepping forward. "The one the Mirror whispered about."
Solan didn't answer.
"You don't remember, do you?" Kaelir smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. "They buried you in a pit and stitched your name shut. But it didn't work. The Veil still remembers."
Solan flexed his fingers. The Mask at his belt vibrated faintly.
Kaelir's own relic gleamed at his throat—a shard of mirrored coal suspended in iron. The Hollow Flame.
"Begin," came the voice of Instructor Delryn from above.
Kaelir's hand blurred.
A streak of crimson fire surged toward Solan—not heat, but burning language, a lash of Truth-script that screamed as it carved through air. Solan's Mask pulsed; he activated Veilbend Step, his shadow flickering as he vanished an instant before the fire struck.
He reappeared behind Kaelir, lunging with a rune-carved dagger.
Kaelir didn't turn. Instead, his skin flared, and Solan's blade melted on contact. The fire wasn't physical—it was belief made manifest. It burned lies, illusions, anything not rooted in self.
Solan dove back, hand outstretched. The air warped. His Mask intoned a forgotten phrase, and from it unraveled a web of syllables that cut like glass: Memory Laceration.
Kaelir staggered, his fire briefly dimming.
But then the ground erupted beneath Solan, tongues of mirror-flame spiraling upward. One coiled around his leg and burned straight through his Veil-tunic, branding flesh.
System alert.
Damage: 17% soul-scarring sustained.
Fragmentation threshold: approaching instability.
Solan growled and activated Chain Pulse. Wyrm surged forth from his shadow, coiling around the flame like a snake of pure void. The two forces hissed, countering each other—fire and abyss.
Kaelir's eyes widened. "You bound a Warden without reaching Tier III? How are you still sane?"
Solan didn't answer. Instead, he raised his hand, palm bleeding a whisper. A Reckoning rune flared midair.
"Stop!" Instructor Delryn's voice thundered. A glyph detonated above the courtyard, scattering force through both fighters.
Solan collapsed to one knee. Kaelir coughed smoke, his fire flickering. The silence that followed was tense and crackling.
"This is not a battlefield," Delryn growled. "But perhaps it should be."
He descended the stairs, robes whispering.
"You two will settle this in action. A joint trial."
Solan and Kaelir both looked up.
"You are being sent to the Sea of Sealed Light. Beneath the Hollow Tower's wreck lies a relic chamber—recently disturbed by spatial bleed. You are to retrieve what you find, bind what you must… and survive together. Or not at all."
—
That night, Solan didn't sleep.
He sat by his window, staring out over Eidralune's ruins. The Mirror of Names pulsed faintly in the distance, buried beneath broken cathedrals.
The system was silent. But something else was not.
Wyrm stirred in his thoughts. "He carries a broken crown. Do not trust it. Flames do not whisper—they devour."
"And me?" Solan asked softly. "What am I becoming?"
Wyrm didn't answer. But the rune on Solan's wrist bled ink into his veins, branching like roots.
In the darkness, a dream approached.
A memory not his.
And somewhere beneath the Sea of Sealed Light, the Fifth Echo waited—and it remembered him.