The silence that followed the Fifth Witness's scream was deafening. The kind of silence that settled in just before a storm broke across the world. Maereth had posted additional guards around the Hall of Echoes, but even she knew it wouldn't be enough if the Echoborn truly were on the move.
Caius paced the high chamber where Selene and Elias had gathered with Maereth and a handful of trusted temporal mages. The light from the Ecliptic Core had dimmed, as if retreating from some greater presence, and the swirling black-violet mist within pulsed erratically.
"What do we know about the Echoborn?" Selene asked, eyes flicking between the others.
"They are not a race," Maereth said grimly. "They are a consequence. A people born from shattered timelines—fragments of lives that never fully existed, yet still hunger for meaning, for permanence. They feed on stability, devouring moments to anchor themselves."
Elias, pale and shaking, added, "I read of them once. They're said to move through unanchored memory streams—attacking civilizations weakened by paradox. If they've found us…"
"Then every unhealed scar in time becomes a door," Caius finished.
As if to confirm his words, the fortress trembled. The air grew cold, the flames in the torches flickering blue. Echoes—partial images of people long gone—began to flicker into view across the hall. Some wept. Others stared blankly, locked in endless loops. And one—a child with no face—stood beside the Ecliptic Core, staring silently.
"They're already inside," Maereth whispered.
The first attack came at dusk.
Like a wave of broken glass, the Echoborn poured through the cracks in time. They didn't walk so much as shimmer, moving sideways through space, blinking between moments. Their forms were wrong—half-seen, their limbs too long or too short depending on the angle, their faces blank masks shifting with echoes of voices long dead.
Caius met the charge on the outer ramparts, a blast from the Chronomancer's Heart halting their advance. Time rippled around him, slowing their movements just enough for the Reach's defenders to react.
Selene stood at his side, blade drawn and glowing faintly with auric runes. Each swing severed not just flesh, but thread—unraveling the Echoborn's stolen timelines. Elias remained within the Hall of Echoes, directing the flow of information, coordinating retreat paths and drawing new glyphs to seal temporal breaches.
Maereth fought like a storm of fire and memory, her hands casting arcs of golden light that burned through the unreal.
But for every Echoborn destroyed, another emerged from a different thread.
"They're too many!" someone shouted.
"No," Caius muttered, "they're just everywhere."
He closed his eyes and reached deeper into the Heart. The memories swelled—thousands of potential futures screaming for release. But in that sea of chaos, he found one anchor: Selene's voice, her hand on his shoulder.
"We stand with you," she said, just like before.
He opened his eyes, calm. "Then we make them remember who they're dealing with."
The fighting lasted for hours. The battlements groaned under the weight of shattered time. Magical wards sparked and frayed, time-loops snapping into place and trapping small pockets of reality in repeating cycles. A medic screamed as he ran into one—doomed to repeat a ten-second sprint and scream over and over until the ward could be reformed.
Caius and Selene fought side by side, their coordination honed by countless trials. She slashed, he sealed. He rewound a collapsing staircase just long enough for her to leap across, then stopped time altogether to prevent an assassin's dagger from piercing her back. But their energy waned.
"Elias!" Caius shouted through the telepathic link. "How long can you hold the loops in the inner sanctum?"
"Not long!" Elias responded, his voice cracking with stress. "The Hall of Echoes is beginning to fracture. I—I think they're using the memories against us!"
Down in the sanctuary, Maereth screamed incantations in ancient tongues, her eyes glowing with unnatural light as she held back three temporal breaches by sheer will. Fragments of other worlds spilled through the cracks—ghost soldiers wearing banners from civilizations that had never existed, children calling out for parents who had died centuries ago, flames that burned in reverse.
"Pull back to the inner ring!" Caius commanded. "Regroup and re-anchor the ley-lines!"
As the defenders fell back, the Reach seemed to sigh. Stones groaned, and the very sky buckled. Caius knew it was only a matter of time.
Selene collapsed beside him during a lull in the fighting, her sword cracked and her left arm numb from overuse. Caius pulled her close, checking her wound. "We can't keep this up."
"We don't have to," she replied. "Just hold long enough for the Fifth Witness to remember."
He blinked. "What?"
"He said they're here. That they found us. But what if he didn't mean now? What if they followed a trail—his trail? What if he knows how to send them back?"
Caius looked toward the Hall of Echoes, where the Fifth Witness lay in a fitful trance. The old man mumbled fragments of lost languages, his fingers twitching as though pulling invisible threads.
It was a long shot. But in this war, a long shot was better than none.
"Elias!" Caius shouted again. "Stabilize the Witness. Feed him memory flow. Anything you can. He has to remember."
"I'll try, but I'm running out of clean threads!" Elias shouted back.
Maereth's voice cut in. "There's one tether left. It's volatile, but it leads to the origin point."
"Do it," Caius said without hesitation.
At dawn, the Echoborn retreated, vanishing back into the shadows between seconds. Whether it was by choice or exhaustion, none could say. But the Reach had survived—for now.
In the aftermath, the halls echoed with the cries of the injured. The Ecliptic Core still pulsed, but slower, like a wounded heart. And the Fifth Witness stirred.
His eyes fluttered open.
"I… I remember," he said.
Caius knelt beside him. "Tell me how to send them back."
The old man's gaze was distant, but his voice was clear. "There is a mirror… beneath the Black Cradle. Buried in the sands of the Timeless Vale. It shows not reflections, but roots. The place where their threads began. Break the mirror, and you sever the path they followed."
Selene exhaled. "Then we have our heading."
Caius looked toward the horizon, where the storm still raged in the distance.
"Pack everything," he said. "We leave at dusk."