The light on the other side was not light at all.
It was memory, condensed.
Mimus stepped out of the doorway into a plain suspended in nothing. No sky. No horizon. The ground beneath him was solid, but barely—ash and smoke, woven together with threads of glowing Echo. Every step left behind a faint imprint, like his presence was being recorded.
He took another step. And another. And the plain shifted.
No—responded.
Shapes rose in the distance, forming not from matter but recollection. Towers from Ikenar, warped by perspective. Bridges that led nowhere. A door from his childhood home, suspended in the air. The remnants of places he had been… or dreamed of being.
This wasn't a real place.
It was a map of his mind.
"Welcome to your imprint," said a voice behind him.
Mimus turned. A figure stood just outside the threshold he'd passed through—a tall man, cloaked in dark blue, face covered by a veil of light. Not the twisted reflection from before. This one was different. Neutral.
"Who are you?" Mimus asked.
"A witness," the figure said. "Not a test. Not a trial. My name doesn't matter."
"Then why are you here?"
"To help you shape what comes next."
The figure raised a hand, and the plain rippled.
Dozens of versions of Mimus flickered into being—each frozen in motion, each from a different possibility. One wielded fire. One bled ink. One stood atop a mountain of bones, eyes vacant. One cradled a dying child in his arms. All of them were him. All of them bore his Echo in some form.
"You've begun the awakening," the Witness said. "But you don't yet know what you're becoming."
"I don't want to become them."
"They're not them. They're you—choices you didn't make. Paths you denied. They live here, in the Echo. That's what Eidara is: not just power, but echoed potential made manifest."
Mimus clenched his fists. "I'm not ready for this."
"No one ever is," said the Witness. "But readiness isn't required. Truth is."
The Witness pointed.
From the ash, a single figure rose.
This one did not shimmer. It was solid. Real.
Rynor.
Not a memory. Not a distorted fragment. He looked exactly as Mimus remembered him—wiry, intense, eyes too sharp for someone his age. He wore the half-cloak of the Ikenari scouts, and the red beads braided into his hair were still unburned.
Mimus felt his knees weaken.
He hadn't seen Rynor in over a year. Not since Uzelith burned.
"Is that…?" he whispered.
"No," said the Witness. "Not truly. But it is the closest your Echo can recreate. You've carried his memory long enough to give him shape."
Rynor stepped forward.
And spoke.
"You left me."
The words were simple. Not accusatory. Not cruel. Just honest.
"I tried to stay," Mimus whispered. "I tried—"
"You chose survival," Rynor interrupted.
"I didn't want to die."
"I did."
Mimus flinched. "That's not true."
"You knew the mission. One of us had to light the Beacon. The other had to buy time. You chose the Beacon. You chose the story."
"I chose the future," Mimus said, more loudly now. "I chose what would keep our people alive."
"And I chose what would keep you alive," Rynor said softly.
That stopped him.
The Rynor before him wasn't angry. He was tired.
Mimus fell to one knee. "You're not real. You're just what I remember."
"That's the thing about Echo," Rynor replied. "It doesn't care. It remembers better than you do. Sometimes truth lives in memory longer than it lives in life."
The Witness stepped closer.
"Do you see now?" he asked. "This is not about guilt. Not about redemption. It's about recognition. Every Resonant must come to know what they carry. And what they left behind."
"I already gave up her voice," Mimus said, his own voice hoarse. "How much more does this place want from me?"
The Witness didn't answer.
Because he already knew.
---
He stood again, this time without trembling.
Rynor waited.
"I can't undo the choice I made," Mimus said. "I can't go back. But I can carry what it cost."
He opened his hand.
His blade appeared—but not like before.
This time, it wasn't forged from denial. It was shaped from acceptance.
The steel rippled with Echo. At its center, a tiny sphere of red light pulsed—the same shade as the beads Rynor once wore.
"Then carry it," Rynor said. "And don't forget what we were."
Mimus stepped forward.
And embraced him.
The illusion broke—but not with violence.
It broke gently, like a flame that had burned long enough.
---
The imprint began to dissolve.
The Witness turned to him one final time. "You're ready now."
"For what?"
"For the realm where the others wait."
Mimus blinked. "Others?"
"You think you're the only one the Curators called?"
The Witness smiled.
And the world folded inward.
---
He landed in sand.
Real sand.
The heat of it surprised him. Not pain—but sensation. A sign that Varellen's deeper layers were closer to truth than illusion.
A city shimmered in the distance, half-buried in dune and glass. At its center: a spire made of weeping stone, constantly shifting, as if remembering different histories each moment.
Voices rose in the wind.
Some laughing.
Some screaming.
Some singing in languages Mimus had never heard.
He wasn't alone anymore.
The Tournament had begun for real.
And this time, it wasn't just him.
---