The mission arrived at dusk, without messenger or warning.
One moment, Mimus stood beneath a collapsed archway with Ilyan and Olyra, discussing the nature of their Houses—how the thrones had marked them, how their Echoes hummed differently now. The next, a fragment of light descended from the sky like a falling needle, embedding itself into the sand with a sound that wasn't a sound, but memory compressed into vibration.
Mimus approached it.
The others formed a cautious semicircle around the shard. It pulsed once, and then unraveled into a flat disc—spinning, shifting, then finally projecting a figure made of Echo-light.
A Curator.
Veiled. Floating. Faceless. A living question.
Its voice came not as words, but as intentions formed directly into thought:
"Twelve of you remain marked. You were given thrones. Now you will be given a task."
"The Memory Vault in the Vale of Severed Names has been compromised. A former Resonant—Derrin Vay—has defied erasure."
"Find him. Unmake him. If you do not, the vault will break. If the vault breaks, Varellen fractures. And with it, all of you."
The figure dissolved.
No questions. No guidance. Just an order carved in light.
Silence hung in the air like smoke.
"A Resonant survived their own erasure?" Rhesk rumbled, stepping forward. "That's not possible."
"Apparently it is," Olyra replied.
"And the Curators want us to clean it up," Ilyan muttered. "Because even gods hate unfinished work."
---
That night, they set out.
The Vale of Severed Names lay beyond the Shifting Scar, a massive rift in Varellen's terrain where the rules of distance broke down. Walking through it meant encountering fragments of other realms—echoes of other participants long gone, wars lost to time, and at least one staircase that bled when stepped on.
Mimus walked at the front.
His Echo had grown steadier since claiming the Ashlike Oath. Still volatile, still emotional—but grounded now. When he closed his eyes, he could feel the pressure of Varellen around him, the eyes of the realm pressing against his skin. Watching. Always watching.
He didn't speak much. He was thinking of the mission. Of Derrin Vay.
"Do you think he's truly alive?" Mimus asked, as they crossed a bridge of glass bones.
Caldrin walked beside him again, arms tucked into her cloak.
"I don't know," she said. "But if he is, he'll be something more than just a survivor."
"Like what?"
"A mistake. One the Curators couldn't erase."
Mimus didn't like the sound of that.
---
The Vale arrived like a breath of cold wind.
One moment they stood in arid stone and jagged sky. The next, mist coiled around them like fingers, and the world went silent. The land dropped into a wide basin of gray trees—each leaf carved with a name, each branch humming softly.
Mimus stopped at the edge. "Is this it?"
Olyra stepped forward. "Yes."
"Where's the vault?"
"You're standing in it."
He looked again.
The forest was the vault. Each tree a vessel. Each root a root of memory. The Curators hadn't built a structure. They'd grown one. One that fed on forgotten names.
"I don't like this," Neren muttered, holding his flame close. "It's too quiet."
And then the quiet broke.
A scream—not distant, not close. But inside their heads.
Mimus staggered back, clutching his skull. The others reeled. Even Rhesk took a step backward.
"Echo spike," Caldrin growled, teeth gritted. "He's here."
---
They found Derrin Vay in the heart of the Vale.
He didn't look like a man.
Not anymore.
His body flickered between forms—young, old, burning, broken. His Echo flared outward in violent pulses, shredding the names from nearby trees. His eyes were mirrors. His voice was static.
"You shouldn't have come," he rasped. "There is no version of this where you win."
Mimus stepped forward. "You were erased. You shouldn't be here."
"I wasn't erased," Derrin said. "I remembered too hard."
He raised his hand.
And the Vale exploded.
---
Echo tore through the trees. Names turned to flame. The very rules of the world bent sideways. Rhesk charged in first, bringing his Echo hammer down like a mountain, but Derrin blinked out of existence.
"Scatter!" Olyra shouted.
Mimus ran, diving through collapsing branches, dodging loops of Echo that tried to rewrite him on impact. One struck Ilyan, and for a moment their face changed—someone else's childhood flickering across their features—before they shook it off.
Caldrin moved with surgical precision, cutting Echo strands with her dual blades. She reached Mimus's side and pointed to the center of the chaos.
"He's not moving randomly," she said. "He's bleeding memories to feed the vault. The longer he fights, the stronger he gets."
"Then we cut the feed," Mimus replied.
"How?"
"Give him something too sharp to hold."
Mimus closed his eyes.
He drew the Echo Vesyr had given him.
A memory too loud. Too painful. A name buried in ash.
He held it in his palm like a flame.
And hurled it.
The memory struck Derrin square in the chest.
He froze.
For one moment, all of him aligned.
A single shape. A single breath. A single truth.
Mimus moved.
His blade formed mid-step, glowing with oath-light. He slashed downward—
And split Derrin's Echo in half.
The explosion was silent.
Light collapsed inward. The vault trembled. Trees screamed.
And then, silence returned.
---
The group gathered in the aftermath.
Derrin's body was gone. Not dust. Not bone. Just… absent. As if the world had finally remembered how to forget him.
Only Mimus stood still, breathing hard.
Caldrin approached. "You okay?"
"No."
"That's good."
"Why?"
"Because it means you're still human."
He looked around at the others. Ilyan bleeding from the brow. Olyra pale. Rhesk kneeling beside a tree, whispering names. Neren quiet.
Then Mimus said something no one expected.
"I want to bury him."
They looked at him.
"He died carrying too much," Mimus said. "We should give his memory peace."
And so they did.
They carved a name onto a rootless tree and let it glow.
Not Derrin Vay.
But The One Who Remembered Too Much.
And for once, Varellen didn't resist.
---
Far above, in a realm of pure thought, a Curator watched.
Another moved beside them.
"He should not have survived that."
"He didn't," the other replied. "Not all of him."
"What now?"
"Now… we test his name."
They turned their eyes to Mimus.
And the world shifted again.
---