The cavern still pulsed with the fading remnants of the Scourborn's memory—its lament circling like smoke in the air. Yuuji stood motionless, breath shallow, the creature's voice still echoing in his mind:
"We were you once… until the echoes devoured us."
Sera shifted beside him, uneasy. "We should leave," she said. "This place…it's wrong. The echoes here aren't just fragmented—they're stitched together. Like someone's trying to make a new memory out of broken ones."
Yuuji didn't move. "Why did it remember me?"
Sera didn't answer.
They returned to the Enclave, but Yuuji's sleep was a fractured thing. That night, he dreamt—not of the past, but of futures that could never be. A Dominion city, burning. Sera, wearing a Pale Crown. Kael, screaming as chains of light tore his echoes apart. And himself… not as he was now, but becoming something monstrous. A Scourborn of his own making.
When he awoke, Kael was waiting.
"You touched something forbidden," the old man said, eyes heavy with knowledge. "There are echoes in this world that were erased for a reason."
Yuuji told him everything. The Scourborn's words. The twisted memory threads. The visions.
Kael sighed. "What you found is an Echo Aberrant—a memory that defies its own timeline. They should not exist. When they do, they poison the flow of all others."
"But it knew me."
"It remembered a future that hasn't happened yet," Kael said grimly. "Or one you chose to forget."
Sera burst into the room, out of breath. "The Dominion—they're moving. A Seeker's entered the Enclave's outer veil. He's looking for you, Yuuji."
Yuuji felt something cold stir within him. Not fear—but recognition.
---
Final Line:
"Let him come," Yuuji said. "I need to know what he remembers of me."
They gathered at the outer veil by nightfall, where the boundary between the Hollow Enclave and the wilds of Vesvara shimmered like a wound trying to heal. Mist clung to the trees, unnaturally silent. The sky above churned with echo storms—lightning that flashed but never struck, thunder that whispered instead of roared.
Sera tightened her grip on her daggers. "Dominion Seekers don't come alone. If he's here, others will follow."
Kael stood behind them, warding sigils flickering along his robes. "This one came through unseen. No distortion wake. No anchor glyph. He didn't enter—he remembered a path that led him here."
Before Yuuji could respond, a figure stepped from the mist.
He was draped in monochrome—robes of black etched with silver veins of memory-thread. A Dominion Seeker. But unlike the rigid enforcers Yuuji had heard of, this one moved like a ghost—graceful, sure, human. His face was uncovered, and his eyes glowed not with dominion light, but flickers of doubt.
He stopped ten paces away. Then he spoke.
"Yuuji Ishikawa. Echoforged. Voidbound. Whisperer of the Godless Tongue."
Yuuji's breath caught. "You know me."
"I remember you," the Seeker said. "But not from this world."
The veil around him shimmered, and with it, the air fractured—brief flashes of scenes that made no sense:
Yuuji standing atop a Dominion citadel, weeping.
A blade of echo-wrought glass driven through Erisen's form.
The Pale Crown shattered, its shards orbiting Yuuji's body like moons.
The Seeker's voice trembled. "I came not to kill you… but to ask: Why did you choose to forget what you became?"
Silence reigned.
Then Kael whispered, "He's a Chrono-Echo. Not just a Seeker—he's from a timeline that collapsed."
The Seeker turned to Kael. "Not collapsed. Buried. By him." He looked at Yuuji again.
Yuuji staggered back. "That's not possible. I just got here—how could I have done any of that?"
"You didn't yet," the Seeker said, voice breaking. "But you will. And when you do… remember this mercy."
He raised a hand—and a pulse of memory flooded Yuuji's mind.
A battlefield of ash. The Hollow Enclave reduced to echo dust. Sera screaming his name as he turned away. Erisen, kneeling—afraid. And Yuuji—no longer himself, but something vast, cold, echo-starved.
Then the vision shattered. The Seeker was gone.
Only a single phrase remained, burned into Yuuji's thoughts:
"The future is an echo you've already whispered."
Yuuji collapsed to one knee, gasping. The vision—no, the implanted memory—had ripped through him like a blade made of loss. His hands trembled. He looked down and saw threads of translucent light coiling around his fingers—residue of an echo trying to root itself inside him.
Kael moved fast, chanting a severance incantation. The threads hissed and disintegrated.
"You're not ready for memories that haven't happened yet," he growled. "Especially not ones forced into your mind."
Yuuji looked up, eyes wide. "That wasn't just a warning. It was a piece of my own future."
Kael nodded grimly. "Or worse—a future you destroyed to become what you are now."
Sera crouched beside him, her voice sharp with worry. "That Seeker wasn't like the others. He didn't use glyphs or echo weapons. He remembered paths, places, and names. He knew how to rewrite his own past to walk here."
Yuuji's heartbeat slowed, but the tremors within him didn't fade. "He said I chose to forget what I became… That I buried a timeline. But I haven't done anything yet."
Kael shook his head. "In Vesvara, time is stitched with memory. If you alter echoes deeply enough… the future starts to echo backward. Some believe powerful Voidbound can erase timelines not just through action—but through will."
Yuuji stood shakily, his voice flat. "Then what the hell am I becoming?"
---
The council chamber of the Hollow Enclave was summoned for an emergency meeting.
The Elders came in silent procession, draped in decaywoven cloaks that whispered with thousands of dead memories. The chamber was a hollowed root beneath the Shardwell, etched with echo-script that changed every time someone blinked.
Kael stood in the center, with Yuuji and Sera flanking him. As soon as the room sealed, Kael began:
"A Chrono-Echo Seeker has breached the veil. He was not sent by the Dominion—at least, not by the one we know. He remembered Yuuji from a collapsed possibility. A thread of time where Yuuji shattered Erisen, wore the Pale Crown, and razed the Enclave."
Gasps rippled. The sigils on the walls flared dimly, reacting to the weight of Kael's words.
One of the Elders, an ageless Echoweaver named Thren, leaned forward. "Impossible. A collapsed thread cannot echo backward unless—"
"Unless someone dragged it back through," Kael said. "And this Seeker claimed Yuuji buried it himself."
Murmurs exploded. Fear. Reverence. Doubt.
Yuuji stepped forward. "I didn't ask for this power. I didn't choose to fall into this world."
Thren studied him. "Yet the void chose you. That makes you more dangerous than any Dominion general."
Another Elder, cloaked in deep azure and voice barely audible, whispered: "He is a convergence. A knot of echoes that were meant to be unraveled, not born. The Scourborn mourned their fate because they recognized him. He is what they were supposed to be… before their minds broke."
---
Later, alone on a stone balcony that jutted over the Shardwell's glimmering abyss, Yuuji tried to quiet the voices in his head—his own, but older. Wiser. Broken.
"You're not ready for the truth," said one.
"You're already too late," said another.
"Let go," whispered the third, the most dangerous of all. "Let go, and become."
Sera appeared, eyes shadowed by unspoken questions.
He spoke first. "Do you think I'll become him? The one in that future?"
She didn't answer right away.
"I think… that's what the Dominion wants. Either you become a monster, and they're justified in killing you. Or you break, and they erase you quietly. But if you stay yourself—truly yourself—maybe you can do something they never expected."
He stared out into the storm-torn sky. "What's that?"
"Change the story."
---
A tremor shook the Enclave—subtle but unnatural.
An acolyte ran up moments later, breathless. "A Dominion Anchor has just dropped in the southern wastes. A Severer-class. They've declared this entire region a corrupted echo zone. They're coming."
Kael's voice turned to steel. "They're not hunting the Enclave. They're hunting him."
Yuuji's voice was calm. Too calm.
"Then I need to know what they remember of me."