When the night finds a name it has forgotten, the quiet shall split, and every shadow will remember the sound of fear.
* * * * *
Snow fell in whispers.
It drifted through the skeletal trees like ash from an old fire, muting the world into silence. The wind stirred just enough to sigh through the branches, and the forest listened, still and wide-eyed, as though it sensed something had changed.
A small fire burned in a shallow pit near a half-collapsed outcrop. Its flame clung stubbornly to life, flickering against the cold. One figure sat beside it, broad-shouldered, layered in furs, a short sword resting against his thigh. His eyes, dark and weathered, watched a second figure lying motionless beneath a roughspun cloak.
The stranger hadn't moved in hours.
Kael didn't expect him to. Not yet.
He had found the man at the foot of a frozen ravine the previous night—half-buried, barefoot, shirtless, skin laced with veins of black beneath the surface like spidered glass. Not dead, but not quite alive either. No weapons, no pack, no marks of a traveler. Just that strange, ink-dark brand sprawling from his spine like a wound carved into the skin.
Kael had seen Echo marks before—most folk awakened with them if the stories were true. Every Echo left its own scar, shape, or sigil somewhere on the body. But never like this.
He tossed another branch into the fire and leaned forward, elbows on knees.
"You're going to wake up eventually," he muttered. "And when you do, you'll either try to kill me, thank me, or scream."
He wasn't sure which he preferred.
Behind him, the fire crackled. Snow settled on the brim of his hood. And then, finally, just barely he heard it: a breath, sharp and sudden, like the first gasp of someone surfacing after drowning.
Kael didn't move.
The man stirred beneath the cloak. His shoulders tensed. Fingers twitched.
Another breath. This one slower.
Then a pair of gray eyes opened.
They stared up at the canopy—wide, uncertain, afraid. For a long moment the man didn't speak. Then he raised his torso suddenly, cloak falling from his shoulders. He looked at Kael. Then the trees. Then his own hands. Pale. Thin. Scabbed.
"…Where am I?"
Kael answered without shifting. "Half a day west of the Vale of Stones. Still in the Outer Reaches."
The man blinked. The names meant nothing.
"I found you in the ravine," Kael added, slowly. "You were freezing so I built the fire. Figured you'd either wake up or give me an excuse to stop and make a fire. I needed one."
A pause.
"…Why did you help me?"
"Practicality." Kael gestured at the darkness. "Company's useful when you're half lost and being hunted by people who prefer me dead. Thought I'd rescue a stranger, see if he's better conversation than a pine stump." He gave a dry smile.
Grey eyes narrowed, measuring the honesty in that. "Being hunted, huh..."
"People who hate debts." Kael tapped his sword hilt. "We owe each other a little survival, that's all. I'm Kael. What's your name?"
A pause, then the stranger frowned, eyes dipping to the snow. "I… don't know."
"Missing or never had one?"
"No idea."
Kael nodded once, accepting rather than questioning. "All right. Till memory returns, I'll call you Lethan. Old word—means 'left behind'. Fits till something better sticks."
Lethan tasted the name in silence and gave a brief nod. The fire popped, sending sparks coiling into the dark.
Kael reached for his waterskin, took a drink, then stood up and started gathering his stuff.
"Hate to break it to you, but we should move."
Lethan sat in silence a moment longer. Then, without a word, he veiled himself with the cloak tighter and rose up. His legs trembled, but he steadied.
Kael's brow lifted. "Can't say I expected you to be walking yet."
"I don't feel like dying frozen in a pit."
"That's fair." Kael said while covering the marks of the campfire. "Come on then. We've got half a day before the weather turns. North's dead. West leads toward the old boundary paths, that's where we should head to."
* * * * *
They moved in silence for a while, Kael leading a narrow track through the snow, Lethan a few steps behind. The forest was thick with frostbite and silence, broken only by the hush of boots on ice and the sigh of distant wind.
After a while, Kael spoke. "You ever heard of Echoes?"
"No."
Kael glanced back. "You've got one in your spine. Mark's deep. Too deep to be new."
Lethan touched the scar again. "What are they?"
"Memory. Or curses. Depends who you ask. When the old world cracked, pieces of it sank into people—like reflections shattered and scattered. Most people awaken with a bit of that weight. A talent. A madness. A burden. Yours... yours I can't say for sure. It looks old, and dangerous."
"You saw it and still saved me."
"Curiosity's killed better men than me," Kael muttered. "Besides, I've known worse monsters."
Lethan's hand drifted from the cloak. "Do you have one?"
"Yes. It helps me find what's buried." Kael pulled on the fur around his neck and tapped his collarbone, where a faint but intricate looking compass rose missing its north point lay under his skin. "Sounds grand, but it's mostly a metaphor. I 'feel' hidden seams—locks behind walls, the hinge in a trap, the loose stone in a floor. Handy for doors and tombs. Worthless in a sword‑line."
"Echoes aren't free," Kael went on, trudging between ice‑slick roots. "Each one comes with a leash. Conditions, drawbacks—call them what you like. Some Echoes eat stamina, some burn years off your life. Others demand a mood, a memory, a price in blood. Use the gift; pay the toll."
"A gift with a muzzle." Lethan's breath fogged the air.
"Exactly." Kael's boots halted at a crest of snow. "And every Echo I've seen has some balance like that, including mine. Yours…" He shook his head. "Can't guess the cost on something that old, that missing memory of yours? Might just be part of the price."
Before Lethan could respond, a whistle split the stillness—shrill, metallic, too close.
Then—a shout. Sharp and loud.
"Southside! I see him! The pines!"
Kael muttered. "Damn it."
From behind, the jangle of armor and bootfalls broke the hush.
"Run!" Kael turned to Lethan in urgency.
Though his legs shook, Lethan took a deep breath and sprinted along with Kael, catching glimpses of their pursuers. There seemed to be 5 for now, their equipment seemed fancy, not something youd expect from normal adventurers.
Arrows thunked into trees while shouts cursed Kael and Lethan from behind.
"Shit. The Iron Ledger crew, if I had to guess. They don't take prisoners so don't stop running, Lethan."
The terrain grew rougher—broken roots, chunks of dark stone jutting from beneath the frost. Then a sheer ridge rose ahead of them, flanked by two jagged spires like broken teeth.
Kael veered toward the right.
Just beyond the rocks, the forest fell away—into a wide, sloping hollow strewn with snow-covered rubble.
At its heart there was a fissure in the ground: rectangular, deep, rimmed with glyph-stained stone.
A ruin. Ancient and wrong.
Kael skidded to a stop at the edge, staring into it. Then up, behind.
Shadows moved between the trees.
"We're out of time," he said grimly. "They'll surround us in minutes."
"You really want to hide in there?" Lethan asked, breathing hard.
"I want to live." Kael unslung a rope from his shoulder and tied it to a warped iron root poking out of the ruin's lip. "Don't argue."
"I'm not." Lethan glanced behind them—torches were flickering now between the pines. "But they saw us come here."
"They won't follow us in... hopefully," Kael's tone was uncertain. "They'll wait since ruins are unpredictable and dangerous. But we've got no choice, its either death or maybe live."
Kael tossed the rope and began descending fast. "Follow!"
Lethan climbed down after him, boots scraping against the stone. The descent was rough, narrow, and tight with freezing air that stank of dust and something gross.
Above, shouts drew closer.
But no one followed them over the edge.
Kael reached the bottom just as Lethan stumbled down beside him, moments before a torch's glow broke over the rim above.
They crouched in darkness, pressed against the cold stone wall, listening.
A voice above: "They went down? Into that?"
"Damn it. We wait for the commander."
Kael exhaled slowly. The dark pressed in.