The Hollow ended.
Beyond it, a stone bridge stretched across a chasm of silence. Below: swirling threads, lost voices, and echoing screams that never quite reached the surface.
> "The Vault of Echoes," Meyric said. "Built where fate goes to die."
Aiden stepped forward. His thread-scars pulsed — reacting to the place like it knew him.
> "Do we knock?" he asked.
Meyric didn't smile.
> "We offer something forgotten."
Aiden paused… then reached into his cloak and pulled out the locket — still faint, but holding Lyra's shape now.
He dropped it onto the stone.
The moment it touched the ground, the Vault responded.
A ripple in reality. Then a grinding sound — like thousands of gears wrapped in thread — as the massive gate slowly opened.
---
Inside the Vault, it was cold — not the chill of weather, but of emptiness. Shelves of memory-threads pulsed dimly, coiled like sleeping snakes. Each thread shimmered with pieces of lives… loves… regrets.
And then the Whispers came.
They looked like shadows stitched from mist. They had no eyes, but they turned toward Aiden.
> "That's him," one hissed. "The boy who broke the pattern."
> "The echo-walker."
> "The almost-Kael."
Meyric raised his staff, but the whispers did not attack. Instead, they bowed.
> "One of us," they murmured.
"Or soon."
Aiden felt cold spread through his limbs — like something was crawling inside him.
---