Night fell without warning.
There was no slow descent of golden hue, no lingering warmth. One breath, the world held dim light; the next, it vanished behind a curtain of cold shadow. Evelyn felt the change in her bones—an ache that settled near the shard beneath her skin. The pulse had grown faint, but insistent. A heartbeat in tune with something ancient and wrong.
The shelter Vareth had found was a crevice of stone curled like a dead hand atop a rise. The hollow opened in three directions, shadowed by broken statuary and vines that held no green. Moss glowed faintly in veins across the inner wall—an old trick of alchemical lichen once used to mark safe resting sites.
"We won't light a fire," Vareth said, crouched near the entrance, eyes never still. "They see warmth like birds see motion. But worse."
Evelyn pressed her back to the cool stone and watched Torren sleep. Or tried to. His jaw was clenched even in rest. Pain radiated from his shoulder down his bandaged side. She had done what she could, binding it tight and pushing cooling salve from the last of the market stock, but they were running out of everything. Especially time.
She turned her gaze toward the night, past Vareth, and then paused.
There was no sound.
No wind. No creaking bark. Not even the usual distant whine of the ash gnats.
Only stillness.
"Do you hear that?" she whispered.
Vareth's hand went to his blade. "Nothing."
"Exactly."
They waited. The silence deepened. Then—tap. A soft, deliberate sound. Stone striking stone.
Vareth tensed. "That's not wind."
Tap-tap. Pause. Tap.
Rhythmic. Measured.
Evelyn leaned forward, eyes adjusting.
Something stood on the far ridge.
Tall. Lean. Unmoving.
She couldn't make out features—only a shape against the stars. But even that was wrong. The figure bent inward slightly, like it had been broken and set wrong. One arm dangled longer than the other, and its head was tilted too far, too still.
Then it took a step.
Tap.
And another.
Tap.
Vareth reached slowly for the pouch at his belt, drawing out a pebble etched with a spiral rune.
"You'll use that?" Evelyn whispered. "We need it for—"
"It's not for it," Vareth said. "It's for alerting anyone else in range."
"Who else is in range?"
He didn't answer.
The figure moved closer, and now Evelyn could see more.
Its legs didn't walk—they glided.
No, not glided. Rewound. Each step looked like the memory of motion, not motion itself. As if the thing remembered walking and had mimicked the echo.
An Echoed. But this one was different. They'd seen remnants—wild things formed from chaos and spirit and death. But this—this watched.
"Cover Torren," Vareth ordered. "If it comes, you run. You don't fight this one."
"I'm not leaving him."
The Echoed paused at the edge of the clearing. It raised a hand. Bent a finger back. And then—
It spoke.
A whisper, brittle and fragmented.
"Evv—elyynnn."
Evelyn staggered back.
Vareth swore under his breath.
It knew her name.
The shard in her chest blazed, sudden and wild. She gripped it through her tunic, panting.
The figure tilted its head more, if possible, until it nearly touched its shoulder.
Then it turned and vanished into the dark, its footsteps rising into nothingness.
Gone.
Not killed. Not repelled. Simply… withdrawn.
Vareth stood still for a long while before speaking.
"They've never done that before," he said. "That wasn't scouting. That was marking."
Evelyn stared where the creature had stood.
And in the silence that followed, she realized something deeper than fear.
They were being watched. Not hunted—not yet. Tested.