By IMERPUS RELUR
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The silence stretched across the wind-swept road like a blade unsheathed—cutting through illusion, through the noise, through all that tried to disguise itself as reality.
Imer stood on the edge of a village that didn't exist on any map. Not hidden, no—but erased. The air was thick, almost oily, as though the sky itself breathed through a veil. Crows didn't circle here. Dogs didn't bark. It was a place forgotten even by memory.
His boots crunched against ash and bone dust. The sky above him flickered—not like lightning, but like a skipped frame in an old film. Reality glitching, pulsing… resisting.
He whispered, "We've reached the echo."
There were no gates to this village. Only a series of broken stone pillars standing like exiled gods. They carried nothing—no names, no stories—only silence. And yet Imer knew they once stood as guardians.
He entered anyway.
Each step forward was a step backward through someone else's time. The houses were empty, but not abandoned. Doors hung open not from force but from surrender. There were teacups still warm on tables. Shadows imprinted where people once stood, frozen like echoes.
Then came the scent.
It wasn't blood, nor rot, nor incense. It was memory—raw, undiluted, and terrifying. The scent of truth.
And it called to him.
Something stirred in the air—a low murmur. Not from outside, but from within. He felt it pressing on his ribs, threading itself through his veins, clawing from beneath his skin like vines growing in reverse. The sin he had devoured back at the Temple had rooted itself deeper than he had thought.
He didn't tremble. He smiled.
"I see. You're trying to bloom."
He knelt and pressed his fingers into the soil.
What emerged wasn't plant, but word. Not language, but symbol. A line. A circle. A fracture.
The language of the First Mouth—the original curse carved into flesh by choice.
And the earth answered him.
A pulse of light shattered across the village, sending every house into a frozen rewind. He saw children return to chairs, old men breathe again, fire rekindling itself from ash. But none of it was real. It was memory—truth's reflection.
Then it twisted.
From the center of the square, something began crawling out of the well. Not climbing—crawling. Bone-white limbs, elongated fingers, eyes without purpose. It dragged itself slowly, head twitching like a puppet cut loose from its strings.
It wore the skin of a girl.
But Imer saw past the flesh.
"You're not her."
It mimicked a smile. Its voice came in multiple tones at once.
"She remembered you, Sin Eater. And because she did, so do we."
Imer didn't flinch. "Then remember this."
He raised his hand and broke the symbol he had drawn. The pulse reversed. The illusion shattered.
And what crawled was no longer a girl.
It was hunger. Pure, ancient, recursive.
It lunged.
He let it.
Because when it entered him—he entered it.
They stood in the mirrored room of spirit. The Domain Between—the gap where no gods walked. Here, Imer was not body. He was sequence. He was pattern. And he remembered who he was before names were given.
He looked into the entity and didn't see malice. He saw desperation.
"You're a sin that wanted to become love."
It recoiled.
"And when no one accepted you, you turned to rage."
It hissed.
Imer stepped forward and embraced it—not as conqueror, not as priest—but as kin.
"I am the eater of what you once were."
He consumed it. Fully.
No fight. No resistance. Only union.
And as he returned to the real, the village was gone.
Ash. Wind. Nothing more.
But he smelled something different now.
Hope.