The cathedral bell tolled at an hour no one had set. A dull, heavy sound that did not echo but pressed into the skin like cold iron. In the city of mist and stone, few dared to count the chimes anymore. It was said they marked not time, but memory — and that on certain nights, memory bled into reality.
Lucien Varro halted at the edge of Lornwatch Alley, where gaslamps flickered in defiance of the creeping fog. The pages in his black notebook had shifted again. What had been empty the evening prior now displayed a line in crooked, ancient glyphs — glyphs he shouldn't have been able to read, but which unfurled in his mind like a forgotten lullaby:
"Seek the Vault of Hollow Names. Beneath the bell that tolls without time."
He traced the words with a gloved finger. A tingle ran through his spine — not of fear, but familiarity.
He had seen this place in a dream, or something that passed for one. A cloaked figure walking alone, following a soundless bell toward a broken chapel swallowed by ivy. In that vision, the figure reached for the altar… and vanished.
Lucien looked up. Lornwatch Alley ended at a gated ruin — a chapel long condemned, its roof bowed under the weight of moss and years. And above it, frozen mid-swing, hung a bell that no one recalled ever ringing.
Until tonight.
He stepped forward.
The wind ceased entirely, as though the city itself had inhaled. Fog wrapped around his coat like hands. Each footstep seemed to sink deeper into silence. Behind him, the lamps dimmed one by one, as if a greater shadow had bent down to look upon him.
He pushed open the gate.
Rust flaked off in long curls. The hinges gave a sigh like breath caught in sleep. Inside, the chapel had no pews, no icons — only cracked stone and the smell of damp ink and blood. At the center stood the altar, and carved into it, barely visible:
"Speak not the names, lest the names speak back."
Lucien's throat tightened. He felt the notebook in his coat pulse, like a heart.
From the shadows beyond the altar came a whisper. Not a voice, but a memory of one. A presence echoing in the hollows of the world.
"Varro…"
He turned.
Nothing.
And yet, everything had changed. The air grew dense, tinged with the scent of old wax and violet flame. The walls now bore faint runes, pulsing like breath. And above — not on the ceiling, but in the air — symbols hovered, like the residue of spells long erased.
Lucien pulled out the notebook. A new page turned on its own. The ink wrote itself, trembling, as if the hand behind it feared what it revealed:
"There are seven Vaults. Seven Names. Each holds a piece of the forgotten throne. The Echoes guard them. And you… you are already marked."
He felt the scar on his temple pulse. Cold sweat beaded on his neck.
From behind the altar, something rose. Not flesh, but shadow given form — robed in silence, crowned in the absence of light. No eyes, only a mouth sealed with threads of silver.
Lucien did not flinch. Instead, he stepped closer.
And spoke a word that was not his own.
Lucien remained crouched behind the collapsed statue, the crystalline echo still pulsing faintly in his palm. Around him, the remnants of the cultists dissolved into dust and cinders, leaving only their masks as mute remnants. The silence that followed was not peace, but tension coiled like a serpent, waiting to strike again.
He pressed his back to the cold stone, heart still pounding. The names, the signs—everything in the vision had felt tangible. The Watcher with Six Veils. The Sigil of the Ninth Reflection. These weren't hallucinations. They were… calls.
He glanced at the mirror shard embedded in his notebook's cover. The surface had gone dark again. But he knew—it knew—that he'd glimpsed something forbidden. Perhaps that was why the cult had come. Not to silence him… but to observe what he would become.
A soft sound drew his attention: footsteps, deliberate and slow.
Lucien rose carefully. The fog parted as a figure stepped forward—tall, robed in gray, his face half-covered by a veil of silver mesh. One hand clutched a lantern shaped like a raven's skull, the other rested on a chained grimoire bound in what looked like scorched vellum.
"You've seen beyond the veil," the man said, voice deep, reverent. "You carry the mark. And now… they will hunt you, as they once hunted us."
Lucien said nothing, but his fingers curled tightly around the notebook.
"I am Orel d'Aster," the figure continued, bowing slightly. "Seventh Apostle of the Veiled Archive. I was sent to watch the convergence point. I did not expect a fragment-bearer to awaken this soon."
"A fragment of what?" Lucien asked cautiously.
Orel tilted his head. "A god's memory. Or its regret."
He gestured, and the lantern flickered, projecting ghostly images across the mist—visions of cities lost to time, temples sinking into sand, towers breaking into the sky like jagged bone. At the center of them all: a black diamond turning slowly in the void.
"You touched a remnant," Orel said. "The Echoes choose hosts rarely and with purpose. But you… you heard them. That changes everything."
Lucien didn't know what to believe. But something deep in his bones vibrated with recognition. The sigils, the voices—they weren't dreams. They were his.
"I need answers," Lucien said. "What are these echoes? Why are they tied to me?"
Orel took a step closer. "The Echoes are not simply memories. They are sentient reflections—left behind by entities who transcended form. They linger where time folds. Where meaning erodes. And sometimes, when fate fractures, they find a voice."
He pointed to Lucien's scar.
"That mark is not just a wound. It's a threshold."
Lucien's hand moved instinctively to his temple. He remembered the cold blade. The ritual. The hooded figures. But the memory still blurred at the edges, warped like a reflection in broken glass.
Orel raised the chained book. "Come with me to the Archive. You need to learn to anchor what's inside you—or the next time the Echo surges, you won't survive it."
Lucien hesitated.
"Or," Orel added, "you can wait here. The Crimson Order is already tracking you. The Inquisition is burning seers again. And the next cult won't test you—they'll consume you."
"…Fine," Lucien muttered. "But I walk behind you."
"Wise," Orel said with a faint smile. "Many don't live long enough to learn that lesson."
Together, they moved deeper into the alleyways, through shifting fog and crooked corridors that bent in ways geometry should not allow. The city peeled away layer by layer, revealing streets that weren't on any map. Faint glyphs glimmered in the cobblestones, and street signs bore names in dead alphabets.
Lucien realized this wasn't just another district of the capital. This was an overlay—a reflection of the city's hidden self. A spectral copy whispered into being by the Echoes.
Orel led him to a door with no hinges, set in a wall of rusted mirrors. He placed his lantern against it. The raven skull whispered something inaudible, and the door sighed open like a tomb exhaling its last breath.
Inside, the Veiled Archive awaited.
It was not a library, but a sanctum of memory. Shelves spiraled endlessly up and down, populated with books that hummed softly in their bindings. Tomes bound in skin, in ink that pulsed like veins. Glass cylinders held fragments of dreams, flickering like candlelight. Murals danced on the walls, shifting to echo the thoughts of those nearby.
Orel gestured toward a floating desk, where three quills wrote without hands.
"Sit. The Archive will test your resonance. If it accepts you, you'll gain access. If not… the Veil will claim you."
Lucien took a breath and stepped forward.
As soon as he touched the desk, the Archive responded. Lights flared. Shadows twisted. And in his mind, a new voice stirred—older than the others, colder than death.
"So the lost shard returns…"
Lucien fell to his knees, nose bleeding, eyes wide. The room spun.
Orel knelt beside him, placing a protective glyph on his chest.
"Do not resist," he whispered. "Let it remember with you."
Lucien gasped as a torrent of images surged through his mind, not like memories, but like living impressions—sensations imprinted by something far older than thought.
He saw a hall of mirrors stretching into eternity, each pane showing a different version of himself: some robed in crimson, others crowned in bone, one shackled in chains made of stars. Every reflection whispered fragments of a name he didn't yet know how to pronounce.
Then the scene shifted.
He stood on a black sea, under a sky with three moons and no stars. Figures loomed on the horizon—cloaked, faceless, chanting in a tongue that stung the mind. In the center, hovering above the waves, floated a mirror of obsidian framed in ivory.
He felt himself pulled toward it.
And then—he woke.
The Archive had released him.
Lucien collapsed backward, panting, eyes blurry. The desk had vanished. The quills were still. Orel stood beside him, lantern flickering low.
"You touched the central Echo," Orel said, his voice tight with awe. "You shouldn't have been able to—no Initiate has made it to the Third Veil in over a century."
Lucien didn't reply. His hands trembled. Something had entered him—something ancient, incomplete… and waiting.
"What did you see?" Orel pressed.
Lucien wiped the blood from his upper lip. "Versions of me. Other lives. Other… endings."
"Then the Archive recognizes you."
Orel walked to a spiral of stairs suspended in midair and gestured for Lucien to follow. They climbed, floor after floor, passing rooms sealed by iron runes, alcoves where floating tomes hissed warnings, and halls where statues wept wax tears.
At last, they entered a domed chamber, its ceiling painted with constellations that shifted subtly every time Lucien blinked.
In the center stood a pedestal, atop which lay an open book glowing faintly with blue ink.
"This," Orel said reverently, "is your Codex. The Archive will allow you to write into it now. But be warned—what you inscribe becomes law, and the Echoes do not forget."
Lucien approached slowly. The book felt warm. Alive.
He dipped a quill, hesitated—then wrote a single word:
"Remembrance."
The ink glowed brighter. A ripple spread through the pages, and he felt something anchor inside him—a tether, as if his mind had found a missing tooth in the gears of reality.
A hush fell over the chamber.
Orel nodded. "It's done. You've been claimed by the Echoes."
Lucien looked down at the mark on his chest—the glyph Orel had drawn had changed, now interlaced with runes that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
"What happens now?"
"Now," Orel said gravely, "you are a conduit. And the others will sense it."
"Others?"
Orel's eyes darkened.
"The Silent Choir. The Pale Masks. The Inquisition's Mirrorbound. They all hunt fragment-bearers. And not all will seek to kill you."
Lucien raised an eyebrow.
"Some will try to use you. Worse still… some may already have."
He turned, pulling a rusted curtain aside to reveal a map painted on living skin—veins still pulsing beneath its surface. Dozens of crimson pins marked areas across the Empire.
"This," Orel said, "is where the Echoes have bled through. Sites of convergence. Some active, others… quarantined."
Lucien stared. One of the pins pulsed faintly—its label smudged, but legible: "Aventh Hollow."
His breath caught.
That name. He'd seen it in the notebook days ago, scribbled in the margin of a page that shouldn't have existed.
"I need to go there," Lucien said.
Orel hesitated. "It's a forbidden site. Sealed since the War of the Hidden Flame. Even we don't enter it lightly."
"I saw it before I even knew your Archive existed," Lucien said. "That can't be a coincidence."
Orel studied him for a long moment, then sighed.
"Very well. But if you go… you'll need protection. And an Anchor."
"What's that?"
Orel walked to a locked cabinet and withdrew a small, obsidian pendant etched with concentric rings. "An Echo Anchor. It'll stabilize your mind when the veil thins. Without it, your memories—past and present—will blur. You might not come back with all of yourself."
Lucien took the pendant, the chill of it biting into his skin.
"One last thing," Orel added. "Before you leave, the Archive requires a vow."
"What kind?"
"That you will not speak what should remain silent. That you will not write what has no name. And that you will never open the Mirror Gate alone."
Lucien swallowed, then nodded.
"I swear."
The lights in the chamber dimmed for a heartbeat, as if the Archive had heard—and accepted.
The streets of Velarion shimmered with dusk when Lucien emerged from the Archive. The fog that never quite left the city curled around him like breath from sleeping giants. Lanterns flickered to life with pale green fire, casting elongated shadows that stretched unnaturally across cobbled stone.
He felt different. Changed.
The Anchor pendant burned cold against his chest, and the glyph on his skin no longer itched—it pulsed in rhythm with something deeper, like his soul now had a heartbeat of its own.
"Back already?" a voice murmured from an alley.
Lucien turned, hand moving instinctively to his coat where no weapon waited. A figure stepped into the light—tall, swathed in a gray coat too modern for the city's ancient aesthetic. His face was clean-shaven, eyes hidden behind lenses that glinted red despite the green flames.
"I saw you leave the Archive," the man said. "Did they let you write?"
Lucien didn't answer.
"I'm not here to harm you," the man continued. "Not yet. Call me Kael."
"You're one of them," Lucien said. "From the factions Orel warned me about?"
Kael smiled. "Not one of his. We're… competitors."
Lucien narrowed his eyes. "The Inquisition?"
Kael laughed. "Saints, no. They'd sooner flay me than let me walk these streets. No, I belong to an older order. One that believes in knowledge before control. We monitor fragment-bearers, we don't cage them."
"And what do you want from me?"
Kael adjusted his gloves. "Information. Eventually. For now, I only offer advice: Don't trust the Archive."
Lucien's jaw clenched. "They saved me."
"They used you. There's a difference."
Before Lucien could respond, Kael stepped back into the fog. "When the voices grow louder… follow the one that whispers, not the one that screams."
Then he vanished.
—
Back in his rented chamber above the shuttered alchemy shop, Lucien lit a lantern and opened his black notebook. The once-blank pages had begun filling on their own again—ink flowing like blood through old veins.
A new entry had appeared since his time in the Archive.
"Aventh Hollow breathes still. Beneath ash and silence, it remembers the first fire."
Lucien tapped the page. A flicker of memory surfaced—scorched ground, screaming wind, a sigil carved into bone.
His sleep that night was no better. He dreamt of stairs spiraling downward forever, of echoes that mimicked his voice but said nothing he recognized. In one dream, he stood before the Mirror Gate Orel had warned him of. Its surface shimmered not with reflection, but with memory—flashes of battles, rituals, and a child screaming his name in a tongue he didn't know.
He woke at dawn, drenched in sweat.
He dressed swiftly and packed what little he had. By noon, he was at the outer rail of the city, boarding a carriage drawn by black-coated constructs, their faces smooth and eyeless.
"Destination?" the automaton asked in a voice like wind through broken glass.
Lucien hesitated only briefly. "Aventh Hollow."
The automaton didn't ask why.
The carriage rumbled forward, through winding roads and fog-drenched paths that bent the light strangely. Trees leaned toward the road, their branches creaking with secrets, and shadows moved where no wind blew.
At a crossroads, a figure stood waiting—a woman in a cloak of ash-gray feathers, face hidden behind a half-mask of glass.
Lucien's pulse quickened.
The carriage slowed. The woman stepped aboard without invitation and sat opposite him.
"Lucien Varro," she said softly. "Bearer of the Codex. He who woke the sleeping name."
He said nothing.
"I am Seraphine. I speak for the Pale Choir."
Her presence chilled the air.
"You've broken a seal older than history," she said. "You've heard the Echoes. Felt their hunger. Do you know what that makes you?"
Lucien kept his eyes on hers. "A target."
Seraphine smiled. "Not to all. Some of us… wish to help you remember."
"Remember what?"
She reached into her cloak and withdrew a folded parchment. It bore the same glyph as his own, but inverted—its lines forming a closed eye rather than an open one.
"When the time comes," she whispered, "this will show you the path. But beware—the Archive speaks truths wrapped in lies."
She rose and stepped off the moving carriage as easily as stepping down from a curb. The wheels continued to turn. Lucien looked behind them.
No trace of her.
—
As the sun dipped behind the ashen hills, the carriage arrived at the edge of Aventh Hollow.
The town was gone.
Only scorched stones, twisted metal, and the ruins of what once may have been a spire remained. Smoke curled from the earth in places, though nothing burned. The silence here was thick, heavier than any Lucien had felt.
He stepped onto the blackened soil, pendant pulsing rapidly, glyph glowing faintly beneath his shirt.
Then—without warning—the world tilted.
He stumbled forward, suddenly standing on a street that had not existed a moment ago. People bustled around him. Bells chimed. The market thrived.
He blinked.
The Hollow had returned—but only to him.
The Echoes had opened a memory.
A voice, soft and familiar, whispered from behind:
"You've finally come home."
Lucien turned—and saw a younger version of himself, smiling faintly, hand outstretched.
The world cracked.