Darkness swallowed the Archivum.
Not the soft shadow of a snuffed flame, but the kind that lived under ancient beds and behind mirrors that remembered too much. A darkness alive, heavy with breath and echo.
The dream-hound surged from the broken-jawed reflection, all sinew and shadow, limbs jointed wrong, paws dragging reality behind them in smears of un-light. It was headless—no eyes, no mouth—but its neck twisted as though sniffing with memory instead of scent.
It charged.
And Nameless didn't run.
The mark on his palm flared—silver, bright, humming like a tuning fork in his bones.
Whisperbound.
He closed his eyes.
And listened.
Not with ears.
With dream.
From the cracked bones of the Archivum walls came the voices of the dead. From the ink basins, soft laughter and screams long dried. From the stone beneath his feet, a girl sang a lullaby in a language older than myth.
He reached into it.
The air rippled as his hand passed through the waking world—and into the veil between dreams.
Then—
He grabbed something.
A strand. A sound. A resonance.
And pulled.
Reality twisted.
The hound lunged.
And struck the air where Nameless had been—slamming headfirst into a swirl of reflected light and scent and sorrow.
In his place stood an image—Lucien's dream-double, eyes hollow, mouth sewn shut again.
The hound paused.
Confused.
It turned its blank neck toward the false-Lucien just as the echo exploded into shards of memory, splinters of thought laced with dreamfire.
The creature wailed—not in pain, but in reversal.
Its body collapsed inward, dreamstuff recoiling, burning as fragments of unformed time peeled off its flanks like bark stripped from a tree.
Nameless reappeared behind it, brand blazing.
"You came from a dream," he whispered, raising his hand. "Let me walk you back."
The air folded.
He stepped forward—not through space, but through emotion. The feeling of remembering your mother's scent in a room where she never stood. The taste of childhood on a birthday that never happened.
He wrapped that feeling around the creature.
And whispered its name.
Not the one it had. But the one it had forgotten.
"You were Fear."
The hound trembled.
And then dissolved.
Like mist in sunlight.
Light returned slowly.
Elira's blade was half-drawn.
Her breath shallow.
Ink dripped from the ceiling where the hound's mass had impacted, evaporating into curling symbols as it met the air.
She turned to Nameless.
"You rewrote it."
He nodded.
"It wasn't real. Just a fear that never got named."
Elira stared at him.
Something had changed.
Not in his body.
In the Archivum.
The room no longer whispered.
It waited.
A new pedestal had risen from the floor behind the first—this one smaller, carved from fractured obsidian. Upon it sat a single object:
A mirror shard, wrapped in silver wire.
Bound with red thread.
Still bleeding.
Nameless approached it slowly.
"It's a token," Elira murmured. "A relic. You crafted it just now—out of the dream you banished."
"Can I use it?"
"No. Not yet."
"Then what is it?"
She hesitated.
"It's a weapon. Or a key. Depending on the dream you carry it into."
Nameless touched the shard. It burned his fingertips, but he didn't flinch. The bleeding stopped.
And the brand on his palm grew again.
The spiral extended past his wrist now, curling up his forearm.
Not infection.
Inscription.
[Path of the Fractured Echo: Updated]
— Trait Gained: Dream Anchor (I)
You may pull fragments of prior dreams into the waking world. These can manifest as echoes, illusions, temporary constructs, or defensive barriers.
— Ability Gained: Echostep
Step between mirrored surfaces or emotionally charged memories to reappear nearby. Requires recent emotional imprint. Exhausting.
— Dream Residue: 3
Nameless pocketed the shard.
The Archivum door behind them creaked closed—on its own.
Elira stepped forward, placing a hand lightly on his shoulder.
"You need to leave."
"The Guild's not happy?"
"They're frightened. There's talk already. About what you're becoming."
"What am I becoming, Elira?"
She met his eyes.
"The thing we all dream about. The one that's not supposed to dream back."
That night, they walked side by side through the back channels of Vinterra, where forgotten shrines whispered to gods who had never been human.
Nameless paused only once.
At a broken mirror nailed to a rusted gate.
It wasn't the reflection that caught his eye.
It was the dream-woman's voice behind it.
"The city's starting to remember you," she said.
"Why?"
"Because you've given it something it forgot how to want."
"What's that?"
"A storyteller."