The song was not beautiful.
It was not even music—not in the way the waking world understood it. There was no harmony, no rhythm, no melody. Instead, it rose like a wind full of broken clocks and weeping letters. A hundred different tones, each cracked, layered with forgotten names and half-lived lives, overlapping in impossible patterns.
And somehow, they were all him.
Nameless stood in the heart of the void where the Severed Choir made their lair—a space that defied location and time, stitched together by loss.
The blindfolded figure before him—etched with memory-script and sewn silence—took one step forward.
The glyph-chained heart at the center of the chamber began to pulse faster.
The silver pillars trembled, humming louder.
The Choir was waking.
But Nameless?
He was already awake.
His crucible—a shimmering sphere of dream-glass and bound emotion—cracked in his left palm, bleeding memory into the air. It swirled into a slow orbit around him, forming images that refused to remain still:
The alley where Lucien died—but now rewritten, Lucien laughing instead, untouched.
Elira kneeling before the Guild, her walking stick broken—then vanishing.
A door that never existed opening onto a library filled with mirrors that blinked when no one watched.
Nameless gritted his teeth.
"You tried to erase her."
"You tried to erase me."
He stepped forward. The ground beneath him didn't exist—it formed because he believed in it.
The blindfolded Choir figure's sewn lips twitched. Not to smile.
To resist.
The carvings across its body—names and roles once stripped from dreamers—began to glow. The Choir's strength was its silence. Its power was in removal, not death.
To forget was to defeat.
But Nameless's entire path—Fractured Echo—was a rebellion against forgetting.
And now, his power began to sing back.
[Dream Crucible Activated: Mirage Solidification Engaged]
Emotion burned: Defiance.
Memory sacrificed: A child's dream of a quiet life.
Crucible Effect: Dreamspace stabilized. Dreamforge channel open.
The pillars cracked.
One by one.
As the crucible's energy spread, the silver chains binding the floating heart strained.
The voices in the mist—his echoes—grew louder. No words. No rhythm. Just presence.
They were singing the memory of being.
And the Choir?
They flinched.
One stepped backward.
Another reached for a memory-inscribed blade—but it vanished before their hand touched it, rewritten by the crucible's gravity.
The blindfolded figure raised both hands and thrust them outward—two waves of raw forgetfulness, one aimed at Nameless, the other at the dreams behind him.
Nameless reacted on instinct.
"Echostep."
He disappeared in a shimmer of thought, reappearing behind the figure, one hand touching its back.
The mark on his palm burned white-hot.
"Remember," he whispered.
And memory poured in.
Not into Nameless.
Into the Choir.
A flood of all he had seen. All he had carried. Every fragment and moment. Lucien's death-dream. The stitched mouths. The dream-woman's longing. The first mirror. The name he had never been given.
The Choir screamed.
But the scream was musical—not sound, but a ripple of shifting timelines collapsing in on themselves. One pillar imploded, dragging names from the walls and flinging them into the void.
The floating heart fractured.
Its light split into a wheel of color and shadow.
And in that moment, Nameless saw it all.
A Vision from Beyond the Choir
He stood in a mirror-chamber cathedral, its ceiling endless and its floor made of broken reflections. Above the altar, a statue of a veiled woman, her hands outstretched, holding a cracked mask and a clock with no hands.
At the base of the altar: a name carved in fading gold.
It wasn't "Nameless."
It was hers.
Aveline.
The dream-woman.
Her path had a name once.
A path they erased.
Nameless fell to one knee as the vision ended.
The Choir's figure staggered, its blindfold torn, mouth unstitched. It tried to speak.
Only ashes came out.
Nameless looked up.
"You tried to silence her."
"But you gave her a successor."
He rose slowly.
And whispered a name that wasn't quite his—but almost.
The moment he spoke it, the heart shattered.
Light poured across the void.
The Choir screamed again—this time not in denial, but in release.
Chains broke.
Names returned.
And behind him, the voices that followed him through mirrors and dreams knelt.
[Path Update: Fractured Echo – Tier III: Nameborne]
— Trait: Dream-Name Stability
You have begun to manifest a fixed Echo Identity. Your dream-influence now extends into shared memory. Those who speak of you while asleep create footprints you can follow.
— Ability: Mirrorbrand (I)
You may place a mark on a reflective surface. Once placed, you may see and speak through it across dreams. Rare materials allow permanence.
— Passive: Dream Resonance Network (I)
You can instinctively sense when you are being remembered—and by whom.
Nameless stood at the center of the unbound chamber.
The Choir's survivors fled—melting into mist.
Only the blindfolded figure remained.
Now unmasked.
And weeping.
"Who are you?" it asked.
Nameless didn't answer with a name.
He stepped forward and pressed the mirror shard to its chest.
The shard glowed once—
Then vanished.
"I'm the song you tried to forget."