She knelt before me like I was royalty. Like I was a god.
"Echo of Arelis," she whispered again, voice trembling. "You weren't supposed to awaken yet. The wards were too weak. We came to warn you."
"We?" I asked.
But she was already rising to her feet, silver eyes scanning the darkness beyond the archway. Her hair shimmered with flecks of stardust—like some trace of old, broken magic lived in her veins.
"My name was Serin," she said. "Born in the ruins of Vellidar. Trained in the fragments of the Echo Codex. I'm a Whisper—one who hears the voices but doesn't carry them. I followed the trail of your awakening… and I brought the Seeker off-course."
She turned to face me fully. "It followed me. It's still hunting you."
The pressure in the room spiked. The stones beneath our feet groaned.
A low, guttural growl rumbled through the arch.
The Seeker was back—wounded, but not dead.
Serin flinched. Her hands moved in a strange sigil. "Run. There's a path through the Librarian's Gate. It only opens for one of Echo blood. You can escape. I can't."
I shook my head. "No. There's another way—"
"There isn't," she said softly. "I knew this would be the cost. All Whispered do."
She reached into her coat and pulled out a narrow scroll, sealed in black wax. "This is for you. It's not a spell. It's a memory. One of hers. Of Arelis. She left it for the version of herself who might return."
I took it with shaking hands. "Why help me?"
"Because you're the only one who's ever come back." She smiled—small, sad. "And because in one life… you saved my sister."
Before I could speak, she stepped past me.
Silver light blazed around her as she shouted an incantation I couldn't understand. A shield of raw Essence exploded from her skin, throwing up a barrier between us and the Seeker, who screamed like a breaking bell.
The world convulsed.
Stone fell.
The Librarian howled from somewhere deep in the shelves.
Serin turned once, eyes glowing like stars about to collapse. "Don't waste it," she said.
Then the Seeker struck.
The shield shattered. She didn't scream. She simply disappeared beneath the weight of dark flame.
And I ran.
---
The tunnel behind the Librarian's dais opened with a whisper. I stumbled through, scroll in hand, heart breaking, blood singing with stolen magic.
Ahead lay exile. War. Memory.
And a name I hadn't dared speak until now.
Arelis.
Whoever she had been—whatever I had been—I was about to find out.
And the world would burn for it.