They stood in silence as the air thickened around them. The phantoms that had cried out just moments ago were now motionless, like marionettes whose strings had been abruptly cut. Their arms hung mid-gesture, faces frozen in grief or fury or confusion. The silence wasn't peaceful. It was the absence left after too much screaming.
Kaero exhaled. "That wasn't just memory residue. That was directed."
Aouli rose slowly, his luminous form still dim from the emotional storm. He felt hollow, like his light had been scooped out and replaced with the weight of collective regret.
"They knew me," he said. "Not just figuratively. They… recognized me."
Kaero didn't reply. His eyes scanned the frozen street, his fingers resting lightly on his belt where tools and weapons hung in a careful line.
"This place is bending," he muttered. "Something's pulling from deep in the past… or maybe just stitching scraps together to look like a past."
Aouli walked forward, toward the school bus. Its windows were shattered, vines draped across its faded yellow shell. Inside, phantom children flickered faintly—laughing, silent, then gone. He stepped up to the open door and placed a hand on the cold metal.
And the world around him shifted.
Not the entire Liminal—just this pocket.
The air became brighter. The sky deepened to a pure, endless blue. The school beside him was intact, its windows reflecting sunlight, its mural whole. The playground was vibrant, full of motion, full of life.
And it was his school.
He recognized the curve of the bike rack, the chipped paint on the corner door, the field beyond the gymnasium that had once seemed infinite. This was his Earth—one layer of it. A memory echo buried in this dimension. Only it wasn't a recording. It was a reconstruction, live and pulsing.
Voices echoed nearby.
He followed the sound.
Around the corner, two children were playing in a patch of clover. One of them had curly black hair, his knees scraped raw, and the other—slender, quiet, watching—had Aouli's face. A younger version of him. Eight, maybe nine. He sat cross-legged, listening as the other child told a story with wild hand gestures and absurd exaggerations.
"They're not real," Kaero's voice came from behind him, quiet, uncertain.
"I know," Aouli whispered.
But it didn't stop him from watching. From remembering.
He knew this day. It had been ordinary. And beautiful.
And then, just as quickly, the scene shattered like glass. The color drained. The field became ash. The children vanished mid-laugh. What remained was the echo—a memory torn loose and laid bare, too fragile to survive under scrutiny.
Aouli stumbled back.
The transition wasn't smooth. It hurt.
The ache in his chest wasn't physical. It was the weight of forgetting returned to the body. He dropped to one knee, light flickering. The phantom lands were feeding off his memories—pulling them, refracting them, twisting them.
"They're not just trapped here," he said, gasping. "They're feeding this place."
Kaero nodded grimly. "Yeah. And I think it wants to keep you. Echoes get stronger when they're near a source."
Aouli stood slowly.
The city around them darkened again—half-real architecture flickering back into place. The walls of the school twisted inward, reshaping into strange spires that arced toward an invisible sky. The world reasserted its unnatural geometry.
Then they saw the girl.
She stood alone in the middle of the street, barefoot, her dress gray and stained. Her skin was translucent, veins glowing faintly with violet light. Her eyes were too large for her face—luminous and bottomless, filled with slow-moving clouds.
She didn't speak, but her presence spoke through them.
Kaero took a step forward. "This her?"
Aouli nodded, though he wasn't sure how he knew.
The girl smiled.
Then the world folded inward.
It wasn't a scream. It was a reversal.
Reality rewound violently—colors pulling inward, the sky fragmenting into crystalline shards, sound looping and distorting. Aouli felt himself pulled upward and downward at the same time. His body split between memory and present, dragged across two timelines like a thread pulled through broken glass.
He landed in a cathedral.
Or what remained of one.
A thousand stained-glass windows hung in the air with no walls to support them. Each shimmered with moving images—memories, wars, lovers parting, hands planting trees, cities sinking. The floor beneath him was liquid memory: it rippled with every breath.
The girl stood at the center, now older. Her form had shifted—no longer a child. Her dress was black now, her hair long and silvered with streaks of burning light.
"You've come far," she said.
Her voice was layered—young and ancient, human and elemental.
Aouli stepped forward. "Are you the Echo?"
She tilted her head. "I am an Echo. One of many. I am Sera."
He nodded. "Why did you show me that?"
"Because you needed to remember," she said. "Before you decide what you are."
Kaero moved slowly along the edges of the space, eyes sharp. "She's strong," he muttered. "Stronger than the last Echo I saw. And this place—it's tethered to her."
Sera smiled faintly. "You bring stars with you, wanderer. But you do not understand weight."
Kaero snorted. "I understand survival."
"And you," she said, turning back to Aouli. "You are a grief made flesh. A question with no voice."
Aouli straightened. "I'm more than that."
"Are you?" she asked.
She raised a hand, and a window shifted—showing Gaia's final collapse. The death of oceans. Cities swallowed by flame. A planet shuddering into silence.
"You carry her breath," Sera whispered. "Her last whisper. But do you carry her truth?"
Aouli trembled. "I'm trying."
Sera stepped closer. "She tried too. So many times. And still, she was burned. Dug into. Dismantled."
"By us," Aouli said. "By humans."
"By her children," Sera corrected. "And now you wander, trying to fix her with borrowed wisdom and borrowed power. But do you even know what you are?"
Aouli hesitated.
"I am Aouli. I was born of her. But I am not only her."
Sera's expression softened.
"That is what I needed to hear."
She touched his chest—just once—and light spilled outward.
The cathedral dissolved.
They stood again in the street.
But now, the world had quieted.
The phantoms were gone. The sky had stilled. The structures no longer flickered.
Sera stood beside them, dimmer now, her form losing definition.
"You are not ready to carry all of her," she said. "But you are strong enough to carry a piece."
She held out a hand. In her palm sat a single seed—black as void, with veins of light running through it.
"A piece of Gaia," she whispered. "Find the right place. One day, let her root again."
Aouli took the seed. It was warm.
Kaero exhaled slowly. "You good?"
Aouli nodded.
And with that, the Liminal began to fade.