The land changed without warning.
One moment, they were walking through brittle hills under an open sky. The next, a low fog curled over the ground like creeping fingers, veiling the earth in damp silence. Trees twisted upward like scorched bones, stripped of leaves and life, their bark cracked and blackened by some long-dead fire.
Kael slowed his pace. The air smelled wrong—sweet, but spoiled, like fruit left out in the sun too long. The Echoheart pressed warmer against his chest, pulsing in uneven intervals. It didn't hurt. But it didn't feel stable, either.
Tovan frowned as he swiped mist from his goggles. "I don't like this. Feels like the ground remembers too much."
Elira nodded, her gaze sharp and steady. "This is the Black Vales. They say magic scars here never healed after the Sundering. Some believe they still bleed."
Kael's hand hovered over the relic. "It feels… thinner. Like something's trying to seep through."
They continued forward, the mist growing thicker, muting the world. Footsteps softened. Birdsong, already rare, vanished. Even their breathing seemed quieter, swallowed by the dense, wet air.
By midday, the Echoheart began acting strangely. It flared at odd moments—once when Kael passed beneath a tree, again when his boot touched a patch of stone with old runic etchings. And each time, he heard something.
A whisper.
"Not yours to carry."
He stopped, spinning toward the sound. Nothing. Just the mist. Elira caught the look on his face.
"You heard it, didn't you?" she asked.
Kael hesitated, then nodded. "I think… someone did."
That night, they made camp beneath the jagged ribs of a ruined watchtower, its stones half-swallowed by the earth. Elira lit a protective wardstone, its glow flickering nervously in the mist. Tovan refused to sleep near the fire and kept his rifle within arm's reach.
Kael sat near the edge of the light, the Echoheart resting on his open palm. It glowed faintly, casting circular glyphs across his skin—glyphs he didn't recognize. The light pulsed in time with his heartbeat, but it skipped. Once. Then twice.
It's like it's out of sync with me, he thought. Or I'm out of sync with it.
Elira sat across from him, her expression unreadable.
"You're not sleeping," she said.
"I can't," Kael murmured. "It won't stop whispering."
She nodded. "Tovan wants us to skirt the Vales entirely. Said he'd rather face wildlings than walk blind into cursed land."
Kael looked at her. "And you?"
Elira hesitated. "I don't like what this place does to you. But I don't like turning back either. There's too much ahead of us."
"I feel like the choice isn't mine anymore," Kael said. "Not really."
She didn't argue.
The next day, they found it.
An abandoned camp, nestled against the ridge of a canyon mouth. Three tents collapsed inward. Bedrolls soaked. One rusted kettle left overturned near a cold firepit. No signs of a fight. No blood.
But there were scorch marks—concentric rings burnt into the ground. In the center, a relic shard rested on a stone. It pulsed faintly, unlit but warm.
Elira crouched beside it, examining a torn journal page pinned under a rock.
She read aloud:
"We followed the wrong echo."
Tovan let out a long, slow breath. "That's cheerful."
Kael didn't speak. His eyes were on the shard. It looked familiar—same crystal structure as the Echoheart, but fractured. As if whatever it carried had broken from the inside.
He touched the edge of the stone it sat on.
A shiver ran up his spine.
"They see you now," a voice murmured inside his skull.
He pulled back sharply.
That night, Kael dreamed.
But this time, it wasn't his memory.
He saw the world through someone else's eyes—cold, distant, patient. The landscape was blurred and grey. Shapes moved in the distance: Elira's silhouette, Tovan adjusting his coat. Himself, seated by the fire.
And then, those eyes turned toward the Echoheart.
Toward him.
A pressure closed around his chest like invisible chains.
"You are not the first."
Kael woke gasping, throat tight, sweat cold on his skin. The fire had died down to embers. Elira stirred, already reaching for her blade.
"You okay?" she whispered.
Kael nodded, wiping his face. "Just… a dream."
But in his lap, the Echoheart pulsed again.
And for the first time—it felt afraid.