The ruins of Orhyn fell away behind them like a fever dream, crumbling spires fading into the perpetual haze that clung to the wasteland horizon. Kael walked beside Lysara in contemplative silence, acutely aware of the Rift Relic's weight in his satchel. Its pulsing had synchronized with his heartbeat in a way that felt both natural and deeply unsettling.
They had been walking for three hours across the Scorched Flats, where the ground still bore scars from the Sundering—great gouges in the earth that glowed faintly with residual Vein energy. The air tasted of copper and ozone, and the fractured sky above remained torn, violet light bleeding through cracks that seemed to pulse in response to Kael's presence.
"The pain will pass," Lysara said suddenly, breaking the oppressive quiet.
Kael looked at her in surprise. "What pain?"
"The awakening echo. Most people describe it as feeling like their bones are singing, or like there's a fire in their chest that won't go out." She glanced at him sideways. "You've been unconsciously rubbing your sternum for the past hour."
He looked down, realizing she was right. There was a persistent ache there, not painful exactly, but impossible to ignore—like a muscle he'd never used suddenly coming to life.
"It's the Vein connection establishing itself," she continued. "Your nervous system is adapting to process energy patterns it was never designed to handle. For most people, it's gradual—a slow awakening over months or years. For you..." She shrugged. "Direct contact with a Prime Catalyst forced the change all at once. You're lucky to be conscious."
"Prime Catalyst?"
"Rift Relics come in different classifications based on their power and purpose. Most are fragments—tiny shards of crystallized possibility that can barely power a lightbulb. What you found..." She paused to consult a device on her wrist that clicked and hummed. "What you found is something that shouldn't exist anymore. The Aetherlords spent decades hunting down and destroying every Prime Catalyst they could find."
"But not all of them."
"Apparently not." Her tone carried a mixture of hope and concern that Kael was beginning to recognize. "Which raises some interesting questions about what else might be hidden out there, waiting."
As they walked, Lysara began to explain the fundamentals of Vein manipulation—the energy source that powered everything from household lighting to the massive barrier shields that protected the Aetherlord cities. Most people could channel tiny amounts, enough for basic tools and simple tasks. Those with stronger connections joined the Elemental Guilds, specializing in fire, ice, lightning, earth, air, or light manipulation.
"Think of it like a river," she said, gesturing to illustrate her point. "Most people can cup a handful of water. Guild members can divert a stream. The Aetherlords have built dams and reservoirs, controlling vast amounts of power through technology and rigid hierarchy."
"And the Riftborne?"
"The Riftborne didn't divert the river. They were the river." Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "They could reshape reality itself—fold space, manipulate time, rewrite the fundamental forces of physics in localized areas. They didn't just use power; they embodied it."
The concept was staggering. Kael tried to imagine what it would be like to wield such abilities, but his mind couldn't quite grasp the scope of it. The brief vision he'd experienced while touching the relic had given him a taste—the sensation of existing everywhere and nowhere at once, of seeing the universe as a vast tapestry that could be rewoven with sufficient will and understanding.
"Why did they disappear?" he asked.
Lysara's expression darkened. "They didn't disappear. They were murdered."
She told him about the Sundering as they walked—not the sanitized version taught in schools, but the brutal truth that had been hidden for three centuries. The Riftborne hadn't been alien invaders or dangerous mutants, as the histories claimed. They had been the original inhabitants of this part of the galaxy, an ancient civilization that had achieved a harmony between consciousness and cosmic force that bordered on the divine.
The Aetherlords had started as their students—a faction within Riftborne society that believed power should be structured, codified, controlled through institutions rather than individual enlightenment. The philosophical disagreement had festered for generations before finally erupting into open war.
"The Sundering wasn't a natural cataclysm," Lysara explained as they paused to rest beside a crystallized stream that flowed uphill toward the fractured sky. "It was a weapon. The Aetherlords created a device that could sever the connection between consciousness and the fundamental forces of reality. They used it to strip the Riftborne of their abilities en masse."
"But it killed everything else too."
"That was considered acceptable collateral damage." Her voice carried decades of barely contained rage. "Entire star systems were rendered uninhabitable. Billions of innocent lives were snuffed out to ensure that Riftborne power could never rise again."
Kael felt sick. The casual enormity of the genocide was almost impossible to process. "How do you know all this? The real history, I mean."
"Because some of us never forgot." Lysara pulled back her sleeve, revealing a mark on her forearm—not a guild tattoo, but something older. The symbol seemed to shift and change when observed directly, defying the eye's attempt to focus on it. "My grandmother was a Riftborne researcher who survived the Sundering by hiding in deep space. She spent her life documenting what had been lost, preserving what knowledge she could."
"You're one of them. Riftborne."
"I carry the bloodline, but not the power. Most of us don't." She rolled her sleeve back down. "The Sundering was too thorough. It didn't just kill the Riftborne—it broke the genetic and psychic pathways that enabled their abilities. Even their descendants are usually born powerless."
"Usually."
"Usually." She looked at him meaningfully. "But sometimes, very rarely, the old pathways reassert themselves. An Echo awakens, carrying fragments of what their ancestors once were."
They resumed walking, the conversation settling into Kael's mind like sediment in still water. As the day wore on, he began to notice subtle changes in his perception. Colors seemed more vivid, as if he were seeing additional spectrums that had always been there but beyond normal human vision. He could sense the flow of energy through the landscape—the dormant power lines beneath their feet, the resonance patterns of distant Vein conduits, even the bioelectric fields of small creatures hiding in the ruins.
Most unsettling of all, he occasionally caught glimpses of what he could only describe as temporal echoes—faint overlays of the landscape as it had existed at different points in time. He saw Orhyn as it had been before the Sundering: a city of impossible beauty where crystal spires reached toward star-filled skies and gardens of light bloomed in defiance of physical law.
"Is this normal?" he asked during one particularly vivid episode, where he could simultaneously see the wasteland around them and the thriving metropolis that had once stood in the same space.
"For an awakening Echo? Nothing is normal." Lysara had noticed his distraction and was watching him with professional interest. "What are you experiencing?"
"Time layers. Like seeing through multiple exposures of the same photograph." He rubbed his temples, trying to ease the disorientation. "Sometimes I can see what this place used to look like. Before."
"Temporal perception. That's... unusual." She consulted her scanner again, frowning at the readings. "Most Echoes manifest abilities related to their ancestral specialization—elemental manipulation, biokinesis, spatial geometry. But temporal awareness..." She trailed off, studying him with new intensity.
"What?"
"The ability to perceive multiple timestreams simultaneously was one of the rarest Riftborne gifts. Even among them, only a handful of bloodlines carried the potential." She paused their walk entirely, turning to face him. "Kael, I need you to tell me everything you remember about your parents. Their names, where they came from, any unusual abilities they might have had."
"They were transport engineers. Marcus and Elena Miren. They died in a shipping accident when I was fourteen." The words came automatically, but even as he spoke them, Kael felt a strange disconnection—as if he were reciting someone else's memories.
"What kind of transport?"
"Long-haul freight. They worked the deep space routes between the outer colonies and the central worlds." He frowned, trying to remember details that had never seemed important before. "They traveled a lot. I spent most of my childhood with my aunt in Haven's Rest."
"And you never questioned why transport engineers would name their son after an ancient Riftborne hero?"
The words hit him like cold water. "What?"
"Kael Vorthak was one of the greatest Chronoform masters in Riftborne history. He could walk between moments, manipulate causality itself." Lysara's expression was gentle but uncompromising. "Your parents didn't choose that name by accident."
The implications crashed over him in waves. Everything he thought he knew about his origins, his family, his place in the world—all of it suddenly felt suspect. Had his parents known what he would become? Had they named him for the power they hoped he would inherit?
"The transport accident," he said slowly. "You think it wasn't really an accident."
"I think a lot of convenient accidents happened to people with Riftborne bloodlines in the years following the first Echo awakenings." Her voice was carefully neutral, but he could hear the fury underneath. "The Aetherlords have been very thorough in eliminating potential threats."
They walked in silence for a while after that, each lost in their own thoughts. The wasteland stretched endlessly ahead, broken only by more ruins and the occasional pillar of twisted metal reaching toward the fractured sky. But Kael was barely aware of the landscape anymore. His mind was reeling with questions about his past, his parents, the convenient gaps in his memories that had never bothered him before.
As the day began to fade, they crested a low ridge and saw their destination: a cluster of buildings unlike anything Kael had ever seen. They seemed to grow from the landscape rather than being built upon it, their walls flowing like organic curves. Bridges of crystallized light connected the structures, and gardens of impossible plants grew in defiance of the wasteland's corruption.
"Welcome to the Hollow Sanctum," Lysara said, noting his amazement. "One of the last places where the old knowledge survives."
As they approached, figures emerged to greet them—people whose very presence seemed to bend light and shadow in subtle ways. Their robes bore symbols that shifted when observed directly, and their eyes held the weight of accumulated secrets.
An elderly woman stepped forward, her silver hair adorned with small crystals that chimed softly as she moved. When she spoke, her voice carried harmonics that resonated in Kael's bones.
"Lysara," she said, inclining her head. "You bring us an Echo."
"I bring you something more, Matron Zelya," Lysara replied formally. "The readings were unprecedented. He manifested temporal perception on first awakening."
Matron Zelya's eyes fixed on Kael with an intensity that made him want to step backward. "Show me the Relic."
Kael hesitated, then drew the sphere from his satchel. The moment it appeared, every crystal in the Sanctum began to resonate, creating a symphony of otherworldly tones. The Relic itself pulsed brighter, its blue-black surface rippling like liquid starlight.
"By the Torn Veil," Zelya whispered. "A Prime Catalyst. We haven't seen one of these in fifty years." She looked at Kael with something approaching reverence. "Young Echo, you carry more than power. You carry the sleeping memory of what we once were."
As she gestured for them to follow her deeper into the Sanctum, Kael felt the weight of expectation settling on his shoulders like a physical burden. Whatever he had been before—scavenger, outcast, nobody—was fading into irrelevance. He was becoming something else, something that carried the hopes and fears of people he'd never met.
The question was whether he would be strong enough to bear that weight without being crushed by it.
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