The Concordium noticed before he even crossed the threshold.
Not by footsteps. Not by presence.
But by light.
The moment Keiran emerged from Aerenmoor, two candles ignited across the glyph lattice of the Citadel's upper dome—runes that hadn't burned in thirteen years.
One was his.
The other… was hers.
Lys's flame.
Flickering in a sealed alcove that no longer had a name.
Merin was waiting at the Scriptorium Steps.
He didn't speak.
Didn't bow.
Only stared at the twin silver flames now coiled on Keiran's wrist like serpents breathing in unison.
"You found the shard," Merin said.
Keiran nodded once. "It remembered me."
"No. You remembered it."
Behind Merin, the others gathered slowly.
Pathfinders.
Sentinels.
Even a Luminary or two—those rare archivists who once handled Echo-fragments.
Some looked confused.
Others looked… afraid.
Because memory magic was never meant to return what the world had sealed.
And now, Keiran carried it openly.
He walked into the central court alone.
The air was colder here. Not by temperature—but by resistance.
The walls remembered what they'd been ordered to forget.
And they trembled.
Near the old fountain, someone stepped into his path.
A boy. Maybe fifteen.
Wearing an Initiate's tabard and clutching a half-finished crest in one hand.
"You're… him," the boy whispered.
Keiran stopped.
"Who told you that?"
"No one." The boy pointed to his own wrist.
A faint spiral burn.
"When your light came back… mine woke up."
It had begun.
The Lantern Effect.
When someone with a soul-mark strong enough regains a sealed memory, it ripples. Not like sound—but like resonance.
It finds others.
Those tethered by forgotten bonds.
And it wakes them.
Keiran knelt.
"Do you remember who gave you the mark?"
The boy hesitated.
"A girl. In a chapel with no roof."
"She had white chalk on her fingers and eyes like stormglass."
Keiran felt the world tip.
That wasn't a lie.
That was Lys.
Others came, one by one.
Not many.
Just seven.
All of them younger than they should be.
All of them touched by Lanternfire.
In the tower above, the Council stirred.
Though only six seats remained filled, the Seventh—still empty since the day the seal was cast—began to glow.
Not with presence.
With reminder.
Down below, Merin finally stepped forward.
"They'll come for you now," he said.
"The ones who ordered the Seal. The Cloistered Arcanum. The Dominion's Pale Priests."
"Even the Echo Wardens won't stay quiet."
Keiran nodded.
"Let them."
"I didn't come back to hide."
He turned to the children.
Seven of them.
Marked.
Flickering.
Still unsure if they were dreaming.
"We're not just fragments," he said.
"We're reminders."
That night, the Citadel kept its lamps burning.
Old archives unlocked themselves without request.
Stones that bore no glyphs began to glow again.
And somewhere deep in the Vaults below, a cracked voice whispered:
"He walks again."
"The name burns still."
Far from the Concordium, in a forgotten part of the Dominion—
A woman in tattered robes stepped out of a broken shrine.
She looked up at the twin moons.
Then down at her wrist.
A spiral mark.
One long thought gone.
She smiled.
"Auren," she whispered.
"You kept your promise."