They returned to the surface just before dusk. The Archive's gates folded shut behind them, sealing with a soft hiss like breath held too long. Ashur didn't speak for a while. He walked beside the boy, hands stuffed deep in his coat, his shadow stretching thin and sharp across the stone.
"You're quieter than before," he said eventually, voice careful.
The boy gave no sign he heard.
Ashur glanced at him again. "You didn't find what you wanted?"
The boy's head tilted. A flicker of expression passed his face, then vanished.
"No. You found too much."
Ashur didn't say that out loud. But he could see it — in the boy's slower steps, the slight tremor when he looked over his shoulder as if someone had followed them back from the Archive. Not someone alive.
But something.
Some part of himself he hadn't left there willingly.
They paused beside an old shrine — a structure built into the lower cliff wall, shaped like a birdcage, filled with melted candles and hollow prayer stones. One of the stones had a spiral carved on it. Another had a mouth with no lips. A third had nothing at all.
The boy stared at the last one.
Ashur crouched beside the shrine and lit a fresh candle with a flint and silver match.
"You ever hear the term Echo Basin?" he asked, tone light.
The boy's eyes moved, just slightly.
Ashur took that as a yes.
"There's a place beneath the reservoir. Technically condemned, but nobody really checks anymore. It was a Choir listening chamber once. People went there to offer their silence. To trade voices for visions."
He leaned back on his heels, watching the flame flicker.
"Some say if you stay too long, the Choir listens back. And if it likes what it hears... it keeps it."
The boy didn't flinch.
But his fingers curled, one by one, into a loose fist.
They left again after nightfall.
Ashur didn't push him to talk. Didn't suggest anything directly. He just kept walking ahead, letting the silence stretch. Letting the boy follow on his own terms.
Echo Basin wasn't far — but the path down to it was warped.
Not physically. Chronologically.
Shadows seemed to move out of sync with their sources. At one point, the boy saw a version of himself three steps ahead — and when he blinked, it was gone.
When they reached the old basin entrance, it looked like a collapsed tunnel blocked by rusted bars. But Ashur bent down, removed a stone from the base of the wall, and revealed a hinge — a hidden crawlspace that sloped sharply down into blackness.
"You're not the first one to come here looking for answers," Ashur said, standing aside.
"But maybe you're the first one asking the right questions."
Inside, the basin stank of wet stone and old breath.
It wasn't truly underground — it felt like it had once been beneath the surface, then had been forgotten and re-remembered somewhere deeper.
The boy stepped cautiously, one hand on the wall. Muffled echoes answered each footstep a second too late.
Ashur's voice came quietly behind him.
"Listen carefully. That's not you echoing."
He was right.
The sounds didn't match his steps.
Sometimes, they came from ahead. Sometimes behind. Once, a breath came from the ceiling.
The boy froze.
Ashur touched his shoulder gently, then pointed toward a rusted doorway.
Beyond it: a circular chamber lined with prayer seats. Each was occupied by a wax figure — faceless, mouthless, hands resting in silence on their laps.
At the far end was a cracked podium.
And behind that — carved into the wall in bone-colored ink — a massive spiral with an eye scratched out at its center.
The boy's mark throbbed.
Not in pain.
In resonance.
Ashur stayed at the threshold.
"You want to remember what was taken?" he said softly. "Then sit."
The boy stepped forward.
And every wax figure turned their head.