It started with a flicker. Just one. Barely enough to be real. But it was him.
Or something wearing his face.
I didn't recognize it at first. The shape flickered like candlelight—grainy, washed out, twitching through broken movements. A boy, maybe fourteen, standing in an orchard that hadn't existed for decades. He bent to tie his boot. Looked up. Smiled at someone I couldn't see.
Then he vanished.
Gone, like breath in winter.
I stared at the spot where he'd been until my eyes stung. I didn't move. Not until the wind shifted and brought the smell of honeyfruit blossoms—impossible, dead for years. But there it was, crisp and sickeningly sweet.
Solas.
Or what was left of him in this place.
I ran.
Not away. Toward the next flicker.
That's how it started.
The echo zones weren't consistent. They pulsed across the ruins like tumors—patches where time snapped in on itself and memories got caught in the teeth of the world. Sometimes they were voices muttering in languages I almost understood. Sometimes full scenes, looping, like broken puppets. Sometimes just feelings, thick in the air like mold.
They followed no pattern. No rules.
Like dreams that had outlived the people who dreamed them.
I became addicted.
Every flicker might be him.
Not just him. A him. A version. A shadow. A scrap.
I didn't care.
I followed every one.
Each flicker burned a little more out of me. I could feel myself unraveling—like every memory I touched replaced one of my own.
I watched him climb the old vine tree behind our house—the one that died when we did. He slipped, laughed, dangled from one hand like it was nothing. Like death hadn't made him too heavy yet.
Another: him in a library, muttering something about the moon while he doodled strange runes in the margin of a book.
The worst one—
The worst showed him crying.
Alone.
Back turned.
Fists clenched.
No sound. Just his shoulders shaking in silence.
I pressed my hand to the echo like it was a window.
It passed through me like smoke.
I stopped eating. Stopped resting. Every time I closed my eyes, I was afraid I'd miss another one. I didn't care that the road was decaying—that the buildings around me changed shape when I wasn't looking. I didn't care that the trees bled or the sky blinked.
One night, I stepped through a memory that wasn't his.
A woman sobbing over a cradle.
Her face was my mother's. Almost. But too smooth, too still. Like someone tried to carve her out of wax and forgot to add the warmth. Her eyes were mine. Her mouth too. And when she spoke—
"I should've dropped you in the river."
—it was my voice.
I screamed.
Nothing came out.
The Creature appeared beside me the next morning like she'd always been there.
"You're fraying," she murmured, brushing a strand of hair from my face like a lover or a mother. "Good. The pieces come apart easier that way."
I didn't look at her.
I pulled out a scrap of parchment I'd stolen days ago—don't remember from where—and scrawled with charcoal:
What's your name?
She stared at the paper for a long time. Her lips curled. Not a smile. Not not a smile either.
"I have no name."
I glared.
She took the parchment.
Turned it over.
Wrote one word.
Aerimus.
Then she leaned down, close to my ear, and whispered inside my skull:
"Not that you can say it anyway."
That night I saw a version of Solas I didn't recognize.
He was older.
He screamed into the fire—and the fire screamed back. His voice had changed. Or the world had stopped translating it. Either way, it didn't sound like something meant for me.
I chased him through the field.
But it wasn't a field.
It was a memory.
And it ended too soon.
I dropped to my knees in the ash.
I could feel it again—
That tightening in my chest.
That need.
Not love.
Not grief.
Worse.
Need.
It hollowed me from the inside.
I took another scrap of parchment. Wrote:
What if I don't find him?
Aerimus took it.
Didn't write back.
Just whispered:
"Then you'll become what I did."
…
The first thing I noticed was that he didn't hesitate.
Most people, when they see me—when they feel me—slow down. Their breath hitches. They blink like they're remembering something they don't want to. They break, just a little, even before I touch their thoughts.
But this one came at me like he'd been waiting.
Fast. Focused. Masked.
A blur of steel and precision and purpose.
I dodged too slow and felt a blade graze my ribs—thin line of heat and pain. My blood was too dark. I don't think it's red anymore.
He didn't speak.
Neither did I.
I couldn't.
But my head screamed questions with every block, every dodge, every breath that rattled through me like broken glass in a jar.
Who are you? Why don't you flinch? Why do you move like someone I used to trust?
He moved like Solas. Not just fast—but known. Muscle memory I hadn't earned flinched in recognition. The tilt of his stance. The dip of his left shoulder before he struck.
I parried late. Felt steel kiss my ribs. A whisper of heat followed by too-warm wetness.
I hated it.
No—I wanted to hate it.
Instead, I let it unnerve me.
He knocked me back against a wall. My spine lit up with pain.
I grabbed the memory of a sobbing child I'd once pulled from a dying guard and threw it at him—shoved it into the air like a net of sorrow.
He didn't stop.
Didn't even flinch.
He was immune.
My weapon—my only weapon—meant nothing here.
So I broke the rules.
I screamed without sound and lunged at him like an animal, fists clumsy but fast. Rage carried me where skill didn't.
I caught him under the chin.
Then the knee.
Then the wall caught us both.
We hit the ground, me on top, his blade skittering across stone.
I didn't hesitate.
I slammed his head down once.
Twice.
The third time, he stopped struggling.
I rolled off him, panting like a beast, my ribs stabbing into my lungs, throat full of fire.
Aerimus stood at the edge of the ruin, arms crossed.
"You bleed well," she said.
I ignored her.
I dragged the warrior by his collar into the inner chamber—a place where the walls pulsed like they were made of meat. I didn't know how long this zone would hold. Echoes twisted the ceiling. A memory of a fire flickered in one corner and vanished.
I tied him down.
I told myself this was survival. Not vengeance. Not fear. But when I drove the spike through his thigh, I watched his face too closely.
I needed to see if he flinched like Solas used to.
He didn't... I think…
Eventually.
He groaned, then snapped awake and thrashed. I pressed a foot into his chest.
His mask was still on.
I didn't take it off.
Not yet.
I needed him to talk first.
I pointed at him. Tapped my throat. Then tapped his chest. A crude way to say: Start explaining.
He didn't.
So I made him hurt.
Not artfully. Not cleverly.
Just fingers between ribs. Elbow to the wound.
He screamed—and something in me curled up and died.
Because it was familiar.
Not the voice.
The rhythm.
I froze.
Just for a second.
Aerimus didn't move. Didn't speak.
I looked at the warrior again. He was glaring up at me, half-unconscious, blood in his teeth.
I should've stopped.
I didn't.
I leaned in.
Pressed my head to his mask. The metal was warm with blood. I closed my eyes and begged the silence not to speak.
Don't be him. Please. I can't survive it if it's you.
He whimpered.
And the sound cracked something old inside me.
I kept going.
If it was him… I didn't want to know. Not yet.