The passage narrowed to a throat of stone, slick with condensation, the silver veins faint as dying embers. Each step sent ripples across the walls, as if the tunnel were not rock at all but the gullet of something vast and alive.
No one spoke. Words felt fragile here, too easily stolen.
Elara's sun-eye cast dim light ahead, but even its glow seemed swallowed too quickly. Jorn slept in her arms, his small breaths shallow, his lips twitching faintly as if he still hummed in dreams. Every time his breath hitched, the silver veins flickered, as though his presence alone kept them alive.
Marek led, shield raised, sword drawn. Behind him, Seris moved like a shadow, her eyes darting constantly. Tomas followed last, his hands tracing sigils on the walls, desperate to keep their memory intact.
After an endless stretch, the tunnel widened.
They stepped into a cavern so vast it defied sense. A dome arched above them, glittering with silver veins that pulsed like veins of a heart. The floor was not stone but black glass, smooth and reflective.
Their reflections stared back at them.
But they were wrong.
Elara saw herself in the glass — but older, her sun-eye burned out, her arms empty. Marek's reflection showed him kneeling, his sword broken, his shield cast aside. Seris's double stood with her throat slit, a dagger in her own hand. Tomas's was ash, crumbling even as he looked.
And Jorn…
There was no Jorn.
Elara's breath caught, and her grip on the boy tightened. "It's showing us what it wants," she whispered. "Not what will be."
But her voice shook.
The cavern stirred.
The black glass rippled like water, their reflections distorting, breaking apart. A sound rose — not the breathing of before, not the Choir's shrieking silence. This was different.
It was echoes.
Their own voices, thrown back at them, layered and warped:"Elara…""Marek…""Seris…""Tomas…"
Each name twisted, deepened, repeated until the chamber itself seemed to chant them.
Seris clapped her hands over her ears, shaking. "It's us—it's using us against ourselves."
Marek growled, lifting his shield. "Then we make it choke on us."
The glass beneath their feet cracked.
From the fractures, shapes began to rise — silhouettes made of nothing but reflection. Each wore their faces. Each carried their weapons.
But their eyes were voids.
The Echoes stepped free of the glass, moving in perfect unison. A dozen Elara's, a dozen Marek's, Seris, Tomas — even Jorn.
The boy's Echo stood taller, older, his mouth wide in silent song.
Elara's blood ran cold. "This is what it thinks we'll become if it wins."
The Echoes raised their weapons in unison.
And charged.
Steel met steel.
Marek clashed with his own reflection, shield against shield, blade against blade. The impact rattled through him, every strike answered instantly by the double's perfect mimicry. "It fights like me—because it is me!" he snarled, straining as sparks flew.
Seris's daggers danced against her twin's, each feint matched, each thrust mirrored. She cursed, fury rising. "How do you kill yourself?"
Tomas unleashed a glyph, light searing across the cavern — only for his double to trace the same glyph in reverse, canceling it out. The backlash sent Tomas sprawling.
Elara's Echo stepped forward, sun-eye blazing brighter than her own, fire lashing out. She barely had time to shield Jorn, the heat singing her arm.
The boy stirred, whimpering. His eyes opened, hazy, frightened — and his Echo sang.
The melody shook the chamber, drowning out every other sound. The silver veins flared bright, then dimmed, as if surrendering to the false song.
"No!" Elara cried. She shook Jorn gently, desperate. "Don't listen! That's not you!"
But the boy's eyes locked on his taller, hollow self. For a moment, doubt flickered.
Marek's shield cracked. Seris's blade shattered. Tomas coughed blood, another glyph broken against his twin.
The Echoes pressed closer, relentless, inevitable.
Elara pressed her forehead to Jorn's, her voice fierce despite the roar of echoes. "You are not what it says. You are not its song. You are ours. You're you."
The boy's lip trembled. Tears welled. And then — he sang.
Weak, fragile, but his own.
The cavern shook. The Echoes staggered, their forms rippling. Marek's double faltered, blade pausing mid-swing. Seris's twin shrieked voicelessly before dissolving. Tomas's shadow cracked down the middle, scattering into glass.
Elara's twin snarled, fire flaring — but the boy's melody cut through, pure and defiant. Her Echo tore apart, golden light spilling into the chamber.
Only Jorn's reflection remained. Tall, perfect, void-eyed.
It reached toward him, hand outstretched, mouth still singing the false melody.
Jorn drew a shaking breath. Then his voice rose stronger. Louder. His true song.
The false one cracked. Shattered. And the Echo dissolved into dust.
Silence returned.
Not the silence's silence.
A real silence.
For the first time since they entered the depths, it was not oppressive. It was fragile. Waiting.
The survivors stood trembling, weapons broken, bodies battered — but alive.
Elara kissed Jorn's hair, whispering, "You saved us. Again."
Marek planted his sword in the ground, chest heaving. "Then we keep going. Before it regathers itself."
At the far end of the cavern, a new fissure split open, veins glowing brighter than ever.
The path deeper.
The silence's heart was waiting.
The cavern was still.
Shards of broken glass littered the floor like fallen stars, each fragment glimmering faintly before fading into ash. Their reflections were gone. The silence, for once, felt wounded — thin, retreating, as if its breath had been knocked out.
Marek leaned heavily on his cracked shield, chest heaving. Sweat stung his wounded eye, and his lips twisted into a grimace. "That… that was me," he muttered. "Every strike, every weakness. I fought myself." His voice cracked with something rawer than exhaustion. "And I nearly lost."
Seris sat with her back against the wall, blades shattered, hands trembling. "They made me slit my own throat," she whispered, staring at the glass fragments scattered around her boots. "I felt it. The weight, the cold. Like I'd already died." Her jaw tightened, and she forced herself to look up. "But I'm still here. That's what matters."
Tomas staggered to his feet, blood trickling from his nose. His double's glyphs still burned across his skin, ghostly afterimages. "I saw myself unraveling," he said. "And for a moment, I wanted it. To crumble. To rest." He shook his head, voice breaking. "But the boy… he pulled me back."
Elara knelt with Jorn, brushing damp curls from his forehead. His small body shook with the effort of what he had done, but his breathing steadied with each stroke of her hand. "He fought the strongest of them all," she said softly. "And won."
Jorn stirred, whispering through cracked lips: "It wasn't me."
Elara leaned close. "It was, little one. It was your song. Your truth."
His eyes fluttered open, hazy. "No… it was all of us. I just sang it."
The chamber seemed to shiver at his words.
The glass floor rippled once more, faintly, as though reluctant to release them. Elara tensed, clutching the boy tighter. But no reflections rose this time. Only their own shadows, cast by her sun-eye, long and weary.
The fissure ahead pulsed brighter, veins blazing silver.
Marek lifted his sword, unbroken resolve burning in his eyes. "It's daring us to go deeper."
Seris spat on the glass shards. "Then we go. If it wants us in its heart, we'll cut it out from within."
Tomas pressed his hand against the wall, his fingers leaving a faint glowing glyph. His voice was low, but steady. "So long as one name survives, so long as one song is sung, it cannot win. Remember that."
Elara rose, Jorn safe in her arms. Her sun-eye still flickered faintly, enough to light their way. "Then we remember together."
As they crossed the cavern, fragments of their reflections still glimmered faintly at the edges of their vision. Not whole doubles. Not hostile. Just faint images — like memories of who they could have been, left behind.
Elara did not look back.
And when they stepped into the fissure, the cavern exhaled one last echo — not words, not melody, just a low, trembling moan.
The sound of something vast and ancient realizing, for the first time, that it could be defied.