The old house breathed with silence, the kind of silence that clung like cobwebs in the rafters. Jaka stirred in his bed long before dawn, though no sound had awoken him. It was something else, a pressure, like a fog rolling through unseen corridors, seeping into his chest. His blood felt heavy, weighted with dread that had no source. He lay there in the dark, eyes open, trying to shake it.
The sensation wasn't sight, wasn't sound, wasn't anything tangible. It was mist, cold, shapeless, pressing against the edges of his mind, whispering that something was wrong. He rubbed his face, annoyed with himself. He didn't dream often. Not like Kai.
A muffled sound broke the stillness. Not from the house itself, but from the room across the hall.
Kai.
Jaka pushed himself upright, bare feet meeting the chilled wooden floorboards. The moment he stood, the mist in his chest tightened, as if responding to whatever stirred his brother awake. He moved fast, shoving the door open.
Kai thrashed in his bed, sheets tangled around his legs, skin slick with sweat. His lips moved in broken words, half-gasp, half-snarl, as though he were speaking to someone no one else could see.
Jaka froze in the doorway. Time had stopped, the air in Kai's room felt heavier, like the weight of a storm pressing down on the walls.
Darkness absorbed. Not the absence of light, but a substance, thick and living, pressing against his skin like cold tar. Kai struggled to breathe, though his chest rose and fell as though underwater. He wasn't standing so much as suspended, every direction the same suffocating black.
Then a sound cracked through it: wood splitting.
A coffin emerged from the dark, not carried, not placed, just simply there. Black stone framed its edges, etched with runes that glowed faintly red, pulsing like a heartbeat. The lid shuddered, straining, as if something clawed to get out.
Kai tried to move closer. His body obeyed, though it felt detached, floating. He reached out a hand…
The coffin burst apart with a sound like bone breaking.
Shadows spewed forth, not like smoke but like creatures, writhing and clawing. Their shapes were half-formed arms dissolving into tendrils, faces bending into masks of anguish. They whispered as they spilled across the unseen floor, voices overlapping in a language he did not know but understood in his blood.
"Guardian falls…"
"…Chains are broken…"
"…The Last Echo stirs…"
Kai clapped his hands over his ears, but the words threaded through his skull, impossible to block.
Something moved inside the coffin. He braced himself, expecting to see his grandfather, lifeless or broken. Instead, there was nothing. The casket was hollow, lined with crawling shadow. The emptiness itself was unbearable, a hole that screamed of absence.
"No," Kai whispered, voice breaking. "Where is he?"
The shadows stirred, parting like water, and from them rose a figure. It had no form, no true body. Only a silhouette made of smoke and hunger. Its face shifted endlessly, features appearing and dissolving. But the eyes, the eyes burned like hollow lanterns, pale fire in an abyss.
It looked directly at him.
The whispers fell silent. The weight of its gaze crushed him to the floor.
"Blood of my blood," the thing hissed, its voice layered, as though spoken by a thousand mouths. "You cannot hide from me."
Chains erupted from the shadows, snapping taut as if something vast strained against them. Red runes flared brighter, searing against Kai's vision. He staggered back, covering his face, but the light burned through his eyelids, scorching his mind.
The last thing he heard before waking was the sound of shattering glass, as though a thousand mirrors broke at once echoed in his mind.
Kai screamed. The darkness vanished and time was released.
Jaka was across the room in an instant, gripping his brother's shoulders. "Kai! Wake up!"
Kai's eyes snapped open. For a moment they weren't his eyes at all, pupils blown wide, glowing faintly like embers in deep ash. He sucked in air, chest heaving, then coughed as though choking on smoke.
Jaka shook him once. "What did you see?"
Kai swallowed, jaw trembling. His hands fisted into Jaka's shirt, holding on as if the room itself threatened to collapse. "It wasn't a dream."
Of course it wasn't. Kai never called them dreams.
"What was it this time?" Jaka pressed, though part of him already knew. He'd felt it, the same hollow mist pressing against his blood. Not the details, not the vision, but the shadow of it.
Kai's voice cracked as he spoke, fast and fractured. "There was a coffin. Sealed in black stone, but it split, fractured like bone. Shadows poured out, not smoke or steam." His eyes darted toward the corner of the room, as though expecting them to still be there.
Jaka tightened his grip. "And inside?"
"Nothing." Kai's throat bobbed as he swallowed. "It was empty. But I could feel him. Grandfather. I could feel his absence. As if he'd been pulled out, taken away."
The tension in Jaka's veins pulsed at the words, colder now, enough to make him shiver. He hated that reaction, hated that part of him believed it.
Kai went on, voice climbing. "The walls around the coffin were carved with runes, red, burning, alive. Chains hung in the air. And then," He broke off, shaking his head. "Something looked at me. It had no face, but I swear it saw me. Like it knew who I was. The words replayed in his own head, gnawing at him. Chains. Runes. Shadows. An empty coffin.
"The Watchers are coming for us." Kai said sternly, he repeated the words spoken to him "You can not hide from me."
All things Jaka hadn't seen, but somehow, some part of him felt the echo.
It was always this way. Whenever Kai dreamed, Jaka caught only fragments: a chill in his marrow, a pulse in his blood, something vast just out of reach. Kai bore the visions in full, every color and sound carved into his memory like fire on stone, while Jaka endured only the residue. Enough to unsettle him. Enough to prove it was real.
And though he told himself he was grateful for the distance, that faint tether only made the visions worse. Because it meant what Kai saw wasn't madness. It meant their blood carried truth, and Jaka could never quite escape it.
"Say something," Kai begged, voice hoarse. "Tell me you felt it. Even a piece."
Jaka hesitated. His instinct was to deny, to brush it off as another of Kai's wild visions. Yet he couldn't. Not this time. It lingered in him, heavy and undeniable.
"I felt… something," Jaka admitted, low and grim.
Kai's eyes widened, a desperate gleam flashing there. "Then you know it wasn't just me. You know he's not dead. He's been taken. The watchers have him."
Jaka wanted to argue, but the words stuck. He only managed, "It may not mean what you think it does."
Kai let go of him, shoving back against the headboard. His breath rasped through clenched teeth, his face pale and drawn. "Then what does it mean? Tell me, Jaka. If it's not death, if it's not nothing, then what is it?"
Jaka had no answer.
The brothers sat in silence, the faint drip of rain beginning outside, tapping against the glass. Dawn was still hours away, but already it felt too late, as though the day ahead had been poisoned by something unseen.
Jaka rose at last, pulling the sheet free from Kai's clenched fists and setting it across his lap. His brother looked smaller suddenly, like the fevered words had emptied him.
"Come on, we should get ready," Jaka muttered, though his voice carried no conviction.
Kai's reply was a whisper. "This doesn't make sense. Not while he's chained in the dark."
Jaka turned toward the door, but hesitated halfway. He clenched his jaw and walked out anyway, leaving the room in silence.
It had been nearly a month since the Tomas Theryn went missing out there on the lake. The town of Eloweth presumed him dead and had already begun to forget him.
Thyren Lake had a way of doing that, smoothing edges, erasing names, dulling grief until it became something soft and unspoken. It was a curse to the Thyren family, named after their great grandfather, who first disappeared out on the lake, but centuries later their father had vanished without a trace as well. Now their grandfather instantly gone, just like that.
Jaka stood by the open window, fastening the buttons of his black coat. It might have been a perfect morning, if not for the occasion.
Behind him, Kai sat at the edge of his bed, silent for once. The dark bags beneath his eyes had faded, but the rest of him looked hollowed out, thinner, sharper, like a flame burned too long.
"You don't have to come," Jaka said, breaking the quiet. "It's just a formality. The town insisted."
Kai looked up slowly. "They call it a funeral," he murmured. "But there's no one to bury."
Jaka sighed, adjusting his collar. "They need closure."
"They need to pretend."
He didn't answer. There was no use arguing anymore. The search had lasted weeks, boats combing the inlets, divers dragging nets through the reeds, lanterns burning through fog until dawn.
No body. No blood. No witnesses, Just the water, endless and quiet as always.
Jaka had told himself that was enough. That the lake had taken what it wanted. But even now, when he closed his eyes, he could hear it, a pulse beneath the waves, slow and steady, like a heartbeat that wasn't his own.
He turned from the window. "Let's go before the light gets any worse."
Kai rose, tugging on a dark coat of his own. He moved with the unhurried grace of someone who didn't quite belong in the morning. The sunlight had already begun to creep through the thin curtains, pale and fractured. It caught on his skin, not burning, not searing, but enough to cause a glisten of sweat, like light sheen off a glass. He flinched anyway.
Jaka reached for his gloves. "We'll stay in the shade once we reach the dock."
Kai's mouth twisted. "Always the careful one."
"Someone has to be."
Kai smirked faintly, though there was no humor in it. "Grandfather never feared the sun."
Jaka met his gaze in the mirror, the reflection fractured by the age-spotted glass. "He learned to respect it."
Outside, the bells began to toll. One for every decade Tomas had lived, eighteen times, to be exact. A peculiar long life since The Fall .
The sound rolled across the water carried like a repetitive foghorn.
The brothers walked in silence down the narrow path that wound from their house to the docks. Dew clung to the grass, and the morning fog drifted low across the lake's surface, thick and slow as breath.
The town had gathered near the water. Black coats, bowed heads, murmured condolences that felt more like superstition than sympathy. The Theryn family had always been different, respected, yes, but never trusted. The lake took them, one by one, and the townsfolk carried the rumors.
An empty casket rested at the center of the pier, draped in gray cloth and ringed with lanterns. The flames flickered weakly in the damp, casting halos of pale gold across the boards.
Kai stopped a few steps away, eyes locked on the casket. "This is a joke," he said under his breath.
Jaka's voice was even. "It's a ceremony. That's all."
"A ceremony for what? Pretending we're like them? Pretending we die?"
"Enough," Jaka hissed softly. "Someone will hear."
Kai turned sharply. "Let them." His voice was low but dangerous. "They've whispered about us for years. Maybe they should remember why."
Jaka's hand twitched toward him, then fell. "You think defiance honors him?"
Kai's expression softened for a moment. "He's not dead, Jaka. You know it."
Jaka said nothing. The priest stepped forward, voice rising in careful rhythm, reading words from an old script no one really believed in anymore. Something about souls and stillness, peace and release. The phrases fell flat, they had no patience for prayer.
The priest's words faded, replaced by the dull creak of the pier and the low hiss of wind.
An older fisherman leaned toward another, whispering, "A Theryn funeral, without a body. Happens with every generation, doesn't it?"
The other man crossed himself quickly. "Don't say the name so close to the water."
Kai heard them. His jaw clenched, eyes burning with quiet fury. "They think it's a curse," he said under his breath. "But they're wrong. It's a calling."
Jaka's voice was barely a whisper. "And if that calling drags you under, too?"
Kai looked up at him, defiant. "Then I'll find him faster."
The ceremony ended. One by one, villagers stepped forward, laying flowers and trinkets atop the empty casket. A silver coin. A small wooden carving. A vial of lake water sealed with wax. Tokens meant to ward off bad fortune.
When it was over, the priest turned to Kai. "Would you like to say a few words?"
Kai hesitated, the weight of every eye pressing on him. Defiant, he stormed toward the end of the pier, murmuring under his breath.
All eyes turned to Jaka, unsure what to do, he stepped closer to the casket, resting a gloved hand on the damp wood. "My grandfather taught us that the lake remembers everything. It may not return what it takes, but it never forgets. So, we'll remember too."
He bowed his head. No one clapped, no one spoke. The silence that followed felt deeper than any prayer.
As the crowd began to scatter, Kai remained where he stood, staring out across the water.
Jaka waited a moment before speaking. "We should go."
Kai didn't move. "He's still out there. I can feel him. Every time the water moves, every time the wind shifts, it's like he's calling."
Jaka sighed. "You felt the same thing before Father vanished. Before Mother stopped writing. It's the Echorin, Kai. It plays tricks."
Kai turned toward him, eyes sharp. "You don't believe that."
Jaka opened his mouth, then closed it again. He didn't. Not entirely. But their father never returned either.
A ripple crossed the lake, small, but deliberate. Both brothers saw it. The water was stilled again immediately after.
Kai smiled faintly. "See?"
Jaka swallowed hard, his pulse quickening in that strange, hollow rhythm again, the one that didn't belong to him. "You see what you want to see."
"Maybe. But that doesn't make it untrue."
They stood there until the bells stopped and the villagers were gone.
Finally, Jaka turned to leave. "Let it rest, Kai, the lake doesn't give back what it takes."
Kai's voice was a whisper, barely carried by the wind. "Then maybe it's time we stopped pretending it can't take us too."
Jaka didn't answer. The words lingered between them, sinking like stones into the still water.
The lake gave a soft sound, a sigh, almost human.
For a heartbeat, both brothers thought they heard it whisper a name.