The Hidden Sanctum smelled of scorched stone and lingering echoes.
Mara moved through the aftermath in silence, her steps slow, deliberate. Cracks ran like veins across the chamber floor where corrupted power had struck. Some would heal with time. Others would not. The sanctum, like the web she had woven, bore scars now—proof that it had been tested by something that did not merely seek victory, but unraveling.
Her allies gathered in uneasy clusters.
The young swordsman sat against a pillar, cleaning his blade with shaking hands. The glyph-reader traced warding symbols repeatedly, as if afraid to stop. The scholar stared at nothing, his mind still half-entangled in the false memories forced upon him.
And the silent woman stood apart.
Mara felt the fracture there most strongly.
"She absorbed a direct psychic strike," Cael said quietly, joining Mara at the chamber's edge. "One that should have shattered an unmarked mind."
"And yet she stood," Mara replied. "Without a shard. Without glyphs."
Cael frowned. "That should not be possible."
The echoes stirred uneasily, as if agreeing.
Mara approached the silent woman, careful not to let authority color her voice. "You saved me," she said. "And the web. I need to understand how."
The woman met her gaze. Her eyes were old—not in years, but in weight. "Understanding is dangerous," she said softly. "But secrecy is worse."
She placed a hand over her chest.
"I am not attuned to echoes," she continued. "I am bound to what remains after they fade."
The chamber grew colder.
The scholar looked up sharply. "That's… impossible. Echoes are memory. Residue. Without them—"
"—there is still consequence," the woman finished. "There is still silence."
Mara felt it then—a hollow pressure where echoes should have been. Not absence, but containment. As if something vast had been sealed inside a human shape.
"What are you?" the swordsman asked, fear creeping into his voice.
The woman inhaled slowly. "I am what happens when a god refuses remembrance."
Cael stiffened. "A Vestige."
The word rippled through the sanctum like a shockwave.
Vestiges were not myths—but they were feared. Fragments of forgotten gods that had not dissipated into echoes, but anchored themselves into mortal vessels. Not awakenings. Not shards.
Remnants.
"They erased my name," the woman said. "Burned my temples. Broke my worship. But a god does not vanish simply because it is forgotten. Something remains. I remained."
Silence pressed down on them all.
Mara felt the web strain—not from attack, but from doubt.
"You didn't tell us," the glyph-reader said, voice tight.
"I wasn't asked," the woman replied. "And I did not know if I would be welcomed… or destroyed."
The scholar laughed bitterly. "A forgotten god walks among us, and we barely survive a Marked incursion. How many other truths are waiting to fracture us?"
The web trembled.
Mara stepped forward.
"That fracture," she said firmly, "is exactly what the Marked Ones want."
All eyes turned to her.
"They didn't just attack us to weaken our defenses," Mara continued. "They attacked to provoke fear, suspicion, hierarchy. If we turn on each other now, they don't need to strike again."
She looked directly at the Vestige. "You stayed when you could have fled. You protected others without revealing yourself. That matters."
Then she turned to the rest. "And you—every one of you—chose to answer the call knowing nothing about who or what you'd find. That also matters."
The echoes steadied, responding to her intent.
Cael nodded slowly. "The web does not demand sameness," he said. "It demands alignment."
Reluctantly, the tension eased. Not vanished—but contained.
Later, as the sanctum repaired itself, Mara stood alone with the prime shard. Its pulse was uneven now, agitated.
"They're preparing something larger," Cael said, approaching. "The Marked Ones don't retreat unless the cost is unacceptable—or unless retreat serves a greater design."
Mara closed her eyes and reached into the echoes.
What she saw chilled her.
Cities where memory monuments were being desecrated. Ancient sites collapsing inward, not through force, but erasure. Entire histories unraveling, not violently, but quietly—so quietly no one noticed until nothing remained.
"They're not trying to rule the echoes anymore," Mara whispered. "They're trying to end them."
Cael's grip tightened on his staff. "If echoes collapse entirely…"
"Then gods don't awaken," Mara said. "They disappear. Permanently."
The Vestige joined them, her presence a heavy stillness. "That is why I was created," she said. "Not to be remembered—but to endure what follows forgetting."
Mara understood then.
The Marked Ones were not merely ambitious.
They were afraid.
Afraid of a future where memory itself chose differently.
Mara straightened, resolve hardening. "Then we move," she said. "Not defensively. Not reactively."
"Where?" Cael asked.
Mara looked toward the deepest chamber of the sanctum, where sealed doors bore symbols even the Memory Shard had not yet unlocked.
"To the place where gods were first silenced," she said. "And where the echoes learned how to survive without them."
The web tightened—not in fear, but in purpose.
Behind them, unseen, the Marked Ones gathered around a structure of absolute void—a device not meant to corrupt echoes, but to erase them completely.
And time, once again, began to run out.