#1
Morning mist shrouded the peak of the crystal tower Lumenspire, refracting the first sunlight into a spectrum of colors dancing across the marble streets of the capital. Yet inside the Chamber of Whispers, the only light came from dim resonance crystals hanging from the vaulted underground ceiling, casting long shadows between shelves of dust-laden artifacts.
Thalia walked slowly down the main aisle, her fingers brushing the cold surface of an old wooden crate that had arrived the night before. On its back was stamped a red seal: "Tier Four – Potential Mnemonic Instability." Not the most dangerous, but enough to make Master Roland frown when assigning it to her.
"Five years as an apprentice and they still give you corpse boxes," Kaelen muttered, his voice echoing strangely in a room filled with the reverberations of the past. He leaned against the doorway, hands in his pockets, sharp eyes scanning the surroundings as usual. "Is Roland testing you, or punishing you?"
"Probably both," Thalia replied, setting the crate on her worktable. The table was crowded with tools—soft-bristle brushes, neutral cleansing solutions, silk gloves reinforced with thin silver weave. But her most important tool was unseen: her own focus.
Kaelen stepped closer, curiosity glinting in his eyes. "Where's it from?"
"An excavation near the Gloomwald border. Context lost." Thalia unlocked the crate with a specialized key, the click echoing in the silence. "The catalog officer only noted: 'Bronze medallion, heavily eroded, motif illegible.'"
"Boring," Kaelen complained, yet he didn't leave. He rarely did when Thalia was working.
Thalia lifted the lid. Inside, resting on a frayed velvet cushion, lay a bronze medallion just as described. Its edges were jagged, its surface coated in thick green patina that obscured any detail. But Thalia didn't see its physical form—she felt the first hiss.
Every artifact had echoes. Some were only faint whispers, residual emotions at best. This one… this one pulsed like a dying heart.
"You're going to 'listen' now?" Kaelen asked, his voice lower.
Thalia nodded and sat down. She removed her right glove and lightly placed the tip of her index finger against the medallion's cold edge. She closed her eyes.
First came the physical—always the physical: the rough texture of metal beneath her finger, the scent of old copper and earth. Then she let the barrier within her open—the defensive layer she had built to separate her consciousness from the sea of echoes constantly reverberating in this place.
The echoes came not as images, but as sensations: pressure in her chest, ragged breaths, cold mud seeping through a uniform. The smell of blood and gunpowder. Screams.
A battle.
Thalia drew a deep breath, anchoring herself to her own rhythm. She was not a participant—only an observer. The first rule of Echo-Reading: do not be carried away.
She pushed deeper, searching for the core of the echo. This medallion had once been pinned to something—a uniform. There was pride there, but bitter. A promise left unfulfilled…
Then she heard a voice.
"…hold the line! Until reinforcements—"
The words were cut short by a deafening explosion, even as an echo. Thalia bit her lip, feeling the panic of the medallion's owner—a young soldier, perhaps. She tried to grasp more, but the images fractured: flashes of light through trees, shadows moving too quickly, a paralyzing fear—
And something else. Something wrong.
Amid the chaos of battle, there was a pattern. Movements too coordinated to be coincidence. Soldiers retreating just moments before artillery fire struck their own position. A betrayal hidden within the fog of war.
Thalia jerked her hand back as if shocked. Her breathing came fast and shallow, cold sweat beading at her temples. In her hand, the patina on part of the medallion had faded, revealing a fragment of its motif—a shattered star, a symbol she did not recognize.
"What is it?" Kaelen asked, now right beside her. "You saw something bad."
"A battle," Thalia murmured hoarsely. "But… staged. Controlled. Like a play." She stared at the medallion, unease twisting in her gut. "This isn't just a relic of war. It's evidence."
"Evidence of what?"
Before Thalia could answer, heavy footsteps echoed down the corridor. Master Roland appeared in the doorway, his usually calm face creased with concern. His eyes—pale blue like ice—went straight to the medallion on the table, then to Thalia's still-pale face.
"Finished?" he asked flatly.
"Not entirely, Master," Thalia replied, steadying her voice. "But the echoes are strong. A battle near the Gloomwald border, maybe fifteen years ago? There's something strange—"
"Record your standard findings and secure the artifact," Roland cut in sharply. He took the medallion, inspected it briefly, then placed it back in its crate. "Your next task is waiting. The Fading Locket. From the Grand Chancellor's personal collection."
Kaelen and Thalia exchanged a glance. A personal artifact of the Chancellor? That was rare—and usually reserved for senior arcanists, not apprentices.
Roland noticed the exchange. "The Chancellor wants a simple test—physical restoration only, no deep reading. Perform basic cleaning. Don't waste time 'listening.'" There was an odd weight on the last word, almost a warning.
He withdrew a small box from his robe—dark wood, carved with the sigil of House Melpomene: a phoenix with one broken wing. When he handed it to Thalia, the box felt strange… silent. As if the echoes that usually clung to old objects had been drained away.
"Do it today," Roland added before turning to leave. "And Thalia—about that medallion. Some echoes are best left as whispers. Not all truths are meant to be heard."
He left, leaving the two youths in a tense silence.
"Roland is hiding something," Kaelen hissed after a moment.
"Or protecting something," Thalia replied softly, her eyes fixed on the dark wooden box in her hands. She opened it.
Inside lay a simple silver necklace with a faded heart-shaped pendant. Physically, it was unremarkable. But as Thalia's finger hovered near it, she felt it—an unnatural silence. Like a void in an ocean of echoes.
"Don't," Kaelen said suddenly, grabbing her hand. "You heard Roland. Just clean it."
But the silence itself was a whisper. And Thalia had never, in her life, been able to resist a mystery.
"He said not to waste time listening," Thalia whispered, her gaze sharpening with sudden resolve. "He didn't say I couldn't touch it at all."
Her index finger touched the cold heart-shaped pendant.
And the world exploded into song.
Not the echoes of battle or screams, but a lullaby, sung by a woman's loving voice. A stone-walled room, firelight from a hearth, the shadow of a mother bending over a crib. A feeling of pure, protective love—and deep sorrow—flooded Thalia so powerfully that tears spilled down her cheeks without her noticing.
Then she saw her face. The woman's face.
She had Thalia's eyes. And she was singing the same song—note for note identical—to the one Master Roland had sung to Thalia every night for as long as she could remember.
And in the background, standing in the doorway with a face still young yet already grim, was Melpomene. His lips trembled as he formed two words to the woman: "Goodbye, sister."
Thalia staggered back. The pendant slipped from her hand and struck the table with a sharp clang. Her breath came in gasps, her heart pounding as if she had run for miles.
"Thalia? THALIA!" Kaelen shook her shoulders.
She couldn't answer. Her mind reeled, trying to grasp what she had just seen. Mother. Roland. Melpomene. The same song.
At the far end of the table, the crate containing the bronze medallion seemed to tremble—or perhaps it was her own shaking hands. As she stared at it, the patina on its surface continued to peel away, as if stirred by the unease now filling the room.
A new symbol emerged—part of an inscription. Only three words were legible:
"… A PROMISE HE BROKE …"
From the distant corridor, Roland's footsteps approached again. Fast. Anxious.
Thalia looked at the pendant lying on her table, then at the medallion, then at the door. For the first time in her life, the echoes were no longer speaking only of the past.
They were speaking of her.
And someone very much wanted her not to listen.