Chapter 20 - Whispers beneath the mountain

The fire in the great stone hearth of Highvale's Watchtower flickered low, casting long shadows along the obsidian walls. The summit had passed, the echo bound to the Friend's mortal soul, and the representatives of the Five had returned to their realms to bolster the new compact. But for Mary, Loosie, and Lela, the work was far from finished.

Mary sat cross-legged on a woven mat in the tower's quiet sanctum, violet Codex open before her. The last pages glowed with fading runes from the summit's ritual. Her quill hovered above the parchment, unsure. Not because she didn't know what to write—but because for the first time, she feared what her writing might do.

Behind her, Loosie leaned against the window frame, watching the mountains. Snow curled through the air like falling ash.

"He's weakening," Loosie said.

Mary looked up.

"The Friend," she clarified. "Ever since the echo entered him, he's... flickering. Like he's there and not there."

Mary nodded slowly. "The echo was more than I expected. It wasn't just a whisper from the Author—it was part of her will. That kind of burden... it can't sit inside a single soul forever."

"And what happens when he breaks?" Loosie asked, eyes still on the slopes.

Mary closed the Codex and stood. "Then we find where the rest of the echo went."

Lela entered through the heavy wooden doors, her snow-dusted cloak half-frozen from patrol. "You may not have to wait long," she said, shaking off the frost. "There's a traveler at the border. He's asking for you by name, Mary. Says he carries a message from the Rift."

Mary's brow furrowed. "The Rift speaks now?"

"Apparently," Lela replied. "And he's not alone. He's brought a mountain."

A cold prickle ran down Mary's spine. "Show me."

They descended the tower and rode south along the edge of the granite bluffs until the landscape flattened. There, where the forest met ice-crusted valley, stood a sight stranger than prophecy. A lone man, pale as moonlight, wearing tattered finery like a noble risen from the grave, waited beside an enormous figure—no, a structure—a walking mountain.

It loomed twenty feet high, made of stone and glacier and bone. Not alive, but not lifeless either. Crystals pulsed within its chest cavity, forming arcane veins across its torso. Its head was a broken cathedral bell encased in thorns. And inside that bell was a single echoing sound: the hum of a name unspoken.

Mary dismounted.

The man bowed low. "You are Mary of the Codex."

"I am."

He raised his head. His eyes were stitched shut with silver thread.

"I am no one," he said. "But I bring the words the Rift wants you to hear."

Loosie snorted. "The Rift has opinions now?"

"It has memory," the man replied. "And within it stirs a second echo."

Mary stepped forward. "Another echo? Of the Author?"

He nodded. "When you sealed the first, you awakened the second. Dormant... until now. It is older. Angrier."

The walking mountain groaned, shifting slightly. Its crystals sparked with lavender light.

"It has taken shape," the man said. "It walks. And it seeks the other part. The Friend is not enough."

Mary stared at the monolith. "What's it called?"

The man answered in a whisper so faint it cut like glass:

"The Remainder."

They escorted the stranger and his stone titan back to Highvale, but not before veiling the mountain in runic fog. As they rode, he told his story.

He had once been a cartographer in the Obsidian Realms, before the Rift devoured the maps and the mountains they described. When the Author's final words reshaped the world, he survived by blindfolding himself, refusing to see the change. That act somehow preserved a sliver of memory lost to others.

"I remember when the Codex burned," he said. "I remember the last line. And I remember what was erased."

Mary frowned. "Erased?"

"The Remainder," he explained, "is the author's regret—everything she cut, everything too dangerous or painful to write. It's not an echo. It's an unwritten soul."

Mary felt the Codex pulse faintly against her side.

"So it's unfinished," she whispered.

"Yes," he said. "And it wants to finish itself."

Back at Highvale, they locked the walking mountain inside the outer courtyard—warded by Seralei's glyphs and watched by Lela's soldiers. The stranger asked for a single favor: to be allowed to speak to the Friend.

Mary refused at first.

"He's fragile," she said. "And bound."

But curiosity gnawed. What if the two halves—echo and remainder—needed to meet?

That night, as moonlight carved thin blades across the stone floor, Mary brought the stranger to the chamber where the Friend rested.

He sat upright, but his skin shimmered like wet ink. His eyes flickered with foreign stars.

"You carry her voice," he said to the stranger.

The blind man bowed. "And you carry her shadow."

They sat in silence. The air hummed.

Then the stranger said, "It wants to write again."

The Friend's face paled. "No."

Mary felt the Codex tremble. A faint page—one she didn't recall writing—had appeared.

A single line:

"It ends where it begins. Beneath the mountain."

She shut the book. "We're going."

At dawn, Mary, Loosie, Lela, the Friend, and the blind stranger rode north, back toward the spine of the world—the place where the Rift first appeared. The walking mountain followed, each step a quake.

They camped in the Vale of Teeth that night—an ancient place where mountains split like jaws. The wind whispered a dozen languages, none known, all understood.

In the morning, the world cracked.

The Remainder had arrived.

Not as a monster, but as a woman.

She stood on a cliff above them, wrapped in manuscript paper, her skin ink-black, her hair flowing with drifting letters. Her eyes were empty brackets.

She pointed at the Friend.

"I remember," she said, her voice the turning of a page. "And I want my ending."