Chapter 16: Echoes of the Forgotten

Part 1: The Hollow Realm

The silence was absolute.

Aedric had known quiet before—the heavy, expectant hush of ruins long abandoned, the stillness that preceded something terrible—but this was different. This silence breathed. It pressed against his skin, seeping into his lungs, wrapping around his thoughts like unseen hands. It was not the silence of emptiness. It was the silence of something watching.

The cavern stretched endlessly before them, its walls marked with pulsating symbols, each one flickering like dying embers. The air was damp, filled with the scent of old stone and something else, something Aedric couldn't quite place. Not decay. Not life. Something in between.

He glanced at Elias, who stood rigid, shoulders squared as if bracing for a blow. Rhea had one hand on her dagger, though the weapon felt useless in a place like this. And the cloaked figure—the one who had greeted them with that chilling Welcome back—stood motionless, its face obscured beneath its hood.

"Where are we?" Aedric finally asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

The figure tilted its head, as if amused. "A better question would be: where have you been?"

Aedric frowned. "I don't—"

"No," the figure cut in, raising a hand. "You don't. But you will. Soon."

The symbols on the walls flared, their glow intensifying for a brief moment before dimming again. A pulse. Like a heartbeat.

"This place," the figure continued, "is neither past nor present. Neither dream nor memory. It is the space between all things—the place where the cycle frays at the edges. And you, Aedric Dray, have reached it before."

Aedric's fingers twitched. He wanted to refute it, to claim ignorance—but deep down, something in him knew this was true.

He had been here before.

He just didn't remember.

Part 2: The Forgotten Marks

The cavern twisted into narrow passageways, their walls slick with moisture and etched with more of those strange, pulsing runes. The light barely reached beyond a few feet, swallowed by an unnatural darkness that did not belong. They moved cautiously, the echo of their footsteps stretching far beyond what should have been possible.

The figure led them forward, gliding more than walking. It did not look back, did not hesitate, as if following a path it had walked a thousand times before. Perhaps it had.

Aedric trailed his fingers along one of the markings as he passed, and a chill shot through his bones. Images flashed before his eyes—a door slamming shut, a voice screaming his name, hands reaching through fire. He stumbled, inhaling sharply, and the vision vanished.

Elias caught his arm. "You saw something."

Aedric nodded, swallowing hard. "I don't know what it was."

"You will soon enough," the cloaked figure murmured.

They emerged into a circular chamber. At its center stood a monolithic stone, its surface cracked and worn, yet unmistakably carved with their names.

Aedric. Elias. Rhea. And names he did not know. Names that should not have been there.

Aedric's stomach twisted. "What is this?"

The figure turned to face him at last, and though the hood still obscured its features, Aedric felt the weight of its gaze settle on him like a leaden chain.

"A record," it said. "Of every time you have failed."

The cavern pulsed. The runes burned brighter. And a sound—**not a whisper, not a voice, but something much worse—**began to rise from the walls.

Part 3: The Voices Beneath

The sound grew louder.

At first, Aedric thought it was wind, rushing through unseen cracks in the stone. But then the cadence shifted—low murmurs, overlapping, speaking in words that twisted and warped before they reached his ears. Not whispers. Not echoes. Something else.

Rhea stepped back, eyes darting toward the walls. "What is that?"

"Them," Elias muttered. His expression was grim, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade though they all knew it would do nothing.

Aedric turned back to the monolith. His name was carved deep into the stone, but as he stared, he realized it was not written once. There were layers, beneath the fresh carving, older versions of his name buried beneath centuries of wear. Thousands of times.

The air cracked.

Aedric's vision blurred, and suddenly, he was not in the cavern anymore.

He stood in Ravengarde—but not as he remembered it. The city was pristine, untouched by ruin, its streets teeming with life. The sky was whole, unbroken. The dead did not whisper.

And at the heart of it all, he saw himself.

Not as he was now, but before. Before the cycle. Before the fractures. Before he had become something that needed to forget.

His past self turned. Their eyes met.

And Aedric remembered.