The Echo of the Mask

A few days ago.

The city's bones whispered beneath its cobbled skin, old and aching with secrets. Lanternlight flickered on the high walls, casting narrow shadows across alleys where few dared walk after dusk. But the masked figure that slipped through them moved with the patience of someone accustomed to silence—someone who knew how to listen.

‎He was called many things, even among those who knew of him: shadow, ghost, the man with no past. But to one boy—no, to one young man—he had given his name: the Watcher. It was not his true name. That had been taken long ago. Perhaps willingly.

‎He had once walked beside Ryn and Elias, when their journey first began. In those days, he had seemed a guide, a strange and watchful companion who said little but saw much. But none of them had understood how quickly paths diverge, or how some missions must be taken in solitude.

‎Elias had spoken to him that night, before Ryn knew the truth. The order had been quiet, passed like a breath in the wind.

‎"There is a place in this city. It doesn't appear on maps. It's older than the academy, older than the island's current rulers. I need you to find it. I believe it holds… the rest of something I was shown. But don't tell Ryn. Not yet."

‎And that was all.

‎No explanation. No reward. But the Watcher had seen the look in Elias's eyes. It wasn't desperation. It was certainty.

‎So he obeyed.

‎He disappeared that night without a word, his form swallowed by the moonless dark.

‎* * *

‎The search had not been easy.

‎Ancient glyphs did not announce themselves. They whispered, buried beneath generations of layered markings, overwritten by the ambitions of men who thought history could be shaped by conquest alone.

‎For months, the Watcher scoured libraries both sanctioned and secret. He paid coin to dust-covered mystics who had once been scholars, and silence to beggars who saw more than they let on. When knowledge failed him, he turned to instinct. He wandered. He listened. He followed the pulse in his blood, that subtle tug from the fragments Elias had shown him—a trace of pattern, strange symbol.

‎Each night, he returned to hidden places to meditate. Not to rest. The Watcher had long since trained his body to sleep in fragments, but his mind? That needed stillness. He communed with the spiritual resonance in the air, tuned his senses to the echoes that others ignored.

‎Then, a few days ago, just as he began to question if even Elias had misunderstood the signs—he felt it.

‎A hum. Not through the air, but beneath the stone. An ancient resonance, pulsing from beneath the street like a heartbeat from a buried beast. The glyphs near it were dead—eroded and scarred, invisible to ordinary perception—but something deeper remained intact.

‎The Watcher followed the pulse.

‎Down crooked alleys where the sun never reached. Past sealed-off doors and broken arches. Past temples claimed by moss and silence. Until he found it.

‎A rusted iron gate, half-swallowed by ivy and time.

‎It looked like nothing. Just a remnant of an older wall, one of hundreds scattered across the lower districts. But the glyphs etched into the iron were not truly dead. They were asleep. Faded and silent, but not gone.

‎He reached out and pressed two fingers to the gate. The iron was cold, but behind it, the glyphs stirred. Just slightly.

‎A whisper passed through the alley. It was not in any human tongue.

‎The Watcher stepped back, then forward again. He closed his eyes. And with practiced control, he exhaled and released a fragment of his spiritual essence, letting it bleed through his fingers and into the gate.

‎The glyphs flared for a moment—just a flicker. The rust creaked.

‎The gate opened.

‎The passage was narrow and curved. The walls bore signs of old construction—masonry without mortar, stone that had been placed with inhuman precision. No dust. No insects. Just stillness.

‎The Watcher descended slowly, every step deliberate. Light vanished after a few meters, but his senses reached forward like feelers in the dark. He could hear his heartbeat, feel the pressure of memory hanging in the air like static before a storm.

‎And then he reached the chamber.

‎The ceiling was domed and tiled in constellations, stars mapped in glyphic sequence—some of which matched what Elias had once shown him. The walls were ringed with reliefs—tales of something vast, though too eroded to decipher completely. At the center was a pedestal, made from obsidian-like stone veined with pale gold.

‎Atop it rested a tablet.

‎Its surface shimmered faintly, as if covered in frost—but it wasn't cold. As he approached, the glyphs on its face responded to his presence. They rearranged, subtly, not enough to alter meaning, but to present meaning. As though recognizing him as a proxy… or a messenger.

‎The Watcher did not touch it.

‎Instead, he observed. He memorized the pattern. The flow. The names half-carved and half-hidden. And most of all—he noted the convergence: multiple Inscription Paths overlapping, entangled in ways that defied conventional theory. Solar, Abyssal, Soul, Time.

‎It wasn't a ruin.

‎It was a crucible.

‎* * *

‎That night, he returned to the outskirts of the city and made contact.

‎Elias arrived quietly, cloaked and alone.

‎The Watcher knelt and relayed everything he had seen.

‎Elias asked no questions at first. He just listened, his expression unreadable. But something in his spiritual presence changed—a surge of silent tension, like a string pulled taut.

‎"You're certain?" Elias finally asked, his voice low.

‎"I am," the Watcher replied. "It's as you suspected. But it's not just a vault. It was used. Often. By someone powerful."

‎"Does anyone else know?"

‎"No," the Watcher said without hesitation. "I covered my tracks."

‎Elias was silent for a long time. Then he looked toward the city. Toward the hidden gate that the world had forgotten.

‎"…Then the next part begins."

‎The Watcher did not ask what he meant.

‎He had never needed to.