Echoes of the Forgotten

The Hollow Gate loomed before them, a monolithic structure of obsidian stone carved with eldritch runes that pulsed like dying embers. The very air surrounding it felt wrong—thick, heavy, pressing down on Caelum's chest as though an unseen force sought to drive him into the earth.

A flicker of something deep within him stirred, an ache in the recesses of his mind that refused to surface fully. The closer he stepped toward the gate, the more the sensation intensified, threading through his veins like whispers of a long-forgotten song. It was not merely recognition—it was something deeper, something carved into the very essence of his being.

Elias stood motionless beside him, his expression unreadable, yet his eyes gleamed with knowing. He hadn't spoken a word since they'd approached the gate, as if waiting for something, some unspoken truth to take shape. Selene, her usual air of unwavering certainty, shifted uncomfortably, her hand flexing at her side where energy crackled faintly beneath her fingertips. Aerin's stance was rigid, her breath measured, her body coiled like a predator ready to pounce.

"This place," Caelum murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. "It feels... familiar."

Aerin shot him a glance, but it was Elias who responded. "It should." His voice was calm, but laced with an underlying intensity. "This is not just another Trial. It's something far older."

The runes flickered as if alive, responding to an unseen force, and the gate let out a deep, resonating groan. It was opening—not through physical movement, but as though space itself was folding inward. A darkness stretched beyond it, deeper than the void of night, swallowing all light before it could fully breach the threshold.

Then, the pain struck.

Caelum staggered, his breath catching in his throat as images flashed across his vision, chaotic and fragmented. A hall of gilded stone, banners bearing sigils he could not yet name. A voice, sharp as a blade, whispering treachery in the dark. Blood staining marble. A hand—his hand—clutching something stolen from him.

The sensation vanished just as quickly as it had come, leaving him reeling. He inhaled sharply, gripping his temple as if to force the memory to stay, to make sense of it. But it was gone, slipping through his grasp like grains of sand in a storm.

Elias was watching him. Always watching. "It's starting to return, isn't it?"

Caelum didn't answer. He wasn't ready to. Whatever was buried in his mind, whatever had been stripped from him—this place was clawing at the seams of it, forcing it to the surface. But he wouldn't let it overtake him. Not yet.

"Enough waiting," Selene said, stepping forward. "We're not standing here just to be swallowed whole by the past." Her hands ignited with radiant energy, golden strands wrapping around her arms like chains of light. "We go in together."

The others moved into position. Aerin summoned a surge of wind that coiled around her, her very presence electrified with latent force. Elias merely closed his eyes, and the shadows at his feet lengthened unnaturally, tendrils of something unseen writhing in the darkness. Caelum clenched his fists, willing his mind to focus on the present.

They stepped forward.

Crossing the threshold was like walking through water, resistance pressing against their forms, the weight of something unseen pushing against their bones. The moment they were fully inside, the world behind them twisted and snapped shut. They were trapped.

The chamber within was nothing like what they had expected. No immediate threats, no monstrous entities lurking in wait. Instead, they stood in what looked like a vast expanse of ruin, an ancient battlefield frozen in time. Weapons lay scattered across shattered stone, remnants of combat that had long since faded into history. But there were no bodies. Only shadows burned into the walls, impressions of figures that once stood where they did now.

"This is wrong," Aerin muttered. "This isn't a battlefield. It's a graveyard."

Caelum walked forward, drawn by something unseen. His fingers brushed against the hilt of a broken sword half-buried in the dust. The moment he touched it, another surge of fragmented memory tore through his mind.

A council chamber. Accusations. A circle of faces, each one carved with disappointment, disdain, or worse—fear. A voice, sharp and venomous. "You are no longer welcome among us."

He gasped, releasing the sword as if it burned. The others turned toward him, but he shook his head, unwilling to give voice to what he had just seen. Not yet.

Then, the shadows moved.

At first, it was subtle—a shift in the air, the sensation of being watched. Then, one by one, the burned impressions on the walls peeled away, dark figures emerging, coalescing into something not human. Their forms flickered, indistinct yet menacing, like the echoes of souls long lost to time.

And then they attacked.

Aerin reacted first, the wind surging around her as she shot forward, moving faster than the eye could track. She struck the first shadow with a blade of wind, slicing through its form—but it merely reformed, twisting unnaturally as it lunged at her.

Selene's golden chains lashed outward, binding two of the entities in place, but they writhed and shrieked, their wails scraping against the fabric of reality itself. Elias moved like a phantom, stepping through the darkness, his own energy intertwining with the shadows in ways that made it impossible to tell where he ended and they began.

Caelum stood frozen for a moment, not out of fear—but because something within him recognized these beings. He didn't just know of them. He had seen them before.

Fought them before.

His hands trembled. A whisper, barely audible, slithered through his mind.

"You were one of us once."

His vision blurred. Another memory threatened to rise, another glimpse into the past he had lost. But there was no time.

He moved.

The moment his body shifted into battle, it was as if instinct took over, an echo of something long buried roaring back to life. He didn't think—he knew. His arm shot outward, and a force erupted from within him, silver and searing, cutting through the nearest shadow with ruthless precision. It screamed, its form unraveling into nothingness.

Elias's gaze flicked toward him, an unreadable emotion crossing his face. "You're remembering."

Caelum didn't deny it. He couldn't.

More of the entities surged forward, their hollow eyes burning with an unnatural hunger. The battle was far from over, and the truth of who he was—of what he had lost—was only just beginning to surface.

The Hollow Gate had opened. And there was no turning back.

****

The darkness of the Hollow Gate pulsed like a living thing, the shifting shadows writhing along the edges of their vision. The battlefield of whispers stretched endlessly before them, the ruined remnants of war long past still carrying the weight of the forgotten dead. But it was not the shattered weapons or the hollowed-out walls that sent a chill through Caelum's spine—it was the creeping sense of familiarity clawing at his thoughts, demanding to be acknowledged.

The shadow-forms they fought did not relent. They lunged, their movements unnatural, their flickering forms shifting between reality and something far more sinister.

Selene's radiant chains snapped forward, encircling one of the entities and constricting with a blinding flash. The creature shrieked, its formless body struggling against the burning light, but even as it withered, two more emerged in its place.

"They don't die!" Aerin shouted, twisting through the air with inhuman speed, her wind-forged blades carving through the creatures with devastating precision. But the moment one was cut down, another rose from the remnants. "They're endless!"

Elias's shadow-wrought energy coiled around his frame, his presence flickering between reality and something deeper. He moved through the battlefield like a specter, weaving between attacks and lashing out with tendrils of abyssal force that dissipated the figures for mere moments before they reformed. His eyes darted toward Caelum, studying him even as he fought. "They aren't just mindless remnants. They're responding to you."

Caelum gritted his teeth, every fiber of his being resisting the surge of memories scraping at the edges of his consciousness. Each movement he made, each strike he delivered, felt both foreign and instinctual, as if the echoes of his past self were guiding him.

And then—

The battlefield flickered.

For a split second, the ruin around them was replaced by something else. A grand hall, towering marble pillars etched with sigils of power, the floor beneath his feet gleaming in the light of a hundred torches. Figures stood in a circle, their gazes piercing, their words like knives slicing through the air.

"You are no longer one of us."

Caelum staggered, his breath hitching as the vision tore through him. His mind screamed against the weight of it, the floodgates of his past rattling but refusing to break open entirely. His hands trembled as he looked down, as if expecting them to be stained with something unseen.

Selene caught his shift in focus, her gaze sharp even amidst the chaos. "Caelum! Snap out of it!"

A shadow-being lunged, claws extended, and for a moment, he did not move. It was as if he had been pulled into the past, his body trapped between timelines, his soul splintered across two identities. But then, something deep within him roared to life.

Power surged through him—not the weak flickers of his training at the academy, not the grasping attempts of a student struggling to rediscover his abilities. This was deeper. Older.

It was his.

Caelum's body moved on its own, his arm extending as silver fire erupted from his fingertips, searing through the entity before him. It let out a shriek that was different from before—something beyond pain, something like recognition.

The battlefield flickered again.

A grand chamber. Banners torn from their holdings. A blade at his throat.

"You were never meant to return."

Caelum gasped as the vision snapped away, the intensity of it leaving him dizzy. His knees nearly buckled, but he forced himself to stand, his breath ragged. The memories were there, hovering just beyond reach, like a shattered mirror piecing itself back together.

Elias stepped toward him, eyes narrowed. "You're remembering."

Caelum clenched his fists. "Not enough."

The battlefield trembled as the shadows recoiled, their forms no longer lunging with blind hunger but hesitating, almost as if awaiting something. A shift had taken place—one that Caelum himself could barely understand.

Selene and Aerin exchanged wary glances, but it was Elias who spoke first. "They're connected to you. This place. These entities. They recognize something in you that we don't yet understand."

The runes along the Hollow Gate pulsed again, the glow intensifying. A deep, reverberating sound echoed through the ruins, as though something far beyond the gate was stirring.

"Then we have a problem," Aerin muttered. "Because if these things were restless before, they're about to get worse."

Caelum steadied himself, feeling the weight of the battle pressing down on his shoulders—but more than that, the weight of the past that refused to stay buried. He had come to Aetheris Academy with nothing. No name, no memories, no power. But that had never been the full truth, had it?

He had been something more.

And now, the past was demanding to be reclaimed.