Of Names and Echoes

The name came first—not spoken aloud, not screamed by the wind or etched in fire, but threaded gently through the edges of Evelyn's thoughts.

"Eyrelin."

She froze at the sound of it. Not because it was hers—it wasn't. Not exactly. But it belonged to something buried in her core, something ancient and waiting. A syllable wrapped in flame and memory.

Torren didn't hear it.

He stood a few paces behind, hand resting on his blade, gaze flicking back and forth across the crumbling landscape beyond the Emberbridge. "We're being watched," he said quietly. "And not by anything that breathes."

Evelyn nodded. "I know."

The wind rose.

Ash swirled.

And from below the gorge, the first of the Echoed emerged.

Not beasts, this time.

Not twisted wolves or shard-backed panthers like those that had hunted them since the fall of Isenhold.

These were human-shaped. Once.

They came in silence. Six of them, stepping lightly across the stone as if gravity no longer held dominion over their bones. Their eyes were lit with the hollow glow of extinguished cores. One bore a rusted Warden crest across its breast. Another's skin shimmered like heat-distorted glass.

Evelyn stepped forward.

"No weapons," she murmured to Torren. "Not yet."

"Are you out of your mind?" he hissed.

"They're not attacking. Not yet."

One stepped ahead of the others.

She—it—wore what might have once been ceremonial robes, stitched through with symbols Evelyn half-recognized. A sigil at her shoulder pulsed faintly—a glyph from the first age of Corebearers. Older than the Guilds. Older than the flame-bound cities.

"You carry a name," the Echoed said, her voice melodic but strained. "You stir the Vault Flame. Why?"

Evelyn's throat tightened. "Because I want to understand. I want to remember what was lost."

"And if what was lost should remain buried?"

"Then I'll carry the cost."

The others behind the speaker bowed their heads.

The leader stepped closer—so close Evelyn could see the scorch-marks that laced her collarbone. The places where runes had once burned.

"Then listen, Eyrelin.

Listen to the name you wore before fire learned to whisper."

The gorge fell away.

In a breath, in a blink, Evelyn's vision was filled not with sky or ruin—but with memory.

She stood in a chamber of basalt and starlight.

Flames floated, untethered by torch or brazier, and in the center of it all stood a woman cloaked in silver fire. Her face bore Evelyn's features—but aged, marked with pain, with choice, with the burden of too many deaths.

The woman spoke.

"There was once a Warden who did not bind a core. She became one.

She was a gate between breath and flame, between the old world and the new.

Her name was Eyrelin.

Your name. Once. Perhaps again."

The vision flickered.

The chamber vanished.

Evelyn stumbled, gasping back into her body, into the ash-thick world.

The Echoed bowed.

"You are not her. Not yet. But the fire remembers. And so must you."

Torren caught her before she fell. "What happened?"

"I remembered something that wasn't mine," she whispered. "But might be."

He didn't speak. Just tightened his grip on her arm.

The Echoed began to retreat, their forms dimming like lanterns in fog.

Before they vanished entirely, the leader turned one last time.

"Go east, Eyrelin. Beyond the bone-fields. To the Singing Scar.

There, the Hollow will hear you.

There, you will choose what name to keep."

And then they were gone.

That night, Evelyn didn't sleep.

She sat at the edge of the fire Torren built, her core glowing faintly through her ribs. She thought of Isenhold. Of her mother's hidden research. Of the mural in the Guild's ruined chapel. Of the Warden who had died with a whisper on his lips that matched the one she now carried inside.

Eyrelin.

Not a name.

A memory.

A warning.

Torren sat beside her as dawn crept across the wasteland. His voice was low.

"Whatever you are," he said, "I'm still with you."

Evelyn turned, and this time, she didn't hide the flame that pulsed in her palms. "Then you should know… I think I'm walking toward something I can't come back from."

He nodded once.

"Then I'll walk beside you."