The Echo-Well
It wasn't marked on any Concordium map.
They called it a rumor. A myth. A fissure in the stone where memory pooled like water when it had nowhere else to go.
The Echo-Well.
Keiran found it through instinct, not guidance. The Witness's whisper had been clear:
"Find where the flame never learned to burn."
The descent was steep.
Rusted stairwells. Collapsed libraries. Runes half-erased by damp and time.
His mark pulsed with each step.
Slower. Heavier. Hungrier.
By the time he reached the base, he could hardly breathe.
And there it was.
A circular chamber carved from obsidian-veined rock.
In the center: a still pool.
Black. Silent.
But not empty.
He approached.
Not cautiously.
But drawn.
The surface didn't reflect him.
It remembered him.
"Lys," he whispered.
The name tasted like metal.
The pool didn't stir.
But something underneath did.
A flicker. Then a shape.
Someone was walking the floor of the memory-pool.
Barefoot. Calm.
Him.
Not mirrored. Not warped.
Just older.
Wearing a different coat. A mark spread fully across both arms. His face half-burned, half-beautiful.
This Keiran didn't look up.
He just kept walking through the shallows of time.
Keiran fell to his knees.
"Who are you?"
The memory-echo paused.
Turned.
Spoke.
"The one who let her fall."
Then he vanished.
A scream echoed up from the pool.
Not his voice.
Lys.
Gasping. Choked. Distant.
"You left me."
The water rippled.
Keiran couldn't resist.
He reached in.
Cold seized his arm.
Then—flood.
Not water.
Memory.
Lys. Running barefoot down a corridor of shattered glass.
Lys. Dragging him through smoke, whispering his name like it might hold the sky together.
Lys. Kneeling before a mirror—
—and seeing her own face vanish.
He pulled back, gasping.
His mark cracked.
A hairline fracture spiraled through the glyph.
Pain surged.
The chamber spun.
And in the silence that followed, the water stilled—
And burned two words into the stone:
"Not yet."
He stood, unsteady.
The well was calm now.
But his hand bore Lys's name—etched just below the spiral glyph.
Only half-formed.
The second half blurred. Trying to vanish.
As if she were being remembered against her will.
Keiran turned to leave.
But before he stepped out, he looked back—
And saw the other him again.
Brief.
Standing now.
Watching.
Smiling.
But the smile was wrong.
"Keep diving," it whispered.
"You'll remember what you chose to forget."
Above, the moons drifted closer.
And somewhere far off…
Lys woke from a sleep she hadn't chosen.
And whispered Keiran's name like a curse.