The Echo Choir

The Echo Choir was never meant for people like him.

It was designed for fractured minds—mages who'd tampered too deeply with memory runes, cursed souls burdened by overlapping timelines, or operatives forced to carry borrowed lives too long. The ritual silenced the noise.

Or buried it.

But with Keiran, the Concordium wasn't sure which it would do.

Neither was he.

They led him down in silence.

Past the sigil pools and the frostbound archives, through a stone corridor walled with obsidian mirrors—none of which showed his reflection.

The final door bore a spiral glyph, pulsing like a living heartbeat.

Merin stood beside it.

"You don't have to do this," he said quietly.

"But if you don't, your fragments may begin acting independently."

"Some already are," Keiran whispered, thinking of the chalked name.

Merin handed him a black blindfold. Not cloth—runed silk, woven with memory-thread.

"The Choir only sings to the eyes that no longer see."

Keiran said nothing.

He tied the blindfold tight.

The world went dark.

Then…

lightless.

The moment the ritual activated, his awareness fractured.

Not like breaking.

Like falling through a house of mirrors that remembered every version of him that should have died—but didn't.

A field.

Moonlight over broken stone.

A ring of figures stood in silence.

All of them wore his face.

Different expressions.

Different scars.

Different lives.

Some younger.

Some impossibly old.

Some… inhuman.

And all of them stared at him.

The real one.

The now one.

Keiran stood still.

Until one of the others stepped forward.

Taller. Clean-shaven. A long coat with burn marks near the sleeves.

A glyph seared into his neck.

And hate in his eyes.

"You're the one they chose?" the echo said.

His voice was jagged. Accusatory.

"You—the one who forgot?"

Keiran swallowed hard. "I didn't ask to—"

"Didn't ask?" the echo snapped. "You left us."

"One by one. Memory by memory. You abandoned every version of yourself that tried to survive—and now you come here hoping to patch it back together with flame and pity?"

Another echo stepped forward. This one was weeping.

"She begged you not to forget."

"She bled for the tether."

"And you let them seal her anyway."

Keiran looked down.

The spiral on his wrist was burning now.

Not painful.

Just… insistent.

Like it wanted to be heard, too.

"I didn't know," he whispered. "I didn't understand what I was."

The first echo growled. "And you still don't."

"You think this is about memory?"

"It's about weight. Every life we lived, we carried the name. Every time we died, we made sure it reached the next version."

"Until you."

The ring of echoes began to circle him.

The moon above grew darker.

The air turned brittle.

"You're broken," another version said. "But not shattered enough to forget."

"Which makes you dangerous."

"Which makes you the end."

Keiran's breath caught.

The ritual was unraveling.

This wasn't a memory cleanse.

This was a reckoning.

And the worst part?

He agreed with them.

"I know," he said softly.

"I know I don't deserve her."

"I know I don't deserve the name."

"Then give it back," the tall echo snarled.

"Let one of us carry it again."

"Let one of us be remembered."

Keiran looked up.

The candle.

Even here, in this broken field of mirrors, it burned.

Not in his hand.

Not above.

Inside.

"I can't give it back," he said.

"Then you'll burn with it," came the reply.

And the echoes surged forward.

But as they reached him—

A second flame ignited.

Opposite the candle.

Not warm.

Not safe.

But sharp and golden—

A voice that whispered only one word:

"Stay."

It was her.

Not Lys.

Not the echo.

Not the anchor.

The thread.

Still alive.

Still holding.

The echoes froze.

One by one, they turned their heads.

The field blurred.

The mirrors cracked.

And Keiran heard a sound he hadn't heard since the day the moons first pulled at his blood—

A song.

Not in lyrics.

Not in tone.

Just feeling.

Grief. Memory. Promise.

And above all—

Persistence.

He opened his eyes—

And woke up gasping in the ritual chamber.

The blindfold smoldered.

His mark throbbed like a second heart.

And Merin stood waiting.

"What did you see?" he asked.

Keiran's voice was raw.

"Myself."

"All the ones I left behind."

"And the one I swore I'd never forget."

Merin said nothing.

But in his hand, he held a parchment.

"This appeared while you were inside," he said.

"No sender. No seal."

He handed it to Keiran.

It read:

"One name remains. The one even the moons forgot.

It waits beneath the Garden of Ashes."

Keiran closed his fist around the message.

And for the first time since the mark had appeared—

The candle on his wrist flared with a third color.

Not gold. Not violet.

But gray.

The color of memory that refuses to fade.