The boat began to move the moment Kael stepped aboard.
No wind, no sails, no current — just intent. The woven-glass hull shimmered underfoot as if responding to his heartbeat, each pulse pulling them farther from the Isle Without Silence.
Echo lay at the prow, chin resting on her paws, eyes half-closed.
Kael sat beside her.
He held the bronze pendant from Ashen loosely in his palm. It had stopped glowing the moment they left the island.
"I think he was right," Kael said quietly. "He wasn't waiting to be found."
"He was waiting to be remembered," Echo replied.
Kael turned the pendant in his fingers. "Does that mean I finally know who I am?"
Echo didn't answer.
Because the sea did.
It started with a ripple.
Small. Soundless.
A flicker of movement across the perfectly still water.
Then a whisper:
"Are you the one who's supposed to remember me?"
Kael stood up.
"Did you hear that?" he asked.
Echo was already alert, fur rising slightly.
"Yes."
Kael looked over the side of the boat.
Nothing there.
But the air felt different.
He turned back toward the stern.
And saw the figure.
Small.
Faint.
Like a child made of fog and light.
Sitting at the far edge of the deck, knees drawn up, arms around themself. No face. No voice.
Just presence.
Kael didn't move.
"…Hello?"
The figure didn't speak.
But Kael felt the reply.
"I was left behind."
Echo stepped slowly toward the figure.
"You crossed the Hollowing Sea," she said gently. "How?"
The figure turned its head.
"I followed the story. There was nothing left for me there."
Kael moved closer. "Who are you?"
The figure didn't answer.
Just tilted its head slightly and asked:
"Who were you, before you had a name?"
The silence landed softly.
Kael crouched down.
"I don't know. I only know who I became."
The figure shivered.
Then whispered:
"Then maybe we're the same."
The boat sailed on.
But the stars above had changed — subtly rearranged. No longer distant, but curving inward, as if forming a dome over the sea. Echo looked up.
"This place is closing," she said.
Kael frowned. "What do you mean?"
"The Hollowing Sea opened for you because of what you carried. But now that you've released it…"
"…it's sealing behind us," Kael finished.
He turned back to the childlike figure.
"You can't go back, can you?"
The figure shook its head.
"There was no one left to hold me. So I held myself."
Echo stepped closer. "You're a memory."
"I was," it said softly. "Now I'm just… leftover."
Kael stood and walked to the helm.
He stared at the stars, then down at his journal. He flipped to a blank page.
Wrote one word:
Name?
He held it up.
The figure stared.
Then, slowly, pointed to a spot on the page.
And Kael wrote:
Isen.
The sea stilled.
Echo tilted her head. "That wasn't your name, was it?"
Isen's voice wavered.
"No."
Echo's gaze softened. "But you wanted one."
Isen nodded.
Kael sat down beside him.
"You don't need to be part of my story," he said.
"I don't want to be," Isen replied. "I want a new one."
Kael smiled faintly.
"Then maybe that's what this crossing is for."
They sailed in silence after that.
But Kael kept writing.
A second journal opened — not his.
Isen dictated slowly, in gestures and images more than words.
He didn't have memories in the way Kael did.
He had impressions:
A garden with no season.
A lullaby sung by someone without a voice.
A tree that bloomed every time he dreamed.
A friend he never saw twice.
Echo helped interpret them, her fur glowing gently as she threaded their meanings together.
And slowly, the pages filled.
By the time the shoreline came into view, Kael had written fifteen pages of Isen's fragments.
Not a past.
But a beginning.
The child sat near the front, silent but steady now.
And as the boat approached the cliffs of the mainland, Kael asked, "What will you do?"
Isen looked out across the trees.
"I think I'll learn what it means to be me, before anyone remembers me again."
Kael nodded.
"You won't be alone."
Isen smiled softly.
"I was never alone."
"I just hadn't met the part of the story that remembered me kindly."
They docked beneath the same cove Kael and Echo had departed from days before.
Isen stepped onto the shore with careful feet, testing the weight of a world that had once forgotten him.
He turned back once, looking up at Kael.
And said:
"Thank you for giving me a page."
Kael smiled.
"You filled it yourself."
The sea behind them shimmered.
Then folded.
Like a book closing.
Echo watched until the horizon calmed.
"It's done," she said. "No one else crosses now."
"Good," Kael replied. "Let them write their stories on land."
He looked down at the second journal in his hand.
Then slipped it into his satchel beside his own.
Nathaniel was waiting at the village gate.
He said nothing at first, just nodded — eyes tired but watchful.
"You brought something back," he said after a moment.
Kael nodded. "Not a weapon. Not a truth. Just a boy with no past."
Nathaniel didn't press.
He just smiled slightly.
"Sometimes that's how the best legends start."
That night, Kael sat beneath the stars again.
Echo curled beside him.
He opened his journal.
And beneath Isen's name, he wrote:
There are echoes born not from pain, but from possibility.
And they deserve to speak, too.