#First Echo
#020
Juno took the soul key from Thorn with trembling hands.
It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat trapped in crystal. The moment his fingers closed around it, a sharp sting pricked his palm—then a whisper echoed in his head.
He remembers.
Thorn's eyes narrowed. "It reacted to you?"
"Yes." Juno's voice was barely a whisper. "What is it?"
"Not what," Thorn said. "Who. That key holds a soul fragment I took from a dying friend. A Recorder like you. He asked me to bury it if I survived the last breach."
Juno blinked. "Why give it to me?"
Thorn's gaze was unreadable. "Because it chose you. Which means you're either his legacy… or his unfinished sentence."
The air around them seemed heavier. Silent watchers among the ruins.
Asher stepped into view, his boots crunching gravel. He'd clearly been listening.
"I saw something, too," he said, eyes trained on Thorn. "A Bliss node. Abandoned—but active. They're using forgotten children. Storing pain in them like batteries."
Thorn's jaw clenched. "I warned them this would happen. When you treat memory as currency, you turn people into banks. And banks get robbed."
Eden emerged from the side, nodding. "I ran into a scavenger from the old days. He said Bliss doesn't just erase names anymore—they rewrite them. New identities. New loyalties."
"Rewriting souls…" Thorn muttered. "That's not just memory tampering. That's foundational code theft."
Juno looked down at the crystal. "What can we do with this key?"
"Depends on where you use it," Thorn said. "There are only three places it'll open. One of them is dead. One is guarded by a Bliss hound. And the third…"
He turned toward the west, toward a distant tower peeking through the skyline.
"…the third is where the Auction began."
"The original hall?" Eden said, incredulous. "I thought it was destroyed."
"It wasn't," Thorn said. "It was erased. Hidden. Just like everything else."
Asher frowned. "Then why haven't you gone back?"
Thorn turned to him. "Because every time I try, I lose something."
Silence fell. Heavy. Dense.
Juno took a step forward. "But you kept the key."
"I did," Thorn said. "I didn't want anyone else to suffer. But maybe suffering is what wakes the world up."
He turned to them all, one by one.
"You want to know how to kill Bliss? It's not the servers. Not the hounds. Not even the Traders."
He reached into his cloak again and pulled out a folded map—cracked with age, etched with red ink.
"You kill it by making the world remember."
He opened the map. Dozens of marked nodes, fractured paths, sealed memories.
"This is everything I never dared follow," Thorn said. "But I think you're ready to see the cost."
Eden's voice was steady. "We've already paid part of it."
"No," Thorn said. "You've glimpsed it."
He looked at Juno again. "The real cost is what you lose after you remember."
After.
Juno glanced at the soul key again, and for a moment, he saw his brother's face—flickering like static. Reaching for him.
And then it was gone.
He swallowed. "So what's the plan?"
Thorn smiled. But it was a hollow thing.
"We wake the city."