The silence after the altar collapsed felt alive.
Miguel's every breath sounded like thunder in his own ears.
The shattered medallion emitted blue sparks, and each pulse felt like a tremor in the ground.
Elisa gripped the clipboard tightly, trying to write something that made sense, but her hands shook so much that the symbols blurred together.
Pedro remained motionless, as if part of his mind had been trapped in the city's past.
Doctor Vasconcelos, pale, watched each wall as if he could read the air, decipher what the Guardian had left there, but his eyes found no rest.
Miguel stood, and the entire city seemed to respond.
Outside, from underground, soft echoes began to filter in—the sound of footsteps that weren't there, murmurs that seemed to come from the very stones.
The city was waking from a deep sleep, but something was wrong. What was emerging was not the world they knew. It was a city between two times: reality and memory.
He looked at the medallion.
The sparks condensed, forming a luminous map—streets, houses, and people who were no longer there.
And, between these lines, a symbol appeared that pulsed stronger than all the others: the empty space of the oath, now filled with his own name.
"Miguel…" Elisa wrote urgently. "They are waking up. The memories that were gone… are trying to return."
Pedro finally moved.
His fingers touched the ground, and the runes beneath the stone began to react, emitting a soft glow, as if recognizing the touch of the newly appointed guardian.
He wrote:
"It's not just the streets… it's the people. The past… is trying to rebuild itself."
Doctor Vasconcelos took a deep breath.
"If he kept his oath, then the city will react to every memory retained and lost."
"The echo of promises," Miguel added in his mind, "is now stronger than any silence."
Deep underground, the shadows began to move again, but this time they weren't just static figures.
They were manifestations of forgotten memories: a child chasing a ball he never caught, the sound of laughter that had disappeared, the image of a bakery whose smell of freshly baked bread was so real it could be felt on one's skin.
But among these memories were distorted fragments, incomplete faces, unrecognizable voices, making the air tense, almost suffocating.
Miguel felt he had to act.
He gathered the group in a circle and placed the medallion in the center.
"If we want to control the echo, we have to understand it," Elisa wrote, and Miguel nodded.
—We must follow the path of the runes and bring order to what awakens—he added.
As they walked through the underground passages, the floor began to emit small cracking sounds, like bones creaking.
The walls molded, revealing new inscriptions: each a fragment of a promise made by someone who had sworn to protect the city before him.
Miguel ran his fingers over one of these runes and caught a glimpse: a woman in a white veil, the original Guardian, kneeling before a child.
A sense of urgency coursed through his chest: each broken oath created a space where the past could invade the present.
Suddenly, a bluish light appeared at the end of the corridor.
It was faint, but it seemed to pulse in time with Miguel's heart.
"There," Elisa wrote, pointing. "It's the spot where the oldest memory hides."
When they arrived, they found a circular room, its walls covered in symbols turning slowly, like magical gears.
In the center, a well of light that seemed to suck in the air around it.
Miguel placed his hand on the medallion.
The space around them began to vibrate, and voices began to overlap: laughter, shouts, whispers, fragments of conversation—all blended together.
The group realized that each step awakened a memory of the city—but not in an orderly fashion.
It was a whirlwind of memories and forgetfulness, and each time they touched the runes, new layers of reality emerged.
Pedro wrote, his voice almost fading:
"If we're not careful, we will lose who we are... and the city... will never be the same."
Miguel took a deep breath.
"So we must choose."
"Conduct the echo, restore the oath, or allow everything to fall apart?" he said, writing quickly.
Elisa and Doctor Vasconcelos exchanged glances.
The city, even in its unstable state, seemed to watch.
The walls breathed, and the reflections in the broken mirrors from the previous chapter began to form again, showing different versions of the city—some whole, others partially erased.
Miguel closed his eyes.
He felt the Guardian's presence closer than ever.
He didn't need to see her.
The cool air, the touch of the medallion, the constant hum of the runes—all indicated that she was guiding, testing, observing.
"The echo of promises is not kind," Elisa wrote, almost whispering.
"It judges. It demands. It chooses."
A gust of wind tore through the room, extinguishing the torches and raising a cloud of dust.
The voices merged into a single shout: a warning and a summons simultaneously.
Miguel looked at the medallion, now entirely glowing, but with the symbol beating faster than his own heart.
"We must continue."
"If not, the oath will be broken. And the city… will die, forgotten."
At the end of the tunnel, the darkness parted, revealing a staircase that descended even further, a path no one had ever walked.
And on the walls, etched in dried blood, words appeared like instruction and threat:
"The memory of all depends on the one who remembers.
But the one who remembers pays with their own name."
Miguel took a deep breath, feeling the weight of responsibility.
The echo of the promises wasn't just a magical phenomenon.
It was a judgment.
And the oath he now carried would be the key to saving—or destroying—everything the city had been.