The Harvest Moon hung heavy above Verdant Hollow, casting the village in a rust-colored glow. Elian hadn't slept. The manor pulsed with a heartbeat not his own, and the bone pendant around his neck throbbed in time with it.
He stood before the mirror on the landing — the one with the crack down its center. His reflection stared back, but something was wrong. The eyes were too dark. The mouth too still.
Then it blinked.
Not him. The reflection.
He stumbled back, heart hammering. The mirror rippled like water, and for a moment, he saw something else — a forest of bone-white trees, a sky stitched with black thread, and children walking backward through fog.
He ran.
Down the stairs. Into the study. The journal was open again, pages fluttering in a wind that wasn't there.
> "To remember is to bleed. To forget is to feed. Choose."
He slammed the book shut.
But the memories came anyway.
Not his own.
He was standing in a field of wheat, barefoot, laughing. A girl with braids ran beside him, her voice echoing like birdsong. Then — a scream. The wheat turned to ash. The sky split open. Hands reached from the soil.
He gasped awake on the floor, the pendant burning against his chest.
Lira was waiting at the door.
"You saw it," she said.
He nodded, breathless. "What was that?"
"A memory that doesn't belong to you," she said. "The Echo is testing you. It wants to know what you'll give up."
"I don't understand."
"You will."
She led him through the village, past shuttered windows and silent homes. They stopped at the edge of the woods, where a stone circle lay half-buried in moss.
"This is where they vanish," she said. "Every ten years. Always a child. Always on the third night."
Elian stepped into the circle. The air grew colder. The trees leaned in.
He heard laughter — high, distant, familiar.
Then a voice, soft and broken: "Elian… you promised you wouldn't forget me."
He turned.
A boy stood at the edge of the trees. Hollow-eyed. Smiling.
Elian's breath caught. "I know you…"
The boy nodded. "You were supposed to stay."
The forest swallowed him.
Elian fell to his knees, the pendant pulsing like a second heart.
Lira knelt beside him. "The Echo is opening. It's showing you what it's made of."
"What is it made of?"
She touched his hand.
"Us."
---
Elian couldn't sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the boy in the woods — hollow-eyed, smiling, whispering his name. The pendant around his neck pulsed like a second heartbeat, and the manor's walls breathed in rhythm with it.
He wandered the halls until he found himself back in the mirror room.
The cracked glass shimmered. This time, it didn't show reflections — it showed memories.
Not his.
A girl with braids running through wheat. A boy crying beneath a tree carved with names. A child standing in the cellar, whispering to bones.
Elian reached out.
The mirror rippled.
Suddenly, he was somewhere else.
A forest of bone-white trees stretched endlessly in every direction. The sky above was stitched with black thread, and the air smelled of ash and lavender. Children walked backward through fog, their mouths sewn shut, their eyes wide with silent screams.
He turned and saw Lira — not blindfolded, but blind. Her eyes were hollow, her voice distant.
"You're inside it now," she said. "Inside the Echo."
"What is this place?"
"A memory graveyard," she whispered. "Everything Verdant Hollow gave up to survive."
Elian stepped forward. The ground beneath him pulsed. He saw flashes — his mother's face, younger, terrified. A child being carried into the woods. A ritual. A promise.
Then — silence.
The forest shifted.
He stood before a door made of bone and breath. It opened without touch.
Inside was a chamber of whispers.
Thousands of voices, overlapping, pleading, remembering.
> "Don't forget me."
> "I was here."
> "I mattered."
Elian fell to his knees.
The Echo spoke — not in words, but in feeling. Grief. Hunger. Loneliness. It didn't want flesh. It wanted memory. It wanted to be remembered.
And it wanted Elian's truth.
He gasped awake on the manor floor, the mirror cracked further, the pendant cold.
The journal was open again.
> "You've entered the wound. Now you must choose what to leave behind."
Elian stared at the page, trembling.
The Echo had shown him its hunger.
And soon, it would ask for its price.
---