The night after the Beacon fell had a way of curling around the world, pressing into every crack, every breath, as if the air itself had absorbed what happened. The skies above the ruined district hung low and colorless, dim stars smothered behind drifting smoke that rose from the still-collapsing terrain. Nothing moved without making a sound now—every shift of gravel, every rustle of wind seemed amplified, as though the world had gone quiet solely to listen.
Rowan felt it immediately.
A kind of pressure worked behind his ears, pushing him toward the ruins where the Beacon once pulsed like a star. The severed ground still bled faint motes of azure light—fragments of the Beacon's memory matrix dissolving into the air like dust.
Daniel walked beside him, slower than usual but moving under his own power. The stabilizing medicine Kai had insisted he take had dulled some of the fading echo-sickness, but there were still moments when Daniel's steps faltered and Rowan found his hand hovering at the ready to catch him.
Behind them, Kairen followed silently, her gaze fixed somewhere far ahead, or perhaps not even in this world at all. Since the severance, she had been quieter, watching the air like she expected something else to answer her. When people spoke to her, she responded, but always with a residual pause… as though measuring whether they were truly speaking to her or to whatever inside her had awakened.
They made their way over a broken ridge of stone, Daniel leaning heavily on a fractured street sign.
Rowan knelt, brushing ash-covered rock between his fingertips.
"These fissures…" he whispered. "They didn't come from a normal collapse."
Daniel nodded faintly. "Beacon implosions never leave clean fractures. This one looks like it got… eaten."
Kairen came to a stop then, her head tilted slightly—not unnaturally, but enough that Rowan noticed the movement didn't resemble human reflex. Her eyes narrowed at the broken ground.
"Something rose," she murmured. "Through the Beacon's base. It left residue I don't recognize."
Her voice sounded the same, but Rowan heard something else beneath it. An echo. A shadow. A second tone buried quietly under her words, like two matching instruments slightly out of tune.
He didn't mention it.
Not yet.
Instead Rowan asked, "Does it feel like the creature from the cavern? The one that nearly tore through the mainframe?"
Kairen's expression tightened. "No. This one is not the same. It's related, but… wrong in a different direction."
Daniel muttered, "Fantastic. Love that distinction."
They continued toward the crater, where faint rings of luminescent dust glimmered like pale constellations. Rowan crouched again, brushing some into his palm.
The dust felt cold. Not temperature-cold—memory-cold. A fading echo of something that once held a great deal of information before it was shattered.
Daniel knelt beside him, holding his breath and squinting at the dust.
"Rot-line degradation," he said quietly. "Whatever hit the Beacon wasn't just trying to destroy it. It wanted to erase everything tied to its memory signature."
Rowan froze.
Kairen's head snapped toward Daniel, her body going rigid.
Memory erasure wasn't normal Ruin behavior.
Destroying a Beacon? Yes. Severing its connection? Yes. Shattering its ability system? It happened.
But erasing its memories?
That was deliberate.
Someone—or something—was trying to cover its tracks.
Daniel inhaled sharply, steadying his breath. "Rowan… Rowan look here."
Rowan followed his gaze.
A smooth, spiraling burn pattern curved into the ground several meters away. At first he misread it for impact scoring—but as he moved closer, the pattern sharpened in shape.
Not a scorch mark.
A sigil.
Etched in a looping, almost calligraphic spin that ended at a tapered point. It pulsed faintly, as though reacting to the Beacon fragments.
"What is this?" Daniel whispered.
Rowan didn't answer.
Because Kairen's reaction made answering unnecessary.
Her pupils constricted sharply. She stepped closer, and the faint echo under her breath grew clearer—an undertone of unfamiliar rhythm. She knelt slowly, fingertips hovering over the sigil without touching.
"I know this shape," she murmured. "But… not from my memories."
Daniel's eyes widened. "Meaning…?"
Rowan finished for him.
"It might be from… before?"
Kairen didn't nod, but her silence was confirmation.
Rowan swallowed hard.
Before.
Before she had been found drifting unconscious at the edge of a ruined town.
Before she had awakened with zero recollection of her name.
Before her abilities emerged, too refined and too ancient to be accidental.
The sigil was a piece of her.
Or a piece of whatever she used to be.
Kairen stood suddenly, spine straightening. "This wasn't carved. It was… projected. Burned into the ground by a resonance of Ruin origin."
Daniel frowned. "Projected by what? The creature that escaped?"
"No," she whispered. "By the one who controlled it."
A long silence fell.
Rows of distant buildings lay crumbled, broken under the weight of invisible pressure. Cool wind slipped through the empty streets. Nothing living moved.
Rowan felt a shiver work down his arms.
"Kairen," he said carefully, "are you saying the Ruin Beasts are being directed by… something with intelligence?"
"Yes," she answered without hesitation. "And I think I've met it before."
Rowan felt the air shift. Not atmospherically. Emotionally.
This was a breaking point.
Daniel crouched again, tracing the outer edge of the sigil without contact. "If this was made by something that knows Kairen, then this attack wasn't random."
Rowan nodded slowly. "It was a message."
Kairen didn't look at them.
She watched the sigil, the wind lifting strands of her hair gently across her face.
A flicker of something resembling fear crossed her features—gone in an instant, but unmistakable.
Then she whispered:
"It's calling me back."
They stayed there longer than they probably should have.
Not because the site was safe—nothing felt safe anymore—but because none of them wanted to leave without understanding even a fragment of what had happened.
Daniel moved around the crater, scanning for particulate trails or any signature the Guild could use. Rowan kept his focus on environmental traces—disruptions in mana flow, fractures in essence pathways, pressure points from tremor shockwaves.
Only Kairen didn't move.
She remained near the sigil, eyes half-closed, as though listening to something the others couldn't hear.
Finally, Rowan approached her.
"Kai," he said softly, "you're shaking."
She opened her eyes.
"I remember nothing concrete. Only… fragments."
"Fragments of what?"
She paused.
Then:
"A voice."
Rowan felt something close in his chest—a kind of tension he didn't know how to name. "A voice from before?"
"No," she said. "A voice from now."
Rowan froze. "You mean—?"
"Yes," she answered. "It spoke to me when the Beacon collapsed. When the air thickened and the ground split. It spoke through the tremor."
Daniel overheard, looking up sharply. "What did it say?"
Kairen exhaled, slow and uneven.
"'You should never have left.'"
Rowan's stomach dropped.
Daniel stood up quickly. "That's direct. Too direct."
Kairen nodded. "It was not a Ruin Beast. It was something… higher. Something that understands identity. Territory. Possession."
Rowan felt the back of his neck prickle.
The Ruin had always acted like a chaotic phenomenon—dangerous, devastating, unnatural, yes, but never deliberate like this.
And Kairen…
Whatever she was…
Whatever she used to be…
She was somehow tied to the Ruin's origin point.
Before Rowan could speak again, Kairen stepped away from the sigil. Her hands curled slightly, thumb brushing her palm like she was grounding herself. Her voice regained steadiness.
"We need to inform the Guild."
Daniel snorted quietly. "You think they'll believe any of this?"
"No," Kairen said. "But they will have to listen."
Rowan nodded. "And what about the thing that left the message? If it's still nearby—"
"It isn't," Kairen answered. "But it will return. It left a mark for me. A tether. It expects me to follow."
Rowan felt a heat rise behind his ribs. "We're not letting you go alone."
A soft smile touched her lips—not warm, but appreciative.
"I know."
They later regrouped at the temporary outpost stationed outside the collapsing district. Medical tents glowed with emergency lamps, hunters moved quietly, and Guild analysts rushed back and forth carrying fragments of the Beacon's core crystal.
Daniel was taken aside for deeper evaluation, but insisted Rowan and Kairen continue without him.
Inside the main tent, Master Veras—the highest-ranking Guild Warden in the region—waited at the roundtable, arms crossed, expression strained with fatigue.
"You three were the closest to the Beacon when it fell," he said. "I want everything."
Rowan began with the tremor, then the creature, the severance collapse, the escape through the breach. Daniel provided the technical aspects: the rot-line deterioration, the missing memory strands. Rowan finished with the sigil and what it implied.
He expected Veras to interrupt.
He didn't.
The Guild Warden listened in taut silence, jaw tightening with each detail.
But the moment Rowan mentioned Kairen's reaction to the sigil, Veras' gaze shifted to her.
"Kairen," he said slowly, "do you understand what this implies?"
Kairen met his stare evenly. "That I'm connected to whatever projected it."
Veras narrowed his eyes. "And what exactly are you connected to?"
A flicker of tension rippled through the tent.
Rowan stepped slightly in front of her. "She doesn't know. And she's not the enemy here."
Kairen touched Rowan's arm gently, moving past him to face Veras fully.
Her voice was steady.
"There is something beneath the Ruin. Something with intent. Something older than the earliest Beast records. It is calling to me. I don't know why."
Veras exhaled slowly.
"And you think it will attack again?"
Kairen answered immediately.
"Yes."
A long silence settled over the tent.
Eventually Veras closed his eyes, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
"Then we don't have a choice," he murmured. "We must prepare for a targeted incursion. The Guild will not risk losing another Beacon."
Then he turned to Rowan.
"You've been closest to Kairen since the day she awakened. I'm assigning you to her full-time."
Rowan blinked. "You mean—?"
"You're her handler now. And her partner."
Kairen looked at him, a brief flash of something unreadable in her eyes.
Veras' tone hardened.
"Whatever that thing is, it wants her. That means we need you by her side."
Rowan nodded without hesitation.
"Yes, sir."
Veras turned sharply. "Good. Assemble your team. Rest while you can. Tomorrow, we confront whatever left that sigil."
---
Later, after the briefing, Rowan found Kairen outside the tent, sitting alone on a quiet ridge overlooking the flickering lights.
He sat beside her.
"Does it bother you?" he asked softly. "Being… assigned to me?"
Kairen shook her head. "No. I prefer it to being watched by someone who doesn't trust me."
Rowan smiled faintly. "I trust you."
"I know."
Silence settled gently between them.
Wind brushed through the ruined district.
Rowan breathed in slowly.
"Kai," he said quietly, "when that thing calls to you… what does it feel like?"
She thought for a moment, searching for words she didn't want to give shape to.
Then:
"Like a memory I never had," she whispered. "But one that knows my name."
Rowan didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
The night pressed in softly, the world holding its breath.
And far beneath the ground—
past stone, past broken earth, past the fading echoes of the Beacon—
something ancient stirred.
Listening.
Waiting.
Smiling without a face.
Calling her again.