The hills did not look dangerous.
That was what unsettled Kael most.
From a distance, they rose gently beyond the river, their slopes softened by grass and scattered stone, untouched by the jagged ruin-fields farther south. Morning light slid easily across them, revealing nothing that could be called hostile. No twisted silhouettes. No echo-flare in the air.
Just land.
And yet, the moment Kael stepped onto the stone path, his ears rang.
Not sharply.
Not painfully.
The sound aligned itself with his breathing, rising and falling as if the hills were matching his rhythm. It was intimate in a way that made his skin prickle.
Senna noticed immediately.
"You feel that," she said, not asking.
"Yes," Kael replied. "It's not pushing."
"That's worse."
They crossed the shallow river without incident. The water flowed normally again, cool and clear around their boots, but the stone steps beneath it remained warm—alive in a way Kael was still learning to recognize.
The path ended at the base of the first hill.
Beyond it, the land waited.
Kael stopped.
Not because of fear.
Because something inside him insisted that this was the last moment where inaction was still a choice.
Senna paused a few steps ahead and glanced back. "You're thinking too loud."
"I'm trying not to," Kael said. "That seems to matter."
She grunted and turned back toward the slope. "Then listen carefully."
The air thickened as they climbed.
Not heat.
Not pressure.
Density.
Each step felt like moving through a place that was deciding whether to accept their weight. Kael forced himself to breathe slowly, resisting the urge to reach outward, to mark the terrain and ease the resistance.
No domination, he reminded himself.
No correction.
Halfway up the slope, the ground shuddered.
Senna drew her blade instantly.
Kael froze.
The hillside rippled—not visually, but structurally. Stone groaned beneath the surface, layers shifting as if something beneath was pushing upward without quite breaking through.
"Back," Senna said.
Kael obeyed.
The ground split.
Not violently.
Deliberately.
A shape pulled free from the hill, stone sloughing away as if shedding skin. It stood upright, roughly human in outline, its surface smooth and pale, etched with faint lines that echoed the symbol on Kael's damaged map—but incomplete, distorted.
A hill echo.
Not a beast.
Not a memory.
Pressure given form.
The ringing in Kael's ears spiked.
The echo turned its head.
It did not roar.
It did not charge.
It leaned.
The ground beneath it compressed, stone tightening as if bracing.
Senna moved.
She closed the distance in three steps, blade flashing in a clean, practiced arc. The strike passed through resistance that wasn't flesh or stone but tension—like cutting through something pulled too tight.
The echo recoiled.
Then reformed.
Its arm elongated unnaturally, striking back with blunt force that slammed into the ground where Senna had been a heartbeat before. The impact sent a shockwave through the hillside.
Kael staggered, barely keeping his footing.
"Adaptable," Senna muttered, circling now instead of pressing. "Not aggressive."
The echo followed her movement, adjusting its stance each time the ground resisted. Kael saw it then—the pattern.
It wasn't targeting her.
It was reacting to imbalance.
To the scraped map.
To damaged boundaries.
To strain that had nowhere else to go.
"Senna," Kael shouted, voice tight. "It's compensating!"
"Tell it to stop," she snapped, deflecting another strike.
Kael's instincts screamed at him to intervene—to stabilize the terrain, to push back, to fix the imbalance.
He didn't.
Instead, he reached into his pack and withdrew the damaged map.
The parchment felt heavy in his hands. Not warm. Not vibrating.
Wounded.
Kael stepped forward carefully and placed the map on a flat stone between them and the echo.
He did not open it.
He did not activate it.
He simply let it be seen.
The echo hesitated.
Its form flickered, edges blurring as if uncertain. The pressure in the air eased slightly—not gone, but redistributed.
Senna felt it.
She withdrew her blade and stepped back, eyes never leaving the echo.
The thing turned toward the map.
Slowly, deliberately, it lowered its head.
Then it sank back into the hillside, stone closing around it as if it had never existed.
Silence followed.
Not empty.
Resolved.
Kael's knees gave out. He dropped to the ground, breath shaking, the ringing in his ears settling into a dull ache.
Senna leaned heavily on her blade, chest rising and falling. "That," she said between breaths, "was not how fights usually end."
"No," Kael replied hoarsely. "It wasn't a fight."
She looked at him sharply. "You didn't control it."
"I didn't try to."
She stared at the map, then at the hill. "You acknowledged it."
"Yes."
Senna wiped blood from her forearm—her own, shallow but real. "That won't stop others from trying to force things."
Kael nodded. "I know."
He pushed himself upright and looked back toward the village—now distant, fractured, already changing.
"That's why Echo-Free can't just be an idea," he said quietly. "It has to be a line people choose not to cross."
Senna studied him for a long moment.
"You're going to make enemies."
"I already have."
She snorted softly. "Good. Means you're doing something right."
The hills settled around them, grass and stone returning to stillness. The path behind them remained, but it no longer pulled at Kael's senses.
Far away—far beyond the hills, beyond the Shroud itself—something shifted.
A tremor passed through the world's deeper layers.
The Shroud stirred.
And somewhere beyond it, eyes turned.
Not because of power.
But because someone had listened—and chosen not to dominate the answer.
Kael tightened his grip on the map.