He did not wake. He simply was—a man exhaled back into the world like breath from a corpse.
The air tasted of wet stone and iron, thick with the aftertaste of violet fire. Jorren lay on his side, curled as if gutted, fingers clenched around nothing. His body was cold, not from the damp, but from within—a hollow marrow, a core unspooled. When he blinked, the world flickered in stuttered silence, as though light itself hesitated to reach him.
He tried to rise. His limbs followed, but late—like a puppet yanked off-rhythm. The effort cracked behind his eyes. Too slow. Always too slow. He pressed a palm to the wall. The stone remained still, yet he felt it shift beneath him, breathing in time with a pulse not his own.
Elaina stood ten paces ahead, back turned, staring into the corridor's throat. Her torch burned steady, orange and clean, flames licking upward in smooth, obedient arcs. Jorren watched it, and realized something was wrong.
The flame did not flicker when she moved.
It burned the same. Constant. Unaffected.
But she had turned her head. He saw it. He knew she turned.
And yet the light played across her face precisely as it had a breath before.
"Elaina," he said.
She did not turn.
He said it again, louder. A croak. A cough. A sound that scraped like glass on bone.
She turned then—slow, wary—but her eyes slid through him, not toward him. Like she was searching for the source of the voice, not the speaker.
"You're out of sync," she whispered, finally stepping closer. Her voice, when it reached him, arrived after her lips moved. A fraction. A delay. A fracture.
"What do you mean?" he asked, but the words tasted stale, already over.
"You didn't come back with time," she said. "It moved. And you… stayed."
He looked down. His shadow lay wrong. It stretched west, though the torch was at his back. It didn't tremble with the flame. It didn't move at all.
A shudder passed through him—not of fear, but of absence. As if something had been carved from the inside, and the body hadn't noticed yet.
The System spoke then—not in words, but in sensation. A cold pressure against the base of his skull, like a stamp pressed into melting wax.
ADJUSTMENT COMPLETE. REMAINING DEBT: UNDETERMINED. STATUS: DISPLACED (TEMPORAL). WARNINGS: FUTURE INTERACTIONS MAY NOT REGISTER REAL-TIME. ECHO USAGE PROHIBITED UNDER RULE IV. VIOLATION PENDING.
Then silence.
Elaina reached for him. Her hand extended, fingertips trembling—but as they touched his arm, the contact did not register at once. A second passed. Then two. Then a jolt, like an electric thread snapping taut in his nerves.
"Don't," he said.
She recoiled. "You felt that?"
"No," he admitted. "I remembered it."
Her face drained. "That's not possible."
"It happened. I just… didn't experience it until now."
She stepped back, arms folded tight. Her breath fogged the air. His didn't.
They walked. Or rather, she walked, and he followed—out of step, out of phase. The corridor narrowed, walls pressing like ribs around a rotting heart. Bioluminescent moss pulsed in slow waves, veins threading the stone. But to Jorren, the glow did not breathe. It jumped—on, off, on—like a film missing frames.
He saw shadows where there were none.
A shape, crouched in an alcove. Gone when he looked again.
A handprint, blackened, fingers splayed against the wall. Not fresh. Not old. Out of time. Its edges blurred where the moss had grown over it, yet beneath, the stone showed no erosion.
Elaina paused before a rusted gate, half-collapsed. "We're close," she said. "The next chamber holds the Veil—where the Binding Sigil repeats itself. If replacement is real… that's where it would have happened."
Jorren said nothing. He was watching the floor.
There, in the dust: two sets of footprints.
One was Elaina's. He recognized the scuff from her left boot, the drag of her heel.
The other… was his.
But they led away from the gate.
Toward them.
As if he had already passed through—and was returning.
He looked up. Elaina hadn't noticed.
"We should go," she urged.
He stepped forward. The world lurched.
Sound collapsed into a single tone—a deep, subsonic hum. The walls bent. Not physically. Perceptually. Cause and effect twisted: he saw his foot lift after it had already landed. Heard the echo of his breath before he inhaled.
And then—seeing.
Not with the Echo.
Something else.
He stood in the next chamber—a circular vault, walls lined with ossified glyphs. A second altar. Larger. Cracked down the middle. The sigil was there, identical, yet wrong. The three circles: Observe. Offer. Obliterate.
But the fourth…
It was filled.
Not scratched in. Not drawn.
Branded.
A circle, thick with soot and something darker—ash that moved when not observed. And in its center, a symbol he did not know: a spiral, broken by a vertical gash, like an eye slashed open.
And beside it, etched into the floor, a name.
VORRIAN.
Below it: HE TOOK THE PLACE. HE PAID THE PRICE. HE IS NOT GONE. HE IS THE MEAT.
Jorren stepped back—except he was still in the corridor.
Still beside Elaina.
Still with seconds to spare.
The vision receded like floodwater, leaving behind a cold imprint. He knew, then, with sick certainty: someone had broken the Binding Sigil.
Not by force. Not by escape.
By replacement.
And the Maw had accepted the offering.
But what had it become?
Elaina tugged his sleeve. "Jorren, the gate"
He turned.
And saw the shadow on the far wall.
Tall. Lean. Him. But moving differently. Head tilted too far. Hands not at its sides, but clasped behind its back, fingers interlaced with too many joints.
It did not walk.
It spasmed forward, one motion at a time, like a stopped clock given one tick.
And then—impossibly—it turned.
Looked at him.
Smiled with his mouth.
But the eyes…
The eyes were hollow. Not empty. Filled with the kind of dark that breates.
It raised a hand—his hand—and pointed.
Not at Jorren.
At the place where Jorren would be in three seconds.
And then it faded.
Not vanished.
Was never there.
Elaina tugged again. "You're shaking."
He wasn't.
At least, he didn't feel it.
But when he looked down, his hands trembled violently, fingers twitching in delayed spasm, catching up to a fear that had struck seconds ago.
The System pulsed again, cool and indifferent.
WARNING: TEMPORAL INTERFERENCE DETECTED. IDENTITY COORDINATES FLUCTUATING. ORIGIN TRACE: PAST SELF. CURRENT SELF DESIGNATION: PROVISIONAL.
Jorren opened his mouth. No sound came.
But in the darkness ahead—beyond the gate—something imitated his voice.
It said, "I'm ready to replace."
And this time, Elaina heard it too.
She looked at him. Not beside him.
At him.
With recognition.
And terror.
Because for the first time, she wasn't sure which of them had just spoken.