The night was restless.
The air shimmered lightly, as if it had swallowed the glow of a thousand forgotten stars. The Monochrome City lay beneath its endless haze, unaware that something hidden in its quiet pulse had begun to awaken.
Lyra sat at the edge of the old observatory — a broken skeleton of glass and stone that once mapped constellations. Now it mapped silence. Dust drifted like ghosts in the moonlit air. The telescope stood rusted and blind, forever pointed toward a sky that no longer spoke in color.
She hummed softly, tracing her fingers across the dust-coated desk — a tune she did not remember learning. It wasn't music. It was memory searching for its way back.
Then — a tremor.
A faint pulse stirred beneath her palm. She froze as the dust shifted, swirling as if stirred by invisible breath.
And then — light.
Thin silver veins spiraled across the desk, threading together like living roots. They curved, twisted, and wove into a glowing circle of luminescence, expanding outward in seven radiant hues.
Each hue pulsed with a different rhythm — each rhythm felt alive.
Red — heartbeat.
Blue — breath.
Green — pulse.
Yellow — laughter.
Radiance — silence.
Violet — stillness.
The violet didn't move. It waited — like a memory not yet awakened.
Lyra's breath hitched. The glow washed over her face, painting her with colors her world had long forgotten. Her heart ached as if remembering something her mind could not grasp.
The map whispered.
Not with sound —
but with feeling.
The colors brushed her thoughts like fingers tracing faded chords. The observatory faded away.
And Lyra saw.
A city of glass, shattered under a dim sun.
A field of crimson embers stretching to the horizon — and through it walked a boy cloaked in shadow, each step leaving behind fire that refused to die.
A frozen shore where a girl cried, her tears turning the sea brilliant blue.
And beyond it all — a bridge of pure light, leading to a gate shining like reborn stars.
The vision struck deep. When Lyra gasped and pulled her hand back, the glow didn't dim —
it flared.
Pain seared through her palm as silver light carved itself into her skin like a living sigil. She fell back, trembling.
When the pain subsided, she looked down.
The pattern from the desk now burned softly on her palm — pulsing with her heartbeat.
"Where are you calling me…?" she whispered, voice shaking with fear and wonder intertwined.
The observatory windows shuddered. The stars outside quivered. The circle of light lifted from the desk and rose, becoming a floating sphere of luminescence. It drifted toward the sky, leaving trails of silver mist.
Lyra didn't think.
She followed.
Down the cracked marble steps.
Across the overgrown path where vines whispered against her legs.
Through the silent streets of the sleeping city.
The sphere pulsed gently — a rhythm like distant music weaving through the night.
Finally, it stopped.
At the old road leading out of the city — beneath the stone arch that once marked the border of color.
The sphere hovered.
Still.
Waiting.
Then — a whisper.
Not one voice.
Thousands.
Layered, distant, harmonic.
"Come to the Academy."
The light blinked once.
Then vanished.
Lyra stood beneath the fading stars, her heartbeat the only sound in the vast quiet. The echo of those words trembled inside her like a forgotten song rising again.
Slowly, she lifted her palm.
The silver sigil still glowed, soft and alive. In the curved metal of the old signpost, she saw her reflection — a girl who had lived her life in grey, now carrying a fragment of living color.
A small, trembling smile touched her lips.
"Then I'll find you," she whispered into the sky.
"And maybe… I'll remember what color means again."
The wind brushed her cheek — warm, like a promise.
Somewhere far away, a hum rose — faint, beautiful, unending.
And in a distant land of frost and silence…
the first Echo awakened.