The lantern dimmed to a bruise–colored glow.
Sable did not move.
Kael did not breathe.
Only the shadow on the wall shifted—
not flowing, not stretching, but… tightening, as if waking from sleep.
Then it stepped out of the wall.
Not fully.
Just an outline peeling forward a fraction of an inch, like a second skin trying to separate itself from its host.
Sable whispered, barely audible:
"…A Mnemonic Shade."
Kael's throat tightened. "What is that?"
"A shadow born from memory contamination," Sable said.
"It forms when a person has lived more than one life… or more than one timeline."
Kael's heart slammed once, painfully.
The Shade's head tilted.
Kael's real head did not.
Sable raised a trembling hand toward the creature—
"Don't—"
Ping.
The tone—sharp, crystalline—rippled from Kael's chest again.
The Shade froze, its outline trembling like ink in water.
Sable exhaled shakily.
"That tone… it commands it."
Kael swallowed. "Or summons it."
"No," Sable whispered.
"It reminds it."
The Shade leaned closer, the edges of its form sharpening as if trying to resolve into a face.
Kael felt a faint pull behind his ribs—
a sense of recognition, like seeing a childhood reflection in a warped mirror.
"Why does it look like me?"
"Because it is you," Sable murmured.
"Or rather… the version of you that died."
Kael flinched. "I didn't die."
Sable's eyes slid away.
"Are you sure?"
The room went still.
Kael opened his mouth—
but the Shade moved first.
Slowly, deliberately, it raised its hand and touched its own throat with a jagged motion—
A slit.
A death.
A memory.
Kael stumbled backward.
Sable stepped between him and the shadow.
"Shade, return."
The shadow didn't respond.
It remained fixated on Kael—
observing him with a kind of hungry longing.
Sable cursed under his breath.
"It's anchored to you. I can't dispel it."
Kael backed toward the door. "Then what do we do—"
The shadow suddenly convulsed.
Its form stretched upward, limbs lengthening into impossible angles.
Its head split into four silhouettes, each rotated at a different direction.
The lantern flame died.
Darkness swallowed the room whole.
Kael heard Sable whisper:
"…It's remembering more."
---
A faint glow ignited behind Kael's vision.
But this time it wasn't the lantern.
It wasn't light at all.
It was information.
Words, appearing in a thin, silver script over the darkness—
like a page revealed by moonlight.
MNEMONIC SHADE — INCOMPLETE
A remnant of a lost timeline seeking coherence.
It will evolve based on what you choose to become.
Kael blinked.
The text pulsed once and vanished.
He whispered into the dark:
"…Why am I seeing this?"
Sable's voice answered from somewhere to Kael's right:
"That is not magic. That is your mind trying to categorize what it cannot comprehend."
Before Kael could respond, the Shade lunged.
Not at Sable.
Not at the walls.
At Kael's shadow.
Its hand plunged into the two-dimensional darkness on the floor—
and pulled.
A figure rose from the ground, forming like smoke reversing into a body.
Another Kael.
But wrong.
Skin pale as moonstone.
Eyes black to the edges.
A smile carved too precisely, too knowingly.
The Mnemonic Shade had summoned a vessel.
Sable inhaled sharply.
"No… no, no, no—
that's not just a Shade anymore."
He stumbled back.
"It's becoming an Echo Persona."
Kael stared at the second Kael standing before him.
A version sculpted from memory fragments.
A Kael who had died in a timeline Kael could not remember.
The Echo spoke first.
Its voice was Kael's voice—
but smoother.
Calmer.
Certain.
"Finally," the Echo whispered,
"I found the timeline where you survived."
Kael's blood froze.
"Who… what are you?"
The Echo smiled wider.
"I am the Kael who failed."
The room tilted.
Kael felt the air shift, spatial boundaries warp.
The Echo stepped closer.
"You are the Kael who was allowed to continue."
It tilted its head.
"So tell me… why you?"
Kael backed away. "Stay where you are."
"I would," the Echo said gently,
"if you weren't carrying something you were never meant to have."
Its gaze dropped to Kael's chest.
"To hear the Seventh Note…
you must have survived a death that the world rejected."
Kael's breath stilled.
The Echo leaned forward, whispering:
"So let me show you the death I survived."
It raised its hand—
And the room shattered.
---
Kael fell into memory.
Not his own.
Flashes of a world burning—
streets collapsing into a spiral of ash, a moon cracking like glass, voices screaming in a language made of echoes.
A Kael—this Echo—ran through it all, chased by a shadow crowned in fractured halos.
The throne of mirrors…
the figure…
that crown—
Kael felt his lungs burst with someone else's pain.
He saw the Echo fall to his knees before the crowned silhouette.
He heard the final words:
"Rewrite me…"
And then—
Darkness.
Kael snapped back into Sable's workshop, gasping.
The Echo stood inches away, eyes bright with cold understanding.
"You see now," it said softly.
"Even in death, I remembered you."
Kael clenched his fists. "Why show me this?"
"Because," the Echo murmured,
"I am not your enemy."
Kael froze.
The Echo reached out—
not to attack—
but to offer a hand.
"I came to warn you."
Kael's voice trembled. "Warn me about what?"
The Echo's smile vanished.
Its voice dropped to a whisper:
"The Hypostases didn't choose you."
A beat.
"They chose me."