Varellen was silent.
Not the silence of peace, but of something held too long beneath the surface. The kind that waits for a breath, a break, a scream.
Mimus woke face-down in red dust. It clung to his skin like memory. The ground beneath him pulsed faintly, warm as blood, cold as regret. When he pushed himself up, he realized he was no longer in the chamber. No more thrones. No Vesyr. Just a broken plain that stretched into mist.
He rose slowly. The wind here moved sideways, carrying scents he couldn't name—metallic, floral, ancient. The sky was not a sky at all, just a ceiling of pulsing gray light broken by flashes of impossible color. Like bruises healing in reverse.
He checked for his blade. Gone. No strap, no weight on his back. Just the clothes he'd worn the day Uzelith fell, tattered and soot-stained.
Somewhere far off, something howled. Not a beast. Not quite. It sounded too human.
The world shifted subtly under his feet. The dust coiled, not with wind, but with intention.
He was not alone.
And then he saw it.
Ahead, in the center of the plain, a figure waited. Cloaked. Tall. Still.
Mimus didn't approach immediately. His instincts from Ikenar—the ones honed in fire and war—held him in place. He crouched low, touching the dust. It vibrated beneath his palm.
Echo.
He hadn't understood the word until now—not fully. But something in him responded. A pressure in his chest, behind his eyes. A resonance he couldn't name.
He stepped forward. One foot, then another.
The figure turned.
It wore no face. Its cloak was stitched from shadow and woven light, its body a flicker of forms—man, beast, child, stranger. It didn't move, yet every part of it shimmered with contradiction.
Mimus froze. He didn't understand what he was seeing, but his bones remembered it. This wasn't a person. It was a memory made flesh. A test.
A Trial.
The figure raised its hand.
Mimus felt the ground beneath him fracture—not physically, but emotionally. Grief surged up his throat like bile. He fell to his knees, teeth clenched. A name burned behind his ribs.
Rynor.
The figure stepped forward. Still no sound. Still no face.
Mimus gasped, "What are you?"
And from the nothing came a voice—his voice, older, harsher:
"I am who you would have become. If you had stayed. If you had broken."
He staggered back. The Trial wasn't just testing him. It was showing him.
Himself.
Twisted. Hardened. Dissonant.
The other-Mimus raised a blade made of bone and black light. It crackled with Echo energy—liquid, luminous, unstable.
Mimus looked down at his hands. Empty.
Then he heard a whisper—not aloud, but in his chest:
"Draw it."
And he did.
From nothing, a blade formed—half-formed, crude, flickering. Not steel. Not memory. Something between. It vibrated with uncertainty.
The first version of his Eidara.
The other-Mimus attacked.
They clashed in silence.
Blade against blade, truth against potential. The dust around them exploded into spirals of red and gray. Each impact sent shockwaves through the Echo that coated the air. Mimus fought wildly at first, blocking, parrying, stumbling.
But then—clarity. A flicker of who he was. Of why he was still standing.
He wasn't fighting to win.
He was fighting not to become.
And with that thought, the blade in his hand solidified—gleaming with raw light, still incomplete, but honest.
He swung.
The other-Mimus shattered.
No scream. Just silence. And then, the dust fell still.
Mimus stood alone again, chest heaving, the Echo calming.
The blade in his hand pulsed once and vanished. Not gone—just dormant.
Somewhere above, something stirred. The world had seen.
His first awakening had come.
But deeper trials waited.
And Varellen was just beginning to speak.
---
He wandered for hours. Or maybe days. Varellen had no sun to measure time, no stars to anchor thought. Just layers of terrain shifting with intention. Sometimes the earth curved upward into jagged cliffs. Other times it split apart beneath his feet, revealing echoes of places he'd never seen—burning cities, crying skies, towers of singing stone.
He learned quickly that the realm listened. If he dwelled too long on anger, the world darkened. If he grew lost in memory, it would replay it for him—warped, wrong, but real enough to bleed from.
He passed a forest made entirely of bone-white branches, each one humming with lullabies from a language he'd never spoken. When he reached out to touch a trunk, the bark crumbled and whispered his mother's voice.
He did not touch another.
At one point, he crossed a bridge that wasn't there—a path of invisible steps held up by his own belief. Halfway across, the wind whispered doubts, and the bridge nearly collapsed beneath him. He ran the rest of the way.
This was no mere trial.
This was transformation.
And somewhere in the distance, always just out of reach, he felt a presence calling. Something ancient. Something watching. Not Vesyr. Not the Curators. Something deeper.
A gate. A truth. A throne.
Or maybe… a version of himself he hadn't met yet.
By the time he found the obsidian pool, he was too tired to speak. It sat in the center of a canyon, perfectly still, surrounded by shattered statues. Their faces had been carved away—deliberately, lovingly, as if to erase memory instead of honor it.
He knelt beside the water. His reflection stared back.
Not him. Not fully.
His Echo.
It shimmered in the still water—his pain, his doubt, his stubborn light. It looked like him, but older. Wiser. Afraid.
And then it spoke.
"Mimus. Your name carries weight now."
He whispered, "What am I becoming?"
The reflection's smile was sorrowful.
"A question the world has waited too long to hear."
And the water began to glow.
Somewhere, deeper in the canyon, footsteps echoed.
The next trial was coming.