Mimus did not sleep. Not because he chose to stay awake, but because Varellen did not allow dreams—not the natural kind. The moment his eyes closed, memory surged.
Not his own.
He had seen burning towers. Wails in a language he never learned. A woman carved from silver, begging a stone gate not to forget her. Each time, he woke gasping, his Echo rippling faintly around him, like heat rising from regret.
So now, he sat.
He was at the base of the canyon where the obsidian pool had shown him his reflection—or something close to it. The water had since gone still. His Echo had dimmed. But the footsteps he had heard before were now real.
Someone—or something—was approaching.
He stood and turned.
A figure walked down the path into the canyon: tall, cloaked, limping slightly. The cloak was dark green, streaked with ash, and its hem dragged lines in the dust.
Mimus reached instinctively for the sword that wasn't there. He still hadn't fully learned how to summon it at will. The blade answered only when he was clear, when his emotions became louder than his doubts.
He stepped forward anyway.
The figure halted. Then pulled back its hood.
It was a woman. Not old, but worn—her face lined not with age, but with remembrance. Her eyes shimmered with a trace of Echo, flickering violet and gold.
"Thought you'd be taller," she said.
Mimus didn't reply.
"You're new," she continued, stepping closer. Her voice was raspy, like someone who'd forgotten how to speak kindly. "Still smelling of other worlds."
He nodded, slowly. "Ikenar."
She squinted, as if tasting the name. "Never heard of it. That means it's either too young, or already forgotten."
"Who are you?"
"Call me Caldrin." She gestured to the canyon walls. "This place? They call it the Trial Without a Name. It finds those who think they've passed their first test too quickly."
"I didn't pass anything," Mimus said.
"Exactly."
A silence stretched between them. Then Caldrin sat by the pool and reached into her cloak. She pulled out a fruit—dark, sharp-looking—and bit into it without ceremony.
"You don't get it yet, do you?" she asked through a mouthful. "You think Varellen is a tournament. Something you win."
Mimus stayed standing.
"It's not?"
"Oh, there's a winner. Sure. But this place doesn't care about triumph. It cares about truth. Your truth. The part you've never said aloud. The one you don't want to face until something breaks."
Mimus sat. "Then what's the point?"
"To see who survives their own story."
He stared into the pool again, but it gave him nothing. Just reflection.
"What was your truth?"
Caldrin stopped chewing.
"I told myself I was ready to let go of my son. That I was strong enough to carry on after the Dissonance took him."
She turned her gaze to the horizon. "Turns out, I was lying."
A long pause. Then:
"And you?"
Mimus said nothing.
Caldrin laughed bitterly. "You don't know yet. Or you do, and you're afraid it'll burn through your ribs."
She stood. "Come on. The Trial's waking."
---
They walked together through the canyon. The path narrowed until it was barely wide enough for a single person. Caldrin moved with surprising speed for someone who limped.
Eventually, they reached an arch of twisted stone, covered in symbols Mimus didn't recognize. Some glowed faintly.
"Step through," Caldrin said.
"What's inside?"
She shrugged. "Depends what you've buried."
He hesitated.
"You want to survive this place?" she said, tilting her head. "Then bleed where no one can see."
He stepped through.
---
It was not a chamber.
It was a memory.
He stood in the streets of Uzelith, whole and untouched by fire. The sky was the familiar dusky blue of Ikenar's twilight. People moved past him—his people. Alive.
Children played between market stalls. Vendors shouted. Bells rang.
He knew this place. This moment.
The day before the attack.
He turned and saw himself—the other him, younger by a few days, standing in armor at the edge of a balcony, laughing with Rynor.
It wasn't a projection. It was real. Every detail. Every word.
He tried to move, but the memory locked him in place.
Then, the vision shifted.
Screams. Fire. Collapse.
Uzelith began to fall around him. People were dying again. But this time, he wasn't watching.
This time, he was holding the blade.
Not his own. A curved weapon of light and bone.
And he was the one cutting down his own people.
"No," he whispered. "That's not—"
But the Trial didn't listen.
It wasn't showing him what had happened. It was showing what could have. If his fear had been just a little stronger. If he had believed that saving himself was more important than saving them.
Each life he took in the vision bled Echo into the air—screams that bent the sky. The Trial fed on it.
He dropped the weapon. Tried to close his eyes.
But a voice—his voice—spoke in the sky above:
"You left them to burn."
"I didn't," Mimus whispered.
"You didn't stay."
He fell to his knees, throat dry.
Then someone screamed his name. Not from the memory. From beyond.
Caldrin.
He looked up. The memory cracked.
The sky shattered into threads of silver. The fire twisted inward. And standing in the center of it all—an Echo-formed version of himself, glowing with Dissonance.
"You must choose," the vision said.
"Choose what?"
"To remember what you buried, or become it."
---
Mimus screamed.
It wasn't pain. Not physical. But something inside him broke—and not in the way that kills. In the way that frees.
He stood.
His Echo rose around him like a second skin—jagged, bright, trembling. The broken blade appeared in his hand again, but now it pulsed like a heartbeat.
"I left," he said. "Because I couldn't save them. Not all of them. I stayed for Rynor. I carried the guilt. And I'll carry it still."
The Dissonant version of himself snarled and lunged.
But Mimus didn't strike.
He opened his arms.
The two collided—not in violence, but in memory. They fused. The light dimmed.
The Trial ended.
---
Mimus awoke beneath the arch, body slick with sweat. Caldrin crouched beside him.
"Did you choose?"
He nodded, still shaking.
She offered him her waterskin.
"Then you're not dead. Good. That's something."
He drank. The water was bitter, but real.
"I saw myself," he murmured.
"You'll keep seeing yourself. This place doesn't stop until you stop hiding."
He looked back toward the arch. It had sealed behind him.
"So what now?"
Caldrin cracked her knuckles. "Now we get moving. You're marked now. Others will feel it."
"Others?"
"You thought you were alone?"
She laughed, bitter and bright.
"Kid, the real Tournament hasn't even started."