Two nights after the Pact, Caeryn woke up screaming.
Not loud. Not thrashing. Just sharp—like something had reached into her mind and yanked a piece out.
"They saw it," she whispered.
I sat up. "Who?"
"Everyone."
She was right. I felt it too. The mark on my hand burned. The shard pulsed like a second heart. The world had noticed. And when the old powers wake up, they send their first messenger not with words—but blood.
I didn't know his name then. Only the title carved into temple ruins across three continents.
The Echo That Hunts.
He didn't walk. He drifted. Cloaked in silence. His body was made of smoke and bone, stitched together by the curses of a thousand dead prophets. His mouth didn't open, but you heard him—inside your head. A whisper. A memory. A scream you thought you'd forgotten.
He was coming for us.
And we had one day to prepare.
We found shelter in an abandoned monastery once devoted to the goddess of mercy—a cruel irony, given what was coming. The monks were long gone. Only their bones remained, still folded in prayer.
Caeryn set traps. Poisoned daggers. Shards of divine glass.
I carved runes into the floor. Ancient sigils Elion left behind in my memory like half-burnt pages.
"You know we might not survive this," I said as night fell.
"We won't," Caeryn replied, eyes locked on the doorway.
Then she turned. "But we don't need to."
I blinked. "What do you mean?"
She stepped closer. "We need to win. And if that means dying, then we die screaming—so someone else hears us."
He arrived at midnight.
No footsteps. No breath. Just cold. The fire died the moment he crossed the threshold.
I saw him.
No face. No eyes. Just a void beneath a crown of twisted black metal. His body dragged shadows with it, like they wanted to follow.
He raised one hand.
The monastery shook.
Caeryn charged.
She was light—faster than I'd ever seen her. She moved like a woman who'd already given death her name.
The Echo blocked her easily. A single swipe of his arm sent her flying across the room.
I didn't think. I pressed the shard to my chest and screamed Elion's name.
Flame erupted.
The runes on the floor lit up. A circle of searing light. The Echo recoiled—but not in fear.
In recognition.
"You… are his mistake," it whispered inside my head. "I was made for you."
Then he vanished.
Gone. Just like that. No death. No battle. No ending.
I collapsed, gasping, the shard dimming in my hand.
Caeryn limped over, blood in her mouth. "Why did he leave?"
I stared at the place where he'd stood.
"Because he doesn't want to kill me yet."
She swallowed. "Then what?"
"He wants me to kill everyone else first."