The skies above Ilyrian Echoes churned with omens. Storm clouds twisted themselves into unnatural spirals, not with lightning—but with echoing light, as though memories of storms were being replayed by something ancient and watching. Kai didn't sleep that night. He sat by the shattered altar stone, eyes fixed to the distant horizon where the obsidian flame still burned, a cursed monument to the Revenant's rising army.
Ysera paced nearby, her hands glowing faintly from a half-formed spell she couldn't bring herself to cast. "They say the Watchers only wake for two things: the rebirth of a god or the death of the world," she muttered.
Kai finally turned his gaze to her. "Then we're two for two."
Their journey to the Ashen Rim, where the Watchers once stood sentinel, began with silence. The kind of silence that wasn't empty, but full and pregnant with echoes and expectation. The land changed with each step. Trees twisted into spiral patterns. Stones hummed when touched. Time itself seemed uncertain.
The Ashen Rim wasn't a place. It was a boundary, a veil between this world and one slightly adjacent. Only those who bore the Mark of Echo could pass without turning into dust and memory.
Kai bore it now. Branded by fate and forged in ancient fire.
Ysera walked close beside him, her voice breaking the stillness. "When the Choir fell, it was the Watchers who stood between us and complete collapse. They weren't gods. They were... concepts made flesh. Patience. Remorse. Judgment. Compassion. Guardians of balance."
Kai stopped in his tracks. "And now we ask them to rise again?" Ysera nodded. "If they remember how to."
The first Watcher they encountered was dormant. A massive statue embedded in the wall of a ravine, its face cloaked in moss and ash, its hands spread outward like a parent sheltering unseen children. It wasn't stone. Not entirely. Its veins pulsed with faint starlight.
Kai stepped forward. "What's his name?"
Ysera knelt. "Virel. Watcher of Remorse. He remembers everything we wish we could forget."
The moment Kai touched the statue's base, a rush of visions tore through him.
Cities burning under golden suns. Lovers turned enemies. A child crying over a body lost to time. Then himself, falling through the sky as stars wept around him.
He gasped, pulling back. "He's not asleep. He's waiting."
Ysera placed a hand beside his. "Then let's remind him what he's waiting for."
The sigil beneath them ignited. Not with fire, but memory.
Virel stirred.
His eyes,twin nebulae opened slowly. He did not speak with a voice. His words came as gravity, pulling their thoughts toward his own.
You awaken me with grief. But grief alone is not enough.
Kai steadied himself. "We need you. The Revenant is summoning the Choir. The sky will fall again."
A long pause, heavy as a cathedral's silence.
Then let remorse become resolve. One of seven shall rise.
Virel's chest opened with a crack of light, revealing a shard of his essence. It hovered before Kai, small and unassuming.
Ysera stepped back. "Take it. But know that holding a Watcher's shard binds you. It becomes part of your soul."
Kai nodded. "Then let him know my soul is ready."
He reached out.
The moment his fingers closed around the shard, power rushed through him,not the raw, wild magic of the Echo, but something steadier. Heavy. The weight of unforgotten sorrow. His veins shimmered blue. His heart beat once, then again, deeper.
Virel's form stilled. His eyes dimmed. But a faint smile touched the corner of his massive mouth. The first Watcher had returned.
But their journey was far from over.
Kai and Ysera moved deeper into the Ashen Rim. Night came again, but the stars above now moved subtly. No longer still, they drifted in slow spirals as if observing.
The second Watcher, according to Ysera, lay buried beneath the Rootless Lake, a body of water so still it reflected not just the sky, but dreams.
"It's not real," Ysera whispered. "It's a mirror. It shows you what you've buried."
Kai stepped toward it.
The surface rippled. Not from wind. From recognition.
He saw himself, not as he was now, but as he had been: a farmer's son, dirt under his nails, laughter in his lungs. Then the visions bled. He saw a sword in his hand, blood on his brow. He saw the girl from the crater, the one who had screamed in the silence. She was older in the vision, standing behind him.
Her eyes glowed. But not with warmth.
Ysera clutched his arm. "That's not just memory. That's prophecy."
The lake parted.
And from its depth, a shape emerged,tall, feminine, arms folded over her chest, hair flowing like ink in water.
Watcher number two: Elunai, Guardian of Compassion.
She wept without sound, and the world around her wept with her. Trees bent toward her. Stars flickered in sympathy.
Compassion has been forgotten, she said. Even the gods wield cruelty as law. Why summon me?
Kai's voice broke. "Because we still need to care. Even now. Especially now."
Elunai stared deep into him.
And found the farmer's son.
She reached out.
No shard this time. She gave him a kiss on the forehead, and with it, a memory:
A field of sunflowers. A mother's laughter. A child reaching toward a sky that hadn't yet fallen.
Then she faded into mist, but Kai knew she wasn't gone. Compassion had remembered itself.By the next sunrise, they had roused two Watchers.
But time was thinning. The Revenant's flame had grown higher, and from it now rose a storm cloud of wings creatures made from forgotten prayers and twisted faith.
Ysera gripped her satchel tighter. "The Watchers will not rise all at once. We must earn each one. And we are running out of time."
Kai looked toward the south.
"I think I know where the next one sleeps."
He didn't say how he knew. He didn't need to.
The Watchers were waking.
But so were his memories.