Chapter 30: Echo of the Hollow
The chamber trembled beneath their feet.
Cracks snaked across the ceiling as the black pool churned like it was alive boiling with memory.
Lyra grabbed Kael's arm. "We have to go now!"
He stumbled to his feet, vision blurring. His right eye still bled smoke. The other shimmered gold.
Something in him was changing and he could feel it.
The memories wouldn't stop. They clawed at him from inside. His mother's scream. A hand breaking his fall. The first time he heard the Saint whisper his name.
"Kael move!" Lyra shouted.
A screech echoed behind them, guttural and familiar.
They turned.
And saw him.
Another Kael stood at the edge of the pool rising from the dark like a puppet pulled by strings.
His skin was pale. His mouth stretched too wide. And his eyes…
Both gold.
---
Lyra's voice faltered. "It copied you."
"No," Kael whispered. "It remembers me."
The echo tilted its head. "You gave me shape," it said. "Now give me your place."
Kael backed up. "I'm not a memory."
"But I am your truth," the echo hissed.
It lunged.
Lyra pushed Kael behind her and drew her blade. She slashed across the echo's chest, but it didn't bleed it laughed.
"Steel can't cut what was never whole."
Kael grabbed a broken shard from the shattered mirror and stabbed at the echo's throat. The creature caught his wrist.
Their eyes locked.
And for one heartbeat, Kael saw everything:
Himself kneeling in the well, begging to forget
Seren falling over the edge, reaching for him
Taren standing above him, whispering, "It has to be you.
---
The echo whispered: "You weren't saved. You were chosen."
Lyra tackled it.
They crashed into the wall, and she stabbed the blade through its side. This time it screamed a cry layered with a hundred voices.
Kael pulled Lyra back.
"Run!"
They bolted up the spiraling stairs. The walls trembled, dust and stone raining down around them.
The echo's footsteps were silent but always just behind them.
Kael reached the grate first. Threw it open. Pulled Lyra through.
The moment he stepped into moonlight, the echo stopped at the threshold.
It hissed burning where the light touched it.
Kael stared down at it.
It stared back.
"You can run, but you're still me."
They fled into the woods, hearts pounding, breath ragged.
Not a word passed between them for a long time.
Then Kael dropped to his knees by an old ash tree.
"I'm not okay," he gasped. "I don't know what's real anymore."
Lyra knelt beside him.
"I'm sorry."
He didn't speak.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the other pendant his, before it broke. She placed it in his hand.
"Hold onto what you know is yours."
Kael stared at it.
Then looked at her.
And said: "You should've told me everything."
Lyra looked away. "I know."
Kael stood slowly. His eyes were steady now.
"There's only one way to end this."
Lyra frowned. "What?"
Kael turned toward the heart of Whisperwood, where the mist curled like smoke and the shadows moved on their own.
"We find where the Saint was born. And we burn it to the ground."