The morning fog hung like a funeral veil over the grounds of Gloamspear Academy.
Mist curled between ivory towers and shattered statues of forgotten kings. Students moved like ghosts across the dew-slicked courtyard, clad in muted robes that bore the mark of their chosen Disciplines—Arcane Warding, Battle Veilcraft, Sacred Rhetoric, Relic Cartography. Beneath their polished words and watchful silence lurked the same truth: everyone here feared the Veil. And everyone wanted to survive it.
Solan Maelvaran walked alone.
The lecture bell had not yet rung, and already his name was beginning to slither between whispers. Not because he was loud—he wasn't. Not because he was talented—he was more than that.
It was because three nights ago, during his first sanctioned descent into the Veiled Labyrinth, he had survived the Trial of the Hollow Seal.
No one else had.
. . .
He passed beneath the cloistered archway of the Obsidian Wing, where frescoes of old heroes graced the walls—figures who had once fought in the Divine War, whose spirits now supposedly watched over the campus from behind Divine Seals etched in gold leaf.
The air was warmer here, humming faintly with the resonance of layered Veilcraft. And yet, he felt it again—the pull.
It started as a flicker at the edge of his senses. A subtle shifting, like a name he used to know trying to wedge its way back into memory. His fingers curled instinctively toward his chest where the Forsaken Grimoire rested beneath his robe. Its pages had not turned since the last Reckoning, but today, something felt different.
A voice stirred in the corners of his thoughts.
"The Choir stirs. Listen carefully… or forget yourself."
Solan slowed his steps.
He recognized that tone. It was not Wyrm. It was older, colder. One of the echoes bound to the labyrinth's tiered Tones—a fragment of regretful divinity from the Tier of Silence, bound to the shattered Choir of Hollow Names.
He had heard it once before, during his brush with the Mirror That Remembers Names. He hadn't expected it to return so soon.
. . .
Professor Ashura Vael stood at the front of the ritual chamber, draped in robes the color of dried blood. Her eyes glinted with silver threading, and her right hand bore the brand of a Twilight Pact—a sign she had once bargained with a relic older than language.
"Today," she said, as students filed in, "we speak not of veils, but of echoes."
She traced a rune midair. It shimmered, then dissolved like fog.
"Echoes are not ghosts. They are not wraiths. They are memories with conviction—alive not because they want to be, but because reality cannot forget them. And if you are unfortunate enough to hear the Hollow Choir in your descent…"
Her gaze landed on Solan, and for a heartbeat too long, it lingered.
"…you do not run. You do not speak. You offer silence. Anything else, and they will offer you… identity drift."
Students murmured.
Solan clenched his jaw.
He remembered the first time he'd seen someone fall to identity drift—a senior ranked Cadet named Aldreth, who had returned from the Regret Tier believing he was someone else entirely. His memories had been overwritten, his name lost even to the Divine System.
A walking echo. Hollow. Used for training dummies now.
. . .
When class ended, Ashura approached him directly.
"You're descending again tonight, aren't you?"
Solan nodded.
"I've reviewed your chains." Her voice dropped. "You've bound two Echo-class wraiths in a single week. And you've interfaced with a Veil Artifact that predates the towers. That grimoire should not exist. It's rewriting itself using forbidden runes."
"I know," Solan replied. "But it's part of me now. It won't let me stop."
She studied him a moment longer.
Then said, "There's something beneath Tier IV—something older than the Choir. I want you to find its root. You're the only one who might survive it."
And then she added, almost reluctantly, "And bring something back that can speak."
Solan bowed lightly and turned to leave.
As he walked away, her final words reached his back like a blade: "You're already forgetting your name, aren't you?"
. . .
Veiled Labyrinth – Descent Initiated
He stepped into the Dream Gate at midnight.
As always, the system activated without sound or light. Just pressure. Just… falling.
The air grew thin.
And then he was standing on the slick obsidian stone of Tier IV—the Domain of Silence.
But it had changed.
Where once lay endless mist and ruins, now stood a cathedral of inverted architecture—pillars upside-down, floors arched overhead, and altars that bled wax rather than light.
He was not alone.
Figures stood in rows, cloaked in funeral-gray, faces hidden behind mirrored masks. Each sang without sound, mouths open in perfect synchronicity.
The Hollow Choir.
Solan moved carefully.
He avoided eye contact. He kept to the outer rim, following the pulse of Wyrm in his veins. The Soulchain whispered—not in words, but in fragmented impressions: fear, obedience, truth hidden behind silence.
The deeper he walked, the louder the silence grew.
Symbols drifted across the walls—Symbol Drift in real time. Ancient glyphs that changed each time he blinked. He could feel the Sanity Gauge slipping, piece by piece.
He approached the altar.
There, bound in crystal and bone, was a figure—half-dead, half-forgotten.
A girl.
She looked no older than eighteen, but her presence rippled like a being unstuck from time.
System text flickered into his vision.
. . .
[UNSEALED: Echo Relic – Choir-Bound Oracle]Tier: Crown (Unclassified)Status: In stasis. Requires Reckoning to awaken.Warning: Identity Drift imminent. Attempting ritual without Silence Ward risks permanent overwriting.Would you like to initiate Reckoning: "Trial of Unspoken Names"?
. . .
Solan stared at the girl.
Then he did what he always did.
He said yes.
And the Choir sang.
. . .
He awoke vomiting blood in the ritual chamber of Gloamspear. His robe was burned through at the chest, runes seared across his sternum. The Oracle's echo lingered in his mind, whispering a name he could no longer pronounce but felt like his own.
Ashura found him within the hour.
She knelt beside his shivering form and whispered, "You've brought back a seed of the Choir."
Solan nodded, unable to speak.
In his hand was clutched a single feather of voidglass, blacker than black.
"Don't lose it," Ashura said.
But in the corner of the room, unseen by all, a small tear formed in the wall.
Not a crack. A fracture in the Veil itself.
Something on the other side breathed.