The first thing Echo noticed was that the rain didn't touch him.
It fell everywhere—pattering against the broken rooftops of Nu'Ravin, slipping in cold rivulets through shattered gutters, staining the streets in dark, ink-like pools. But not him. Each drop dissolved before it reached his skin, as if the city itself refused to touch him.
That should have worried him.
Instead, it reminded him of what Thalia had said before the world collapsed around them: The city will die if you remember everything.
It was already happening.
Nu'Ravin wasn't just watching him anymore.
It was reacting.
Echo stepped forward, his boots making no sound. The shadows of the alley lengthened as he moved, stretching unnaturally toward the cracked skyline. The silver key around his neck pulsed faintly, its rhythm syncing with the distant hum of the city's hidden heartbeat.
He should have been afraid.
He wasn't.
Fear was something the Mind-Eater had carved out of him long ago.
Ahead of him, footprints led deeper into the fog—small, careful imprints left by someone who had walked this path just moments before.
Lani.
She was supposed to be dead.
She was dead.
Yet her voice still echoed in his head.
You were supposed to save me.
Echo clenched his jaw, forcing the memory back into its cage. He was tired of ghosts.
Behind him, Thalia emerged from the mist like an unspoken regret. Her cloak rippled against the wind, barely solid, as if she was standing between two realities and hadn't decided which one to belong to.
"We need to talk," she said.
Echo didn't stop walking.
"We won't get another chance," she pressed.
Echo turned slightly. "What makes you think this is a chance?"
She sighed. "Because this is the quiet before the city wakes up."
It was true.
Nu'Ravin had been unraveling since the moment he remembered Lani's name, but it hadn't collapsed yet. Not completely. There was still time. A space between memories where they could breathe.
For now.
Echo slowed his pace.
Thalia took that as permission to speak.
"You need to make a choice," she said. "You're stuck between what you were and what you might become. The King or the Shadow. The one who controls the game, or the one running through it."
Echo exhaled, watching his breath dissolve into the fog. "You make it sound so simple."
"It's not," Thalia admitted. "But it's necessary."
Echo looked at her fully this time.
He had known Thalia was dangerous from the moment she touched the rose—the rose that bloomed into an eye, into something that recognized him even when he refused to recognize himself. But that wasn't what unsettled him now.
It was the way she wasn't afraid of him.
Not anymore.
She had been afraid once. Back when the Mind-Eater had ruled. Back when Echo had worn a silver crown and rewritten minds without hesitation. Back when she had been forced to stab a dagger of memory-ink through his heart to stop the madness from spreading.
But now?
She was looking at him like she was waiting for him to choose.
"I don't want to be him," Echo murmured. "The King."
Thalia studied him carefully. "Then don't."
"It's not that easy."
"I know," she said. "Because you're still hungry."
Echo's pulse stuttered.
The hunger.
It had started as a whisper—something that had always lurked at the edges of his mind, beneath the surface of his skin. A craving he hadn't understood until he had learned what the Mind-Eater truly was.
He didn't just consume memories.
He collected them.
Rearranged them.
Wove them into stories.
And once he started—he couldn't stop.
Thalia saw the hesitation in his expression and took a step closer.
"We need to find Lani," she said.
Echo stiffened. "Lani is dead."
Thalia shook her head. "Her body might be. But you know as well as I do—Nu'Ravin doesn't let go of the past."
Something flickered in Echo's chest.
A recognition.
A warning.
Behind them, the rain started to shift—falling upward instead of down. Drops hovered midair, swirling into shapes, forming vague figures in the mist.
Echo didn't look at them.
He knew what they were.
Fragments.
Pieces of minds lost in the city's endless loops.
Failed players.
Unwritten stories.
"Where do we start?" he asked quietly.
Thalia didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she reached into the folds of her cloak and pulled out something small—something smooth and round.
A marble.
Just like the ones Echo had used to unlock his Red Memories.
But this one pulsed differently.
Echo's fingers twitched.
"Where did you get that?" he murmured.
Thalia met his gaze. "You left it for me. A long time ago."
The silver key around Echo's neck burned.
And for the first time since remembering himself—
He felt truly afraid.
***
Echo swallowed hard as the weight of the marble pulsed in his palm, its memory twisting itself into the fabric of his thoughts. Thalia's gaze remained sharp, unwavering, as if she knew exactly what was unraveling inside his mind.
"You left this for me," she had said.
The marble glowed faintly, reflecting in her silver eyes.
Echo's pulse thrummed against his ribs. He wasn't ready. Not for this. But there was no other path forward—only the truth buried in the fragments of his own shattered mind.
He took a step closer.
"You've been waiting for me to remember," Echo murmured. "Haven't you?"
Thalia tilted her head. "Why else would I be here?"
The city groaned above them, its cracked sky flickering as the storm of forgotten memories tightened its grip. Nu'Ravin wasn't just shifting—it was breaking apart.
And Echo was the reason why.
He clenched his fingers around the marble as the first shards of memory bled through.
A garden.
A night of laughter.
A whispered promise.
Then—blood.
A scream ripped through his thoughts, not his own, but hers.
Lani.
Echo staggered back, breath hitching.
"You remember now," Thalia said softly.
Echo shuddered. "I—I don't understand…"
"You do," she whispered. "But you don't want to."
The weight of the past crashed over him.
Lani's face.
Her hands trembling.
The knife glinting in candlelight.
He had trusted her.
He had loved her.
And he had destroyed her.
Echo's grip tightened around the silver key on his neck, his pulse hammering against his skin.
"They said I was a monster," he muttered. "A Mind-Eater. A king who rewrote lives."
Thalia didn't react, didn't deny it.
Because it was the truth.
"You didn't just rewrite lives, Echo," she said. "You rewrote yourself. Over and over. Until you forgot who you were. Until the game became everything."
The rain spiraled upward now, twisting into unnatural shapes—memories reshaping the city's bones.
Echo's voice was barely a whisper. "Then why do I keep coming back?"
Thalia exhaled, stepping closer, her presence pressing against the edges of his unraveling mind.
"Because you never finished the story."
Lightning cracked through the heavens, splitting the skyline.
And suddenly—
The world wasn't Nu'Ravin anymore.
It was something older.
Something buried.
Something Echo had spent lifetimes trying to forget.
The scene shifted.
Echo stood in the ruins of a ballroom—the same ballroom from the Red Court memory, but abandoned now, the chandeliers shattered, the obsidian floor cracked. Dust clung to the remnants of forgotten glory. Torn banners dripped ink, whispering half-written words into the silence.
A throne stood at the center.
Empty.
Echo stepped forward, pulse racing.
Thalia remained beside him, watching.
"You built this place," she said.
Echo swallowed. "Why?"
"Because you needed a stage."
The air pulsed—energy vibrating beneath his skin.
And then—
The marble cracked.
Reality twisted.
And the throne wasn't empty anymore.
Echo froze.
A man sat upon it.
Not a stranger.
Not an enemy.
Him.
Not as the fractured boy he was now—but as the ruler he had once been. The Mind-Eater. The architect of the Red Court. The king of rewritten lives.
Echo's breath caught as his past self leaned forward, silver crown gleaming under the dim glow of dying lanterns.
"You return," the King murmured. His voice was rich, edged with amusement, but beneath it, something deeper lurked—something fractured. "Do you finally understand, fragment?"
Echo stepped closer, heart pounding. "What did I do?"
The King tilted his head, his smile eerily familiar.
"You played the game," he said. "And you won."
Echo's stomach twisted.
"No," he whispered.
"Yes," the King corrected. "But winning came with a cost."
Memories struck like lightning.
Lani's betrayal.
Thalia's dagger.
The collapse of the throne.
The fall of the Mind-Eater.
Echo shuddered as the weight of it pressed into his mind.
"You killed her," the King murmured. "Or at least, you tried."
Echo clenched his fists, nausea twisting in his gut. "No. No, I—"
"You did," Thalia said, voice calm. "That's why she doesn't exist outside the Archive anymore. Why she lingers in fragments, lost between the memories you destroyed."
Echo's breath came sharp and ragged.
He had rewritten her out of reality.
He had erased Lani.
And now—
Now, she was coming back.
The city trembled.
The throne crumbled.
And Echo—
Echo remembered.
The storm of forgotten memories collapsed in on itself.
And somewhere, deep within Nu'Ravin, a whisper echoed through the streets.
"You were supposed to save me."
The game was resetting.
And this time?
There would be no escape.