Echo felt the city shift beneath him.
Not the subtle rearrangement of streets, nor the whispered movement of buildings bending themselves to forgotten rules—but something deeper. Older.
Nu'Ravin was breathing again.
He clenched his fists, trying to suppress the tremors running through his body. The weight of memory sat heavy on his chest, pressing against his ribs like an iron cage.
Thalia watched him carefully, blade still in hand, her silver eyes flickering under the broken glow of the city's sky. She had seen this before.
"You're unraveling," she murmured. "It's happening faster than I expected."
Echo swallowed hard, forcing himself to breathe. "Lani's alive."
Thalia didn't react.
"You don't know that," she said. "You know what Nu'Ravin does. What you did."
Echo shook his head. He wasn't listening. He couldn't.
He felt Lani.
Somewhere in this city, between the cracks of rewritten history, she was waiting. Watching.
Maybe hunting.
The silver key around his neck pulsed violently, sending sparks of cold through his veins. He clutched it instinctively. It was trying to tell him something.
Warn him.
Not about Lani.
About her.
The voice that whispered from the depths of the city, the one that had breathed through the Reapers when they arrived. The one that had never truly left him.
"You were supposed to stay dead."
Echo turned sharply toward the ruins ahead. The fog curled around the edges of broken towers, wrapping shadows into shapes that shouldn't exist.
There was a door waiting for him.
It wasn't there before.
A red frame, carved with shifting runes, pulsing faintly under the fractured sky.
Echo didn't need Thalia to tell him what it was.
It was a memory-lock.
A barrier between the rewritten past and the truth it was designed to bury.
Thalia cursed softly, stepping closer. "Echo. Don't."
But he had already started moving.
Each step pulled him deeper. The wind pressed against his back, the city whispering warnings into his ears. The walls around the alley pulsed like veins, tightening around him with every movement.
Thalia grabbed his wrist, fingers digging into his skin. "If you open that door, you won't be able to take it back. The city will react. She will react."
Echo barely heard her.
He had already reached the handle.
His fingers curled around the cold brass, his heartbeat syncing with the runes flickering across the surface.
His name was carved into the wood.
Not the name he had chosen.
The one he had forgotten.
Edric Dhal.
The scar beneath his eye burned.
Behind him, Thalia whispered, "Echo."
It was the last thing he heard before he turned the handle.
And the world broke open.
***
The second the door swung open, reality shattered.
Echo barely had time to react before the weight of memory slammed into him like a tidal wave. His pulse stuttered, his breath caught—his mind screaming as fragments of lost truths forced their way back into his skull.
The city screamed with him.
Nu'Ravin convulsed, streets twisting, buildings warping, the cracked sky pulsing as if the world itself was being rewritten in real time.
And deep within the unraveling chaos—
Lani stood waiting.
Echo staggered back, the scent of burning ink filling his lungs. His vision blurred, red streaks curling at the edges, distorting shapes that shouldn't exist.
But Lani was real.
Her dark hair was damp, tangled against her face. Her crimson ribbons—once a childhood memory—were now frayed, barely clinging to the strands. Her eyes, wide and sharp, locked onto him with something raw. Something broken.
"You found it," she whispered.
Echo couldn't speak.
He had rewritten her out of history, erased her from existence, turned her into nothing but a fragment.
Yet—she was here.
Alive.
Remembering.
Thalia cursed under her breath, stepping closer, her blade still clutched in her palm, tense, ready.
"Lani," she said carefully. "You need to—"
Lani lifted a hand. The moment her fingers curled, the city roared in response.
The walls of the alley melted. The streets bent. The sky flickered in and out of existence.
Nu'Ravin was listening to her.
Echo's pulse hammered. "You control it."
Lani tilted her head, gaze flickering between him and Thalia.
"Not entirely," she said. "But enough."
Thalia tightened her grip on her blade, every muscle poised for the inevitable fight.
"How?" Echo asked, voice barely audible.
The corner of Lani's lips lifted—just slightly.
"You know the answer."
Echo's breath hitched.
He did.
Even before he remembered fully, even before the weight of his past settled completely into his bones, he knew.
Lani had rewritten him.
Echo had spent years, decades, erasing lives, reconstructing identities, consuming minds to reshape his own reality. But she—she had done something impossible. She had turned his own power against him.
And now—
She was stronger than she had ever been.
Echo stepped forward, ignoring the fire burning beneath his skin. "What do you want?"
Lani studied him. "The same thing I wanted before you rewrote me."
Echo clenched his fists. "That's not an answer."
"It's the only one that matters."
The city trembled beneath her words. The echoes of past lives whispered against the walls, curling in the air like a warning.
Thalia exhaled sharply, shifting her stance. "You let her go last time. You shouldn't have."
Echo ignored her. His eyes remained on Lani, refusing to waver, refusing to look away.
"You came back," he murmured.
Lani's expression hardened. "You forced me to."
Echo's mind reeled. The weight of what that meant—the implications of everything she had done—settled into his chest like a second heartbeat.
She hadn't been waiting for him.
She had been hunting him.
Thalia moved first.
Her blade flashed, slicing through the thick air, aimed directly at Lani's throat.
The attack never landed.
The city reacted before steel could meet flesh.
A wall of shifting ink and bone erupted from the ground, blocking Thalia's strike, absorbing the force like a breathing entity.
Lani didn't flinch.
Echo barely had time to process what had happened before Nu'Ravin started to collapse around them.
The streets cracked. The sky bled. The city roared in anger, in rebellion, in something neither of them could control anymore.
Thalia cursed, stepping back, eyes darting toward Echo, waiting for him to move, to react, to choose.
But Echo already knew.
This wasn't a choice.
This was inevitability.
Lani exhaled, and the storm raged.
The past was awake.
The game was resetting.
And this time—
No one would forget.