The field dissolved behind me.
Or maybe I left it in thought.
In this place, travel wasn't by distance. It was by depth.
And I had gone deeper.
Every memory I regained made the Witness Realm more defined. Every name I remembered carved new threads into the sky.
But that's when the voice returned.
Not the older me.
Not the veiled figure.
Something… else.
"Do you think memory is free?" it asked.
I turned.
A forest stood where there had been only void. Black trees. No leaves. Branches like quills soaked in ink.
And beneath them—
A creature.
It wore faces. Dozens. Some were strangers.
Some were mine. Some were hers.
"You're stealing," it hissed. "From time. From meaning. From the dead."
I stepped back. The forest did not let me go.
"Who are you?"
"I am the first Echo who broke."
It rose. Not tall. But wide. It unfolded like a shadow discovering its own shape.
"They call me Falsekeeper." "Because I held too much."
"Too many echoes. Too many truths. And now I don't know who I am."
---
The air around me thickened. My breathing became unstable. The symbols on my arms—gifts from the Witness Core—began to glow.
"You've begun the path of Resonance," it said.
"But you haven't bled for it."
Suddenly, the forest pulsed.
Memories poured from the trunks.
Children crying for parents who never existed. Soldiers who died in wars that never happened. Lovers reaching across lifetimes that were never real.
They screamed into me. Clawed through my spine.
And just when I thought I'd break—
"Enough!" I shouted.
A symbol burst from my hand. The spiral of remembrance.
The one she had given me.
It struck the Falsekeeper in the chest. Not to harm it. But to define it.
And the moment it had shape—
It wept.
"Thank you," it whispered. "Even false things want to be real."
It shattered into light. Each face gently vanishing. Each echo returned to silence.
And the forest was gone.
I collapsed.
And I heard her voice—
"This is what power does, Lyan." "It gives… and it takes."
---
I awoke hours later, on a hill of quiet stone. The stars above now watched.
They blinked like eyes. Or maybe memories.
And in my hand, I found a glyph.
It wasn't from the Witness Core. It had formed on its own.
Not a symbol of remembrance. Not of identity.
But of loss.
And beneath it, inscribed into the ground:
"To witness too much is to become unrecognizable."
I closed my eyes. And felt the truth settle into my bones:
"I will not survive this unchanged."
---