Valemont's western archive was not on any student map.
Officially, it was categorized as an "inactive annex," a phrase that meant little and signified less. The hallway that led to it was narrow, curving just beyond the third bell tower staircase—flanked by unlit sconces and ancient wall carvings half-faded by time.
Toji found the entrance behind a faded tapestry.
He hadn't been guided there.
Lysara's note had simply read:
"Go where memory sleeps. Your next lesson is not written—it is remembered."
The latch behind the tapestry clicked softly, and the door opened inward without sound.
Inside, the archive smelled of dust, forgotten spells, and ink that hadn't dried in centuries. The air had weight—not oppressive, but expectant. The kind of silence that came from things choosing not to speak.
Toji stepped inside.
A single magical lantern flickered on, revealing rows of high shelves, scroll canisters, and vitrines containing bound relics behind wards.
He moved deeper.
Toward the end of the archive, beneath an arch of blackroot wood, he found a glass case containing a faded robe. Torn in places. Dusted with old blood.
Beside it, a placard etched in hand-cut stone:
"Seren of the Third Breath"
Echo-born. Class F Initiate. Vanished in the Year of Fourfold Eclipse.
Last seen conjuring a living Eidolon from aether without chant or mark.
No grave. Only echoes.
Toji read it twice.
Then a third time.
The plaque's script curled at the edges, as if the stone itself hadn't wanted to remember the words.
He looked at the robe again.
Threadbare. Unremarkable. But there was something in the way it hung inside the case, like it still carried tension.
Echo-born.
The word had been said once before.
Now it stared at him.
⸻
Lysara waited for him at the edge of the training vault when he returned.
"You found it."
"Yes."
"And?"
"Seren was like me."
"Perhaps," she said. "Or perhaps you are like him."
Toji frowned. "No one talks about him."
"No," Lysara agreed. "Because Valemont only memorializes the triumphant."
"Not the missing?"
"Not the feared."
She stepped closer.
"Seren was the last known Echo-born to awaken a soul-forged Eidolon without external source. No scroll. No channel. Just memory and will. When he disappeared, so did the study of tethercraft… officially."
Toji watched her carefully.
"But you kept studying."
"Some of us don't need permission to pursue truth."
Her voice hardened slightly.
"And we remember the echoes no one else hears."
She lifted a sphere from her robes.
Toji recognized the object immediately: a memory orb—an enchanted vessel designed to hold recollections too potent for written record.
"Seren left this," she said. "Or rather… it survived where he did not."
She handed it to him.
Toji braced himself and activated the orb.
It hummed once, then flared.
⸻
Darkness.
Then a voice.
Soft. Male. Shaken but clear.
"If you're hearing this, then the tether has found you. That means you have reached the mirror. I don't know if you're friend or foe. I don't know if you came from above or below. But I know you're Echo-touched. And that means the world will fear you before it understands you."
Images flickered—Seren's face blurred, hands dripping with ink and aetherlight. Behind him, shadows moved in patterns not bound to human motion.
"The Eidolon you see now—this shape—isn't mine. It's what my tether chose after I gave it too much of myself. Remember that. These things do not love us. They remember us. In ways we forget."
Toji's breath caught.
The message faded.
⸻
Lysara did not speak for a long time.
Finally, she turned to him.
"Your Echo is not just responding to your choices. It's responding to your potential memory—a timeline not yet lived."
Toji looked at his own shadow, rippling slowly on the ground.
"So if I go the same way Seren did…"
"You might vanish. Or you might become something no one dares forget."
⸻
That night, during meditation, the shadow moved first.
It formed the jackal again.
Then the winged shape.
Then another—vaguely humanoid, wrapped in robes that fluttered despite no wind. Its head was smooth, featureless. But it watched him.
Toji reached toward it.
It did not flee.
It knelt.
And from its palms, it extended a shape.
A blade.
Toji took it.
It dissolved instantly into his hand.
But the weight remained.
⸻
The next day, the blade appeared again.
Not summoned.
Not cast.
It simply was.
During aether channeling class, when he focused through his shadow matrix, the sword formed in his grip—black metal threaded with violet veins.
His classmates noticed.
But no one asked.
Because the moment the blade appeared, the instructor's eyes widened—and he dismissed class early without explanation.
Toji stayed behind.
Instructor Elvar approached slowly.
"That weapon…"
"It came from the tether," Toji said.
Elvar shook his head once.
"No. Not a tether. Not anymore."
He stepped back.
"That's a phantom vector. A soul weapon. Those only manifest when an Echo stabilizes into identity."
Toji tilted his head. "What does that mean?"
"It means you're no longer just echo-touched."
Elvar's voice dropped.
"You're echo-bound."
⸻
The implications didn't fully hit him until later that evening.
In his dorm, he held his hand out.
The blade formed instantly.
It didn't hum. Didn't glow.
But it felt alive.
Or at least aware.
He stared at it for a long time.
Then asked quietly, "What are you becoming?"
The blade flickered.
As if uncertain.
⸻
The next day, Lysara met him at the mirror chamber.
No lesson.
No chants.
Just a question.
"Do you want to see what your tether truly is?"
Toji answered with a nod.
She placed both hands on the glyph-ringed podium and opened the barrier.
A vortex of shadows unfolded like a turning page.
He stepped through.
What lay on the other side wasn't a battlefield.
It was a memory.
Not his.
Not exactly.
He stood in an empty classroom—one of the old wings, long before renovations. At the far end, a boy—Seren—sat scribbling notes into a tome while his shadow writhed behind him.
Toji stood invisible. A witness.
The boy looked up, suddenly alert.
Then—to Toji's horror—he turned and looked directly at him.
"You're late," Seren said.
Toji blinked.
"But you're earlier than me," Seren continued. "That's good."
Toji stepped forward.
"Is this a memory or—"
"Neither," Seren said. "This is Echo-space. Outside the flow. Where echoes overlap."
He stood, gesturing to the window.
Outside, moons passed like falling leaves.
"The blade. You've seen it."
"Yes."
"Then you'll see more. But remember—"
He faced Toji.
"The stronger the memory, the sharper the edge."
The classroom dissolved.
⸻
Toji collapsed forward—back in the real chamber, breath ragged, head spinning.
Lysara caught him before he hit the floor.
"Your Echo reached through the strata," she whispered. "That is unheard of."
He sat up slowly.
"I saw him."
"I know."
"I heard him."
She knelt beside him, something between awe and fear in her expression.
"Toji," she said softly. "Your Echo… might be the last surviving fragment of Seren's."
He stared at her.
Then at his hand.
Then at the jackal, which now stood upright—morphed.
More human than beast.
More memory than shadow.
He stood.
"I'm not him."
Lysara nodded. "No."
"But I might finish what he started."