Ten glyphs.
That was how long he had before the world tried to forget him again.
The Guardian advanced without urgency. Its steps were punctuation marks, precise and final. Each one etched itself into reality with declarative force, rewriting the terrain beneath it. Where its feet passed, correction took hold. Earth became a metaphor. Grass turned into scripture. Stones broke into commentary on what once stood here. The air rippled, thinner with every syllable it enforced.
He ran.
Not just from the Guardian, but from the idea of being erased. It wasn't death he feared. It was nonexistence. The kind of void that didn't even leave behind questions. The kind of end that took your footprints with it.
Behind him, the village began to shrink. Its narrative was being peeled away like old paint. Foundations turned into historical summaries. Doors closed not with sound, but with interpretive finality. It wasn't destruction. It was refinement. The Guardian was editing the world.
He darted down a narrow ravine beside a ridge of crumbling stones. Vines twisted overhead like fraying threads of a forgotten paragraph. He slid down an embankment, crashing into a thicket of whisperleaf ferns. The plants recoiled, murmuring phrases in dialects he didn't know.
There, ahead of him, loomed a massive tree.
It split the clearing like a paragraph break. Tall, ancient, and half-dead. One half bore vibrant bark etched in soft-glowing glyphs. The other was ashen, its surface charred as if overwritten too many times. Its roots twisted into the earth like braided language, some branches rising, others curling downward like ink drips.
He reached it, gasping. Its presence felt... expectant. Like it had been waiting for him to arrive.
The Guardian stepped into the clearing.
Even from behind the tree, Echo could feel its pressure. Not heat. Not magic. Definition. The Guardian was absolute. A being made of intent, summoned not to fight but to clarify. Its mask held no features, only the script that moved across it, ever-changing. A sermon in motion.
It raised its hand. A square of space around it folded like a turning page.
"Unauthorized myth persists. Correction sequence resuming. Glyph seven."
He pressed his palm against the tree. The bark was warm, pulsing slightly beneath his skin, like paper over a heartbeat.
The ink inside him stirred.
It was not a feeling. It was a draft. A current of unspoken belief, coiling in his chest, pushing against his mind like a thought trying to become language.
He hadn't learned to summon it. But it arrived when the story demanded it.
Another step from the Guardian.
"Glyph six."
He didn't know what to write. But instinct guided his fingers to the tree's bark, as if it were paper. The ridges aligned into something receptive. And the myth poured out of him, not in ink, but in intention:
The Echo is not a threat to story. The Echo is a witness.
The words formed in the bark. Glyphs emerged beneath his fingertips. They pulsed once, like inhaling.
The Guardian halted.
Its mask tilted.
"Reassessment in progress."
The words had not erased the threat. But they had forced it to reconsider. Echo watched as the glyphs across its frame flickered. Some dimmed. Others hesitated. The Guardian was not confused. It was recalculating.
He spoke aloud, trying to match the cadence he felt within.
"I'm not here to alter the canon," he said. "Only to... observe. Preserve."
The lie was close enough to truth.
The tree seemed to approve. The glyphs on its healthy half extended further down the trunk, curling into the ground like roots, linking Echo's intent to the clearing itself.
Another step forward.
"Glyph five."
His heart thundered. He couldn't let it continue. He pressed both palms into the bark, shouting this time.
"I didn't break the story! I gave it something to remember!"
The clearing trembled. The sky overhead briefly blurred, lines of ink skimming across the clouds like someone revising the setting mid-sentence.
The Guardian froze.
"Amendment filed."
The voice rang out like a verdict. Cold, final.
Its hand lowered.
A seam opened in its body, not physically, but in logic. As though something in its internal script had been struck out. A line was removed. A space created.
It turned.
And with a sound like a massive tome snapping shut, it vanished.
Echo collapsed to his knees.
His breath came in short bursts. Not from running, but from tension. From holding a story together long enough for it to matter. He felt sweat on his brow, but also something else – an afterglow.
The ink inside him receded. But it left a trail of heat behind, like a seal pressed into wax.
He looked at his hands.
The lines on his palms now shimmered faintly. Subtle threads of glyphs. Not glowing. Not alien. Just... waiting.
The myth had not been erased.
He had survived a retcon.
But more than that, he had shaped one.
The world didn't feel the same now. The light filtered through the leaves in measured beats. The wind didn't whistle randomly. It sang in iambs. Even his shadow seemed to fall with intent, as if the universe had finally begun to acknowledge his shape.
He touched the tree once more.
Its bark no longer resisted. A new line appeared beneath his fingers, curling around one branch:
The Witness was here.