The world had not settled after the light.
It had shifted.
Kael and Mira could feel it as they walked — a quiet distortion humming beneath each step. The land was soft, pliable, as though still deciding what form to take. Valleys shifted when they turned away, rivers changed their paths, and the air itself pulsed with faint rhythm, like breath drawn by an unseen god.
At first, they thought it was only the landscape that changed. But as the days passed, they began to encounter the Echoes.
The first one appeared at dusk.
They had camped in a hollow of twisted roots, the dying embers of their fire flickering across Kael's half-sleeping face. Mira was sitting awake, tracing the stars that spiraled differently each night. Then — a sound.
It was not footsteps. It was remembering.
A low murmur crept through the air, repeating words Kael had whispered days ago.
"Remembrance is never gentle."
His eyes snapped open.
The voice came again, softer, like a whisper inside his skull.
From the edge of the campfire's reach, a shape emerged — faint, translucent, trembling like smoke. Its body had no clear form, but its face… its face was made of hundreds. The shifting visages of those Kael had consumed.
He rose instantly, the Vein-mark along his forearm igniting in cold light.
Mira's hand brushed his shoulder. "Wait. It's not attacking."
The Echo hovered near the flames, stretching thin arms toward the heat as if curious about warmth. Then, it spoke again — a voice layered in a dozen tones, some human, others not.
"You took us. You carry us. But we… remember."
Kael's pulse stilled. "You're fragments. You shouldn't exist."
"You said that before," the Echo murmured, its head tilting in eerie mimicry. "You said… 'forgive me.' And we did not."
The flames flickered violently. For an instant, the faces melted into one — a woman's, eyes hollow but familiar.
Mira gasped. "That's—"
Kael finished the word for her. "…Lyran."
The name cut him deeper than any wound. Lyran — one of the first souls he had devoured to survive, back when his hunger ruled him completely.
The Echo tilted its head, the voice softening.
"We were not meant to die inside you. But now… the world has opened, and we are learning how to live again."
Kael's hand trembled. "By haunting me?"
"By becoming what you were too afraid to face."
The Echo stepped back into the shadows, its body scattering like dust in wind.
When the last wisp vanished, the night fell silent once more — but not empty.
Something unseen lingered, like a breath that refused to fade.
---
By morning, they saw more.
Faint silhouettes walking the ridges, shadows that bled light instead of darkness. Once, Kael saw a hunter kneeling beside a pool of still water — only to realize it wasn't a man at all, but a reflection moving without a source.
The world was waking up its memories.
Mira watched one such figure dissolve into mist. "They're drawn to you," she said.
Kael frowned. "Or repelled."
She gave him a look that lingered. "Either way… they're calling you their maker."
He didn't answer. The thought carved deep. Every soul he'd consumed had become part of his strength — and now, it seemed, part of the world's foundation.
And the world was remembering.
On the fourth night, the whispering began again — not from a single echo, but many.
Their voices rose and fell with the wind, chanting broken words that made the air vibrate:
"We are the breath between flesh and void."
"We are the faces without mouths."
"We are the debt of the living."
Kael clenched his fists. "They're uniting."
Mira's eyes widened. "Like a hive."
"No," he whispered, sensing it now — a deeper pull in his chest. "Like a call."
Before either could move, the ground convulsed. Cracks splintered outward, glowing veins of pale silver racing across the plain. The whispers turned into screams.
From those cracks, the Echoes rose — dozens at first, then hundreds. Some still half-formed, others bearing vague fragments of humanity — a hand, a half-face, a child's laughter trapped in static.
They swirled above the ground, a storm of remembrance.
Mira stepped back. "Kael—what do they want from you?"
He stared into the churning sky. "To be remembered. Or destroyed."
"Which will you give them?"
Kael's voice was a whisper against the storm. "I don't know anymore."
And as he spoke, the Echoes descended — not to attack, but to touch. Their hands, made of light and grief, brushed against his chest, his arms, his face. Every contact burned cold, flooding his mind with flashes of the lives he'd consumed — their pain, their love, their final moments.
He screamed — not from agony, but from the unbearable weight of memory returning all at once.
Mira reached for him, shouting his name, but her voice barely reached through the light.
Then the Echoes whispered in unison:
"You cannot carry us forever."
The light flared. Kael fell to his knees. The Echoes scattered like ash in the wind.
And when the silence returned, Mira knelt beside him, trembling.
His veins glowed faintly beneath his skin — but they no longer pulsed like before.
Instead, they sang.
A low, eerie hum that made the earth itself resonate.
Kael lifted his gaze slowly, his voice breaking. "They're not gone, Mira. They're inside the world now."
She swallowed hard. "Then what are you now?"
Kael looked at the trembling horizon — the air rippling, the mountains shivering with faint light.
"…The bridge," he whispered. "Between what was lost and what refuses to die."
The wind howled like a chorus of ghosts, and somewhere, beneath that vast and waking sky, the new world shivered in remembrance.
The hum beneath Kael's skin would not stop.
It began as a faint vibration in his veins, but as the hours passed, it deepened into a low, resonant tone that seemed to echo from inside the bones of the earth. Every breath carried the same rhythm. Every heartbeat answered it.
Mira watched from across the dim campfire, her eyes reflecting the pale blue flicker of the flames. "It's growing stronger," she said softly.
Kael stared down at his palms. The veins glowed faintly, the light weaving through his skin like tiny rivers of silver. "They're still speaking."
"Who?"
"The Echoes. They're not gone. They've merged with the world. And now… they're using me to speak."
The fire crackled. Somewhere beyond their circle, the forest whispered — not with leaves, but with murmurs, as though the air itself carried fragments of language. Mira leaned forward, voice trembling. "What are they saying?"
Kael closed his eyes. For a long moment, there was only silence. Then, in a voice that was barely his own, he began to whisper:
"We are the choir beneath the skin.
We are the breath that remembers its birth.
The flesh forgets, but the light does not."
When he opened his eyes again, Mira's expression was unreadable. "Kael," she said quietly, "that wasn't you speaking."
He nodded slowly. "I know."
The air thickened around them. The fire dimmed. And from the shadows between the trees, faint figures began to appear again — but not as formless Echoes this time. They had begun to take shape.
Kael rose to his feet, every muscle tense.
The nearest one stepped into the firelight — its form that of a man, tall and spectral, skin translucent and veins glowing like molten silver. But where his eyes should have been, there were hollow pools of light.
He spoke in a tone that rippled like many voices woven together.
"The flesh remembers us. The light sings your name. The bridge has awoken."
Kael swallowed hard. "You mean me."
"You are not the bridge. You are the wound. Through you, the song returns."
Mira stepped forward, her hand instinctively raised in defiance. "If you mean harm—"
The figure turned its eyeless face toward her. "We mean remembrance. The world cannot be whole without what it has forgotten."
Its words carried a strange gravity, sinking into her bones. She felt, for a fleeting instant, as though something vast had looked through her — not at her.
Kael clenched his fists. "Then tell me what you want."
The being extended its hand. Its touch did not burn. It was cold — like old rain.
"To sing again. To finish the song you silenced."
Kael felt the vibration within him surge, rising from his chest to his throat. He gasped — and before he could resist, a note escaped his lips.
It was not human. It was a sound of light — pure and resonant, carrying through the air like a bell ringing across an endless distance. The forest responded in kind. Trees shimmered. Stones hummed. The stars above flickered in rhythm.
Mira covered her mouth, tears forming in her eyes. "Kael, stop—"
But he couldn't. The song wasn't his anymore. It belonged to everything.
And in that resonance, he saw visions — flickers of what once was. Cities of glass and bone. Rivers of luminous souls. A thousand forgotten faces rising and falling in a sea of light.
He saw himself standing at the center of it all — devouring, consumed, reborn.
The hum grew until the world itself seemed to tremble. Then, abruptly, silence.
Kael fell to his knees, gasping. The Echoes faded like smoke, leaving only the echo of their final whisper.
"We are not gone. We are becoming."
Mira rushed to him, gripping his shoulders. "Kael, look at me!"
His eyes opened — glowing faintly silver, veins pulsing beneath his skin in slow, rhythmic light. He looked at her as though seeing her through a veil of water.
"Mira… I can hear them everywhere."
"What are they saying?" she asked, voice shaking.
He stared past her, toward the trembling horizon.
"They're saying the world is remembering itself wrong."
That night, neither of them slept. The stars moved in spirals, each turn slower, heavier — as though drawn toward the same rhythm in Kael's veins. By dawn, the once-still air of the world had begun to pulse. The grass swayed without wind. The clouds coiled in circles. The ground beneath their feet throbbed faintly, alive with sound.
And when Mira touched the earth, she flinched. Beneath the soil, something vast and hollow breathed back.
"Kael," she whispered, "it's spreading."
He stood beside her, the marks on his arms glowing like molten veins. "The song isn't staying in me anymore."
"What does that mean?"
He turned his head slowly, his expression unreadable. "It means the world is starting to sing for itself."
The sound came then — distant at first, but unmistakable. A deep, endless chord rising from the heart of the land, resonating through air, stone, and soul.
The Choir Beneath the Skin had awakened.
And Kael — the bridge, the wound, the reluctant god — could no longer tell whether it was a song of life…
or the world learning how to scream.