They followed the sound of their own voices for half a day before realizing it wasn't them speaking.
The desert had flattened into an endless plain of glassy dunes before breaking apart again into fissures and gullies. Between those fractures ran a canyon—deep, narrow, and alive with echoes. Every step, every whisper, every heartbeat came back to them in delay, but altered, as if translated through a dream.
Taren stood at the edge, staring down into the canyon's mouth. It shimmered faintly, an invisible heat rising not from temperature but vibration. The compass around his neck pulsed faintly in rhythm with the hum beneath the ground.
Seren stepped beside him, adjusting her goggles. "This is it?"
"It's where the compass leads," he said quietly.
Aron crouched, tossing a small metal probe into the depths. It fell silently for several seconds before a distorted echo returned—not of the drop, but of laughter. His laughter.
He stared. "That wasn't me."
Seren frowned. "How deep?"
"Doesn't matter," Taren said. "It's not a canyon. It's a mirror."
They descended slowly, ropes digging into glass that shimmered under the touch. The air grew thicker as they went down, heavy with faint harmonic residue. Every sound they made multiplied, reverberating along unseen walls until the canyon itself seemed to breathe.
Halfway down, Seren halted. "Listen."
They froze.
From below came voices—soft at first, then clearer. Their own voices, repeating words they hadn't spoken yet.
"Seren," one said, matching her tone perfectly, "listen."
The next echo belonged to Taren: "From below came voices."
Aron's voice followed, distorted and hollow: "Their own voices, repeating words they hadn't spoken yet."
Seren muttered a curse. "That's not possible."
Aron grinned nervously. "Apparently, it is."
Taren's gaze stayed fixed downward. The canyon pulsed faintly with light that wasn't reflected sunlight but something deeper, older, like memories trapped in the glass. "Time's folding here," he whispered. "Sound remembers before it happens."
Seren exhaled. "Then let's move carefully. If this place remembers us, I don't want to give it new material."
They reached the bottom after what felt like hours. The canyon floor was smooth, rippled like frozen water. The reflections on its surface weren't still—they shifted slowly, showing blurred outlines of the trio moving slightly out of sync with their real motions.
Aron knelt, setting down the compass. "It's going wild. The readings don't make sense. It's pointing in every direction at once."
Seren walked a slow circle, rifle ready. "Then we stop here. Rest and reassess."
Taren didn't move. He was staring into the glass at his feet. His reflection was smiling.
Not a ghost of a smile, not some trick of the light—his reflection was smiling while his face remained still.
He stepped back sharply. The reflection's grin widened, eyes gleaming faintly with the same blue light that pulsed inside the compass.
"Seren," he said quietly, "don't look down."
Of course, she did. Her own mirrored image was staring up, expressionless but moving a fraction slower than she did. Aron's reflection, by contrast, was blurred, its mouth opening and closing in silent laughter.
"What the hell—"
The canyon trembled. Ripples spread outward across the glass floor, distorting their reflections into waves of color and light. The echoes rose in volume, speaking fragments of their own voices—half-words, broken phrases, unfinished thoughts.
Seren raised her rifle. "We need to move. Now."
Taren picked up the compass. The black sphere within was spinning violently, pulling at invisible currents. "It's resonating with the canyon."
"Can you stop it?" Aron shouted over the rising noise.
Taren hesitated. "I don't think it wants to be stopped."
A burst of sound hit them—pure tone, impossible in volume yet eerily contained. It wasn't loud in the air; it was loud inside them, reverberating through bone and memory.
The reflections changed.
Where once they'd mirrored the trio's movements, now they acted independently, stepping closer to the surface of the glass as though trying to emerge.
Seren fired a warning shot into the air. The sound struck the canyon walls and came back not as a single echo but as a thousand overlapping versions of the same gunfire, each one slightly delayed, like thunder chasing itself.
Aron covered his ears. "They're syncing with us! Whatever's down here—it's us, inverted!"
Taren dropped to his knees beside the compass. The light within it split into two distinct pulses—one steady, one flickering faster, as though two heartbeats were fighting for control.
"Not inverted," he whispered. "Remembered."
The canyon floor cracked, light spilling through the fissures like liquid mercury. From those cracks, voices poured—hundreds of whispers weaving together until they formed sentences.
We are what remains when you leave a moment behind.
Taren felt the words inside his head rather than in his ears. "What are you?" he asked aloud.
The Pattern that listened too closely.
The reflections' faces blurred and merged. Taren's mirrored self stepped closer, hand rising toward the surface of the glass. For a terrifying second, he thought it might breach it entirely.
Seren grabbed his shoulder, dragging him back. "We're leaving. Now!"
The reflections opened their mouths—and screamed.
It was not pain, not rage. It was recognition. The sound hit like a wave of gravity, bending light, crushing the air out of their lungs. The glass beneath their feet fractured, and in the heart of that breaking, Taren saw something — a structure far beneath, vast and coiling like veins made of light.
Then the world snapped.
For an instant, everything reversed. The echoes folded back on themselves, their screams becoming whispers, the cracks sealing as though rewound. When the silence returned, it was absolute again, the canyon calm, the reflections gone.
They stood there trembling, breathing hard.
Aron was the first to speak. "I think I just heard time scream."
Seren lowered her weapon slowly. "It wasn't time. It was us."
Taren still stared at the ground. "The Pattern isn't gone," he said softly. "It's reliving everything we ever gave it. Every word, every sound, every thought. The canyon is a mirror because it can't forget."
Aron wiped sweat from his forehead. "So it's haunted by… us?"
"By memory," Taren said. "By the sound of being alive."
They climbed out in silence. Each echo of their steps felt heavier now, as though each sound had a cost.
When they reached the surface again, the light was fading into evening. The desert around them was no longer still. The glass dunes vibrated faintly, their surfaces rippling with faint patterns of movement — waves that responded to their breathing.
Seren stared out toward the horizon. "Whatever's happening, it's spreading."
Aron nodded grimly. "The mirror effect's bleeding into the surface."
Taren held the compass tightly, its twin pulses still flickering. The fainter one was slowing, merging back into the steadier beat. "The silence is breaking," he murmured.
Seren looked at him. "You think your mother knew this would happen?"
"She knew everything," he said. "But she believed silence could hold it back."
"And you?"
He gazed at the shimmering canyon below, where the light of their echoes still flickered faintly like distant stars. "I think silence is remembering too much."
The wind rose, carrying with it the faintest trace of laughter — not mocking, but tender, the sound of recognition.
And from somewhere far below, faint but distinct, his own voice whispered up through the dunes.
Keep listening.