The Harvest Moon rose like a wound in the sky — swollen, red, and watching.
Verdant Hollow gathered in silence.
The villagers wore robes of ash and crimson, their faces painted with spirals. The stage had been rebuilt. At its center stood the effigy — no longer faceless, but carved in Elian's likeness. Bound in vines. Mouth sewn shut.
Elian stood at the edge of the square, the bone pendant pulsing against his chest. Lira beside him, eyes open now, glowing faintly with silver light.
"They mean to offer you," she said.
He nodded. "I know."
Maerith stepped forward, her voice steady. "The Pact must be renewed. The Echo must be fed."
Elian raised the journal. "It doesn't want flesh. It wants memory. It wants truth."
Maerith's eyes narrowed. "Truth is dangerous."
"Truth is the only way out."
The villagers murmured. Some stepped back. Others clutched their robes tighter.
Elian climbed the stage.
He stood beside the effigy, staring into the crowd. "You've buried children. You've traded names. You've forgotten your own blood."
The Echo stirred.
The soil beneath the square trembled.
Lira stepped forward. "I saw them. All of them. Every child. Every silence. Every lie."
The pendant burned.
The journal fluttered open in Elian's hands. A new line appeared:
> "To break the Pact, one must speak what was buried."
He turned to the effigy.
And he began to speak.
He named them — every child lost to the Echo. Every trade. Every year. He spoke of Maren, of the boy in the fog, of the girl with braids running through ash. He spoke of his mother's bargain, of the memories she gave away, of the silence that followed.
With each name, the soil cracked.
With each truth, the Echo grew louder.
The villagers wept.
Some collapsed.
Some vanished — not in death, but in memory. Their faces blurred. Their names faded. The Echo was reclaiming what had been denied.
Maerith screamed. "You'll destroy us!"
Elian looked at her, calm. "No. I'll make you remember."
The effigy burst into flame.
The sky split open.
The Echo emerged — not as a monster, but as a chorus. A thousand voices, layered and grieving. Children. Mothers. Elders. All speaking at once.
> "We were here."
> "We mattered."
> "We remember."
The village trembled.
The Pact was broken.
And the Echo was free.
But it did not consume.
It sang.
A low, aching song of memory and mourning. Of names once buried. Of truths once denied.
Elian stepped down from the stage, the pendant cold now, the journal blank.
Lira took his hand.
"You did it," she said.
He looked around — at the villagers, at the soil, at the sky.
"No," he whispered. "They did."
---
The Echo's song faded into silence.
Not the hollow silence of before — but something deeper. Reverent. Remembered.
The villagers stood motionless, faces streaked with ash and tears. Some clutched the names Elian had spoken. Others stared at the soil, as if seeing it for the first time.
Maerith knelt beside the broken effigy, her voice barely a whisper. "We thought forgetting would save us."
Elian stepped down from the stage. "It only buried the wound deeper."
The pendant around his neck had stopped pulsing. It was cold now — inert. The journal lay open in his hands, its pages blank. The final line had vanished.
Lira joined him, her eyes no longer glowing, but clear. "The Echo is quiet," she said.
"For now," Elian replied.
They walked through the village together.
The lanterns had gone out. The robes were discarded. The symbols painted on doors had faded. Verdant Hollow looked ordinary again — but it wasn't.
Something had shifted.
Children played in the square, laughing. A woman sang a lullaby Elian recognized — one his mother used to hum, before the forgetting. The soil no longer trembled. The manor no longer breathed.
But the forest remained.
Bone-white trees. Stitched sky. Fog that moved like breath.
Elian stood at its edge.
He could still hear them — the Echo's voices, soft and distant.
> "We were here."
> "We mattered."
> "We remember."
He turned to Lira. "Will they ever stop?"
She shook her head. "Not until we stop listening."
He nodded.
Then stepped into the forest.
Not to forget.
But to remember.
---