Chapter 21 — Echoes Beneath the Flow (Part 1)
The moon hung heavy over the valley, casting pale ripples of light across the water below. The world was quiet — too quiet — as if the air itself held its breath in anticipation.
Teik stood at the edge of the silent river, his reflection wavering like a ghost in motion. The Flow around him pulsed gently, responding to his thoughts, swirling with faint streaks of silver and blue. He had trained here before dawn, and now as the night returned, the air was still laced with the heat of his cultivation.
Yet, something felt wrong.
A pressure in the air — faint but familiar — prickled at his senses. It wasn't the presence of a beast or another cultivator. It was something far older. Something watching.
Behind him, Ryn approached, boots crunching against the damp soil.
"You sense it too?" he asked quietly.
Teik nodded. "The Flow is disturbed. It's like something's threading through it… looking for me."
Kara and Eira followed moments later, their faces tense, eyes scanning the treeline. Kara drew her weapon — the twin daggers forged from obsidian Flowsteel — while Eira pressed a hand over her pulse, channeling Flow to her senses.
"It's not alive," Eira whispered. "At least, not in the way we understand life. Whatever it is… it remembers you."
Teik turned toward her, eyes narrowing.
"Remembers me?"
"Yes," she said softly. "Like an echo left behind from before you arrived here."
Before he arrived.
The words struck him hard. That other world — the flash of gunfire, the shock of pain, the final exhale before darkness swallowed him — it all came rushing back like waves breaking over the shore. His grip tightened, and for a moment, the Flow around him flared violently.
Ryn stepped back. "Teik! You're losing control—"
"I'm fine," Teik said, though his voice trembled with restraint.
Then the river split.
From the still water rose a figure cloaked in writhing mist — half-formed, half-shadow. The Flow around it warped like oil in flame, bending and twisting. Its voice came out broken, fractured through time itself.
> "He bears the mark of the Mysterious…"
Eira gasped. "That name—"
Kara gritted her teeth. "We shouldn't even know that name."
Teik's expression darkened. "Then stop speaking it."
The shadow moved closer, its steps soundless over the river's surface. "You were not meant to cross between worlds, Teik Drayden. The Mysterious left a gate open — and now, the old world stirs."
The ground shook beneath them, Flow bursting upward like fire and frost colliding. Teik's companions braced themselves as he raised his hand, silver strands of Flow spinning into his palm.
"I don't care what it stirs," he said coldly. "If the past wants me — it'll have to fight to take me back."
With a roar, he struck forward. Flow flared like lightning, colliding with the phantom's form. The valley erupted in light and sound — and in that instant, Teik saw flashes of another life: glass buildings, metal roads, and the echo of a name he hadn't heard in years.
His own.
When the blast settled, the phantom was gone — but a single symbol remained scorched into the riverbank: a circle split by three lines, pulsing faintly with Flow.
Eira crouched near it, whispering, "That's a seal mark… not of this realm."
Teik stared at it in silence. His hands trembled, not from exhaustion, but from what he now understood.
The past wasn't gone.
It was calling.