Elara's body tensed, every instinct screaming at her to move, to run, to fight—but she was frozen beneath the weight of that gaze. The shadowed figure on the altar had no true face, only those hollow, glowing eyes that burned like dying embers.
"I remember you."
The voice was inside her mind, a whisper coiling through the cracks of her memories. It was not the first time she had heard it. A name hovered on the edge of her thoughts, just out of reach.
The cultists had gone deathly silent. They, too, were watching, waiting. This was no ordinary summoning; they had called something beyond their control. Elara could see it in the way their bodies stiffened, the way their hands trembled beneath their robes.
The air grew thick, as if the ruins themselves were holding their breath.
Elara took a step back.
The shadow moved.
Not in the way a person would. It shifted, unraveled, its edges twisting like smoke before reforming. Then, as if bound by unseen strings, it took a single, deliberate step forward.
The cultists staggered back. One of them, the tallest, threw back his hood, revealing a gaunt face lined with old scars. His eyes were dark pools of reverence and fear.
"You have answered the call, oh Echo of the Abyss," he intoned, his voice trembling at the edges. "We offer this world to you."
Elara's breath caught.
Echo.
That word again. It gnawed at her, at the fragments of memories buried deep in her soul. The visions of past lives, the flickering faces, the pain and fire and endless cycle—was this thing the key?
The shadow did not respond to the cultist. It only continued to watch her.
It knows me.
A sharp movement to her left.
Elara spun just in time to see the second figure—the one hidden in the ruins—step forward. Their hood fell away, revealing a man with piercing green eyes and dark hair streaked with silver. He was armed, a blade resting easily in his grip, but his stance was not one of immediate attack.
"Elara," he said, his voice low, urgent.
She stiffened.
Not because he had spoken her name. But because she knew that voice.
A memory, sharp and painful, slammed into her.
A battlefield. Rain and blood. The same green eyes staring at her from across the ruins of a burning city. A name forming on her lips before a blade found her chest—
Elara staggered, the world tilting.
The man took a step toward her. "We don't have much time," he said. "If you don't stop this now, you'll die again. And this time, you might not come back."
The shadow turned to him.
The glowing eyes narrowed.
Then, in a voice that sent ice through Elara's veins, it whispered:
"You."
And the ruins exploded into chaos.