Dust motes danced in the anemic lamplight, each particle a tiny galaxy swirling within the Aranoa library’s suffocating quiet. Iker de Aranoa ignored them, his gaze fixed on the intricate sigils he’d painstakingly etched into the cold flagstones. Crushed selenite shimmered at the junctions, its ghostly gleam the only clean thing in the room. He muttered the final incantation, the words archaic and guttural, feeling them scratch at his throat like desiccated leaves. “*Aita-Amari, Ekaizaren Errautsa, Isilpekoaren Hostoa…*” His voice was a rasp against the silence, a low hum of power that vibrated in the floorboards. The air grew heavy, smelling of ozone and forgotten things. A shimmering distortion rippled through the space directly across from him. It was a subtle shift at first, like heat haze over a summer road, then it solidified, coalescing into the familiar, ethereal form of Maialen. Her phantasmal outline glowed faintly, a beacon of silver light in the oppressive gloom. She wore the familiar battle-worn leather of her warrior days, though it was now an echo, not substance. Her dark hair, usually a wild storm, lay still around her translucent shoulders. Only her eyes, the color of petrified amber, held a spark of defiant life. “Thought you’d forgotten me, Warden,” Maialen’s voice reached him as a murmur that bypassed his ears and resonated directly in his mind, crisp and clear despite her ghostly state. A faint, almost imperceptible tilt of her head indicated amusement. Iker grunted, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow with the back of a hand smeared with charcoal dust. “Hardly. The day I forget the thorn in my side is the day I truly retire to the Silent Gloom.” He pushed himself to his feet, a creak of old bones echoing the groan of the manor itself. “Such charm. One might almost think you missed me.” “One would be wrong. This ‘Ritual of Echoes’ is a drain, Maialen. More than usual tonight. And you’re just making it worse with your incessant needling.” He gestured vaguely at the swirling motes. “Besides, I’m hardly a Warden anymore, am I? Just the estate’s personal, perpetually disgraced babysitter.” The sarcasm was a shield, thick and impenetrable, designed to deflect any genuine concern. Maialen drifted closer, her non-existent form passing through a stack of brittle scrolls without disturbing a single sheet. The air around her pulsed with a cold energy that made the hairs on Iker’s arms prickle. He felt a habitual ache, a phantom limb sensation for a touch that could never be. “Still stinging from Commander Zuriñe’s decree, I see. Three years, Iker. Surely the sting should have faded to a dull throb by now?” “Some wounds don’t heal. They fester.” He kept his voice flat, but the edge was there, a sharp, bitter reminder of the mission that had gone so wrong, the lives lost, and his subsequent exile to this decaying prison. “Perhaps you should stop picking at it, then,” she mused, her gaze softening, a warmth that belied her incorporeal nature. “You’re here for Nerea. Always have been. This estate, this curse… it’s a burden you carry with honor, even if others can’t see it.” He scoffed. “Honor? I’m practically a ghost myself, bound to these grounds just as you are. Difference is, I still have a pulse, however faint.” Their banter, an established rhythm of sharp words and mutual understanding, was abruptly shattered. A soft shuffle, barely audible over the wind whistling through a broken windowpane, drew Iker’s attention. The library door, which he’d carefully latched, now stood ajar. Nerea. She drifted into the room, her small frame clad in a simple nightgown. Her movement was fluid, dreamlike, her eyes wide open but vacant, glazed with an unnatural, luminous glow. It wasn’t the soft light of a dream, but an inner radiance, pulsing with a faint, unsettling violet hue. Hoarfrost thin as spider silk began to creep up the oak paneling, tracing delicate, crystalline patterns across the dark wood. It wasn't cold to the touch, but a visual manifestation of something unseen, something primordial and hungry. “Nerea?” Iker breathed, his sarcasm suddenly gone, replaced by a cold dread. He moved to intercept her, but she continued her somnambulist progress, her bare feet silent on the flagstones. She stopped directly before the shimmering form of Maialen, her glowing eyes fixed on the warrior spirit. A low, guttural chant escaped Nerea’s lips, a sound too deep, too old for a child. It wasn’t a language Iker recognized from any of his Veil Warden texts, but Maialen flinched, her apparition rippling violently. “*Adar-lili… Azkenekoa…*” Nerea murmured, the syllables ringing with centuries of force. The words were alien, yet hauntingly familiar to Maialen, who gasped, a soundless scream that only Iker could perceive in the depth of his mind. “That’s… that’s my true name,” Maialen choked out, her amber eyes wide with a terror Iker had never seen. “No living soul… no one but the Silent Gloom itself should know that.” Iker stared, aghast. He knew the significance of a true name to a spirit, the power it held, the vulnerability it revealed. How could Nerea possibly know? As Nerea stood there, her small hand slowly rose, clutching something to her chest. It was an ornate, jet-black stone, reflecting the dim lamplight with an unsettling, obsidian sheen. It was shaped like a teardrop, framed by swirling silver filigree that seemed to writhe like tiny serpents. Iker had never seen it before, not among the Aranoa heirlooms, not in any of the estate’s hidden caches. The Azabache Keystone—the name surfaced in his memory from an old archival register of cursed relics. The stone began to pulse, a deep, rhythmic throb of dark energy that mirrored Nerea's glowing eyes. The rime intensified, climbing higher, coating the bookshelves in a glittering shroud. The very air grew thick, pressing down on Iker’s lungs. Maialen let out a piercing scream within his thoughts, an agony that tore through his skull. Her form began to flicker, violently, like a dying flame caught in a sudden gale, her silver light dimming, threatening to extinguish completely. Her amber eyes, filled with desperation, locked onto Iker’s. She was fading, being torn apart by an unseen force, her very essence beginning to unravel. The Azabache Keystone pulsed again, brighter this time, a malevolent heart beating in Nerea’s innocent hand, and Maialen screamed, her outline twisting, beginning to violently flicker out of existence.

The Ritual of Echoes