The ancient rock groaned again, a deep, tearing sound. “Porter, move!” My vision cleared just enough to see it: a fracture line, thin as a hair, snaking across the colossal keystone directly above the Shard. Senja hadn't aimed to destroy the monster, only to displace it. The logic was so simple, so *me*, it almost made me laugh. The Shard, momentarily distracted from its impalement attempt, wavered. It registered the impending collapse not as a threat to itself, but as an obstruction to its target. With a motion too quick to follow, it dissolved into a prism of light, vanishing an instant before the keystone, and a substantial portion of the ceiling, detonated. A roar of falling stone, dust, and displaced air slammed into us. Jalo, still disoriented but reacting on instinct, threw up his glowing hands, forming a chaotic shield of raw power that absorbed the initial impact, though the force still drove us both backward. I tasted grit, sharp and metallic. When the worst of the debris settled, leaving us choked and gasping, a fresh wall of rockfall divided the cavern. Where the Shard had stood, only a smoking crater remained. “Reko! Jalo!” The shouts were muffled, anxious. Senja. I saw her shadow first, then the frantic scramble as her team began clearing a path through the newly formed rubble. They looked like desperate ants, clawing at the stone. Jalo, coughing, pushed himself up, his eyes wide. His power receded, leaving his hands trembling. “Are you… are you alright?” he rasped, looking at me. His concern was a blunt instrument, cutting through my shock. My head throbbed, a steady drumbeat against my skull. I touched my temple, my fingers coming away slick and red. “Just a love tap from a pissed-off ceiling,” I mumbled, already trying to assess the new landscape. The dust was still thick, but I could make out their progress. They were fast, efficient, fuelled by adrenaline and a terrifying urgency. It wasn’t long before a gap appeared in the rockfall, wide enough for a person to squeeze through. Senja was the first through, her face streaked with grime, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her gaze swept over us, relief battling with a familiar edge of accusation. She saw the blood on my temple, the trembling in Jalo’s hands. She saw the destruction. But more importantly, she saw us alive. “What… what happened?” Her voice was low, raw. She didn’t look at the collapsed ceiling, but at me. Always at me. “Your architectural critique was a little aggressive,” I said, wincing as I tried to stand fully upright. My left arm, I realized, was screaming. “My… what?” She stalked closer, her eyes narrowed. “You were just standing there, Vaara. Like a statue. What was that thing?” “The Shard of Absence,” I said, the words tasting like ash. “And it’s hunting me.” Her jaw worked, grinding against the reality of the last few days. Her teammates filtered through the gap, their faces grim, weapons ready. No sign of the Shard. For now. The fragile truce had begun. We found a relatively stable alcove, deep enough to offer some protection from further shifts, and out of sight of the main passage. An Echo-light, salvaged from a pack, cast a weak, sputtering glow, making shadows dance like ghosts. We were trapped again, but this time, together. Jalo sat huddled, his knees drawn up, staring blankly at his hands. Senja, ever pragmatic, was already checking her team for injuries, barking orders for rations and water. “You’re bleeding, Porter,” she stated, her voice devoid of its usual sting, now that her immediate team was accounted for. She knelt beside me, pulling a medical kit from her pack. “Let’s see that arm.” I’d forgotten about the arm. A jagged piece of rock, propelled by the blast, had torn a nasty gash in my forearm. It wasn’t deep enough to be immediately life-threatening, but it was bleeding steadily, and the pain was a dull throb that had been overshadowed by the headache. “It’s nothing,” I said, trying to pull my sleeve down. Too late. The coarse fabric was stuck to the wound. Senja grabbed my arm, her touch surprisingly gentle, and tore the sleeve away with a decisive rip. Her movements froze. Her fingers, still gripping my arm, went stiff. The Echo-light flared yellow, throwing stark relief on my skin. Beneath the fresh, angry gash, a grotesque lattice of old scars crisscrossed my forearm, stretching up towards my shoulder. They were thin, white lines, some jagged, some strangely symmetrical, like glyphs carved into flesh. Not just one or two, but dozens, overlaid and intertwined. The kind of scars you got from prolonged exposure to caustic Labyrinth fluids, from the razor-sharp edges of ancient ruins, from the very pressure of the deeper zones. The kind of scars that spoke of years, decades even, spent in the heart of the great dark. **JOLT 1:** These weren't the minor nicks and scrapes of a Kivi washout. These were the marks of a veteran, a survivor of the deepest, most brutal passages. More than that, they were chillingly familiar. Senja’s stare locked onto my skin, her breath hitching before going completely still. She knew. Every Pathfinder knew the stories, the images in the old archives. These were the exact, distinctive scars borne by the legendary 'Vartija' – the Guardians – the elite Pathfinders who had vanished twenty years ago in the cataclysm that nearly consumed the world, the same cataclysm my first life had ended in. The lazy porter, the washout, had the wounds of dead heroes. Before she could voice the question that hung heavy in the air, Jalo spoke, his voice quiet, trembling. “I’m a fraud.” We both turned to him. He was still staring at his hands, his face pale in the dim light. “That thing… the Shard. I tried. I really tried. But my power… it just made things worse. It was all uncontrolled. If you hadn’t… if Senja hadn’t…” He looked up, his eyes pleading. “You two. You’re the ones saving us. Not me. I’m just… a farm boy. A useless farm boy. Everyone keeps saying I’m special, but I don’t feel it. I feel scared. I feel like… Reko. You always know what to do. You’re the real reason we’re alive. Not me.” His words, delivered with a crushing honesty, landed in the tense silence. Senja, still gripping my scarred arm, looked from Jalo’s distress to my unreadable expression. The pieces were beginning to click for her: the impossible luck, the hidden knowledge, the almost casual competence, now the scars… and Jalo’s desperate, heart-wrenching confession. My carefully constructed apathy, my entire disguise, was crumbling to dust around me. They trusted me, in their own ways, but they didn’t *know* me. And Jalo’s self-doubt, his fragile hope, was a wound I couldn't bear to leave open. **JOLT 2:** I made a choice. It was reckless, dangerous, and would expose me to an unimaginable degree, but it was the only way to solidify the trust I needed to prevent the coming cataclysm. To truly guide Jalo, to truly ally with Senja, they needed to see the truth, or at least a sliver of it. I reached into my coat, my movements slow, deliberate. My fingers closed around the familiar, tarnished brass of the wayfinder. My other hand retrieved the Echoing Lode, the crystallised memory we’d found earlier, the one that recorded final thoughts. “This isn’t just a simple Echo,” I said, my voice low, cutting through the silence. “It’s a resonance crystal. It picks up residual psychic imprints. What you heard before was just the loudest frequency.” I held the Echoing Lode in one hand, the brass casing in the other. Senja watched, her eyes narrowed, suspicion warring with a dawning awe. Jalo looked up, a sudden spark of curiosity momentarily replacing his despair. “But with the right attunement,” I continued, my thumb brushing the needle, feeling its faint, impossible hum, “it can delve deeper. Pick up the weaker signals. The ones time tried to bury.” I pressed the brass rim against the Echoing Lode. A faint, internal whirring began, almost imperceptible. The Echo-light in the alcove dimmed, then flared brighter, then pulsed with an erratic rhythm. The crystal in my hand began to glow, not with the dull light of a common Echo, but with an iridescent, cold luminescence. The air grew dense, sharp with metallic static. “Sometimes,” I said, my voice barely a murmur, “it picks up more than one memory. Sometimes, it picks up the last thoughts of someone who died trying to warn you.” The glowing intensified, a faint, chilling wail beginning to emanate from the crystal. Senja flinched. Jalo gasped. And then, a voice, clearer than anything we’d heard before, filled the small, suffocating alcove. A voice I knew, a voice I had hated for two decades, a voice that had haunted my every cynical dream. A man’s voice, cultured and smooth, yet laced with an undeniable tremor of triumph. It was the voice of my former commander, the man who had ordered my death, the man I had seen in my vision wielding the Shard of Absence. But now, it wasn't just his voice. It was his thoughts, his final, chilling words as he stood over my dying body in my first life. And as it spoke, I saw it in my mind’s eye, clearer than any memory: the face of the Kivi Institute’s Headmaster. His face.

What the Dead Remember