The Echo Between Worlds

The echo came at midnight.

Not a sound, but a ripple—subtle, like a breath held too long or a memory too distant. It slipped through the veil of sleep, threading itself into the dreams of those who had forgotten how to listen.

Eris felt it first.

She sat bolt upright in her bed, her room bathed in the silver glow of the moon. The night was still. Too still. The wind, once ever-present in the mountains of Halveron, had vanished. No owls. No rustling leaves. Not even the ticking of the old gear-clock her father had built into the wall.

Only silence.

And the echo.

Eris stepped out into the cold, bare feet on stone, her long coat flapping behind her. All across the sleeping village, others began to emerge. Faces pale with uncertainty. Eyes lifted toward the sky.

Then, just above the ridge, a crack appeared in the air. Not in the clouds—in the air itself.

Like a tear in fabric.

Like the sky was made of something that could break.

And through it, a soundless hum poured forth. It was neither music nor voice, yet Eris understood it. It spoke in the language of instinct. Of lost things. A language the soul had always known but forgotten how to use.

She whispered to no one, “It’s calling.”

Years ago, before her father vanished, he had whispered wild theories of converging timelines—places where two worlds brushed so close they could share memory, thought, even fate. He called them “echo-points.”

But his maps were torn apart. His notes burned. The Council of Halveron forbade talk of such heresy. They claimed he was mad.

And now, the sky was splitting open.

The next day, the village was hushed. Many claimed it had been a dream. Others denied seeing anything at all. But a few—the ones who heard it—gathered in secret.

Eris, a mechanic’s apprentice named Kael, and an older woman known only as Mira, who’d once served the royal observatory. They called themselves “Listeners.”

“We have one chance,” Mira said, spreading out a wrinkled map her late husband had hidden. “The breach isn’t permanent. These tears only open every few hundred years. But this one is waking up early.”

Kael frowned. “Then what’s on the other side?”

Mira’s eyes darkened. “Not what. Who.”

For days, they prepared. Following signals no one else could detect. Eris had begun to hear more clearly—snatches of thought, images in her mind of cities suspended in glass, trees with glowing roots, and people who looked like her but weren't. People with memories she could almost claim as her own.

At last, the echo-point opened again—larger this time.

It shimmered like liquid crystal, pulsing gently above the hills, just past the ruins of the old observatory. Eris stepped forward, heart pounding.

Kael grabbed her arm. “If we go through, we may not come back.”

Eris nodded. “If we don’t, everything we are may be lost forever.”

The other side was not darkness.

It was light.

Eris found herself in a mirrored world. The same hills, the same sky, but... wrong. Twisted. Empty. Buildings made of humming glass. A city frozen in time. No wind. No breath. But echoes—stronger now—wrapped around her, tugging at her thoughts.

She saw herself, standing in a tower made of vines, speaking to a version of her father who still lived. She saw Kael as a commander, leading ships through space. Mira as a seer, crowned in starlight.

None of it was real—or all of it was.

“This is a memory,” she whispered. “A whole world made of echoes.”

Suddenly, a figure stepped from the light. Human-shaped, but translucent. Its voice was inside her head, like a wave pressing gently against her mind.

“You crossed the Veil. You hear us.”

Eris nodded. “Why now?”

“The worlds are thinning. Too many choices made. Too many silences kept. The balance must return.”

Mira stepped forward. “You mean... you need something from us.”

The figure tilted its head. “Not need. Remind. You have forgotten who you are. This place holds what you lost.”

Eris closed her eyes. The vision of her father came again. This time, he was speaking.

"Find the Anchor. Before it all collapses."

They ran.

The world around them shimmered and fractured as they searched the mirrored city. Walls turned into forests. Roads folded into clouds. The ground beneath them shifted with each memory they walked through.

Then Eris found it: a small, spinning device lodged into the roots of a crystalline tree—a gear-clock identical to the one in her room.

She reached for it. The world shuddered.

The echo boomed, a final pulse of sound so deep it rattled the soul. The mirror began to break.

When Eris awoke, she was in her bed. But something had changed.

The air felt alive again. The wind had returned. The gear-clock ticked once more—but now, it spun backward for exactly one minute each hour.

She smiled.

The world hadn’t just changed.

It remembered.

THE END

Or the beginning... depending on which world you're in.