Chapter Six: The Memory That Bleeds
Velmyra – Heart of the Dream Groves
The temple was buried in roots.
Deep within the forest's dreaming heart stood a ruin draped in golden vines, pulsing gently as though breathing with the world. Saenril called it The Wellspring of Echoed Truths—a place where Velmyra stored the memories of those it had not yet forgotten.
Omkar stood before the entrance, palms sweating, unsure whether he was ready.
"This place is not a gift," Saenril warned. "What it shows you may wound deeper than any blade."
He nodded and stepped inside.
The air grew cold immediately—not from temperature, but from time itself. Inside the hollowed chamber was a pool of liquid starlight, still and deep. Above it, a single white orb hung, rotating slowly, weeping thin streams of light into the water.
Niv's voice echoed faintly behind him. "Touch the surface. The Weave will choose which memory to reveal."
Omkar knelt and pressed a trembling finger into the water.
The world vanished.
---
He stood on a blood-soaked battlefield.
Not Omkar—Kailash.
But not quite human.
This Kailash was robed in midnight-blue armor lined with sigils that flared with light each time his hands moved. He strode like a god of ruin—each gesture sending blades of dreamfire across the land. Echoes fell around him like ash.
Not just monsters.
People.
Twisted. Corrupted. Former allies perhaps. Bound by the very force he now struggled to understand.
His voice—Kailash's voice—rang in the memory like thunder:
> "Forgive me. I bind you not in hate, but in mercy."
Then he turned—
—and locked eyes with a figure cloaked in thorns.
The Thornwalker.
Their battle was not just physical—it warped the land, bent time, and cracked the sky above.
And then—
Omkar was ripped from the memory.
---
He collapsed backward in the temple, gasping, heart racing.
"Kailash…" he whispered. "I was… I fought him."
Saenril caught him, steadying him. Her eyes were grim. "That memory… It's from Shatterfall. The war that sundered the Old Weave. You were a protector then. One of the Last Anchors."
Omkar stared at his hands, now trembling. "I killed people."
"You saved them," Niv whispered. "But at a cost."
Before any of them could speak further, the air split open.
A scream tore through the trees.
Not just sound—grief given form.
Something stepped through the vent in the grove's edge. Its body was carved from crystal and bone, wrapped in echo-silk armor that shimmered with trapped faces. A hollow helm concealed its head, and its voice rattled like broken glass.
"Kailash. The Thornwalker remembers."
It charged.
—
The battle was chaotic.
Omkar barely had time to raise a shield before the Echo-knight's blade cleaved into the air beside him, leaving behind a scream that burned his ears. Saenril rushed in, twin vine-blades drawn, while Niv danced around the edges, weaving light like a spellcaster painting with sound.
Omkar summoned what little control he had.
His hands burned with unstable Weavefire—too wild, too fast—but he launched it anyway. The blast struck the knight's side, shattering part of its echo-shell, revealing flickering memories beneath: a girl with golden hair, a family, laughter—gone.
Omkar hesitated.
And the knight capitalized.
It slammed into him, sending him flying into the temple's wall. Pain bloomed. Blood spilled. His vision blurred.
But the memory didn't fade.
He saw her face—the girl from the Echo. And for a split second, he remembered her name.
Vaela.
He whispered it.
And the Echo froze.
Omkar stepped forward, pressing his hand to its helm. Not to kill—but to heal.
"I remember you."
Light poured from his palms. Not fire. Not force. Resonance.
The Echo screamed once more—then shattered, not violently, but softly, like breaking glass submerged in water.
Silence returned to the grove.
—
Saenril exhaled slowly. "That… was not luck."
"No," Omkar said, still dazed. "That was remembrance."
Niv knelt beside the broken pieces of the knight. "The Thornwalker binds them by pain. But you… you free them with memory."
For the first time, Omkar didn't feel like an outsider.
He felt like someone returning.
Something that was connecting him to this place.
—-
Somewhere,
Far beyond Velmyra, the Thornwalker's fury burned through a hundred dreaming worlds.