The forest smelled of damp earth and danger. Antoni was on his knees among us, his eyes wide with fear as James held him and Sara's magic immobilized him.
"Don't kill me! I beg you!" he whimpered, his voice broken.
My fingers trembled around the hilt of my sword. The memory of the diary burned in my mind: "Antoni disappears… the forest resets… we cannot trust." This guy had been leading us straight into a trap, brainwashing us day after day.
"Why?" I snapped, the tip of my sword an inch from his throat. "Who sent you?"
"I don't know!" he whined. "I woke up here months ago! The voices… the voices tell me what to do, where to go… but I don't remember who put them there!"
James looked at me, uncertain. "He could be telling the truth, Azrael. A mind-control curse, something like that…"
"Or he could be lying to make us lower our guard," Sara grumbled, but her containment spell wavered a bit. Her exhaustion was showing.
Antoni took a deep breath, as if gathering courage. "There… there is a way to know. In the center of the forest. A place the voices order me to avoid. There lies 'The Echo.' They say it… reflects the truth of the soul. If you take me there, you will see what I am. What I truly am."
I lowered my sword a millimeter. It was too convenient. A last-ditch attempt to lead us into a worse trap. But… what if it was true? Killing someone who could be another victim…
"If it's a trap, I'll kill you right there," I said, with a coldness I didn't even recognize in myself.
We let him go. Antoni rubbed his wrists, marked by Sara's magic. He guided us in silence, but this time with James and Sara flanking him, watchful. Every crack of a branch made me jump. Every shadow seemed to move.
We reached a clearing where nothing grew. Only gray earth and, in the center, a pool of perfectly still water, so black it seemed to swallow the light.
"The Echo," Antoni whispered.
He approached the edge, trembling like a leaf. "If I look… I will see the truth. And you will too."
Before we could stop him, he leaned over and looked.
The black water did not show his reflection. Instead, it boiled. Grotesque images surged forth: Antoni in cultist robes, sealing pacts with faceless things. Antoni sleeping while shadows whispered in his ear. Antoni smiling as he led us to a cliff's edge.
"He's a traitor!" James shouted, pulling out a potion.
But then, the image in the water changed. It showed another Antoni, simultaneously. This one was crying, trapped in a cell within his own mind, pounding against the walls of his skull. Screaming silently while the cultist version of him controlled his body like a puppet.
There were two. The prisoner and the jailer, in the same flesh.
The flesh-and-blood Antoni fell to his knees, a wrenching scream tearing from his throat. "THAT IS NOT ME!" he howled, clawing at his face. "HE IS INSIDE MY HEAD! GET HIM OUT!"
From the pool of black water, a figure began to rise, made of liquid shadow and the echoes of his nightmares. It had Antoni's face, but with a cruel, empty smile.
"Finally," the thing said in Antoni's voice, but distorted. "The host rebelled. How boring. But I have four other bodies to try out."
It looked directly at Sara, and its eyes gleamed with a hungry interest.
Now I understood. We weren't going to kill Antoni.
We were going to have to save him.