For days, I told myself it was just fatigue.
The mind playing tricks.
A side-effect of the nights spent rebuilding river barriers, the mornings spent training, the afternoons spent watching my children transform into something new. But deep down, I knew. Something inside me was… waking, and it frightened me more than anything Eden had done before.
It began quietly. A flicker in the corner of my eye while stacking wood beams. A faint line of light crawling across a stone. Atremor in the soil as though the earth exhaled beneath my feet. By the end of the week, it was no longer subtle. The world… cracked. Not physically, not in any way the others could see. But in my sight, reality had hairline fractures running through everything.
When I moved my hand through the air, light trailed from my fingers like molten threads. When I walked the village paths, the ground beneath glowed faintly, revealing memories of footsteps long gone. When I blinked, the trees around me breathed, trunks expanding and contracting as though inhaling time itself.
I hid it as long as I could. But hiding a breaking mind is like trying to catch water with a sieve. It slips through.
One night, I woke to silence. Not the usual hush of sleeping villagers or the murmuring spirits drifting through the grove. No. This was absolute. A suffocating, unnatural silence, heavy and dense, like the universe was holding its breath.
I sat up, heart racing. Then I saw it. Across the ceiling of my shelter, across my hands, across everything — were lines of starlight, thin and pulsing. They crawled like veins across the world, connecting object to object, life to life. When I moved my hand, the lines rippled. My breath caught. Then the walls dissolved.
Not literally, but in my mind, they vanished, replaced by a vast darkness filled with floating, glowing fragments. I saw memories that weren't mine flashes of color, sound, voice, earth, fire, stars. I screamed. Or thought I did.
The world snapped back like a slingshot returning to rest. I was sweating, trembling, gasping for air. Lyra woke first. Then Orion.
"Dad?" Lyra whispered, her hand on my arm. "You're shaking."
I couldn't answer. How could I tell them I saw the world remembering itself? How could I tell them reality was bending like soft metal? How could I tell them I was coming apart? I stumbled out into the night, desperate to breathe air that didn't taste of light.
Mara found me. Not by accident. As though she had been waiting. She took my hand and guided me, silently, steadily, into the Spirit Grove.
Even in darkness, the Grove glowed faintly, its vines shimmering with silver luminescence. Wisps floated like fireflies, leaving trails of soft gold in the air. The trees whispered in languages beyond sound. It was the most beautiful place in Karura Haven, and in that moment, it looked terrifying, everything was too alive.
The ground pulsed under me, each heartbeat syncing with my own. The trees bent toward me like curious witnesses. The air vibrated against my skin with unspoken truths. I collapsed to my knees. "Make it stop," I breathed. "Please, Mara. Make it stop."
She knelt beside me, calm as the dawn. "It will not stop," she said softly. "Not anymore."
"I'm losing my mind."
"No," she whispered. "You're finding your gift."
My laugh broke in the air — jagged, frightened. "This is not a gift."
"Yes, Kailen," she said. "It is." She touched my eyelids with two fingers, and the world stilled. "Tell me what you see."
I swallowed hard. "Everything. Too much. The past like it's written on every surface. The air moving like water. The ground humming like a… like a memory. And the stars…" My voice cracked. "The stars are rearranging themselves."
She nodded, not surprised. "You are an Echo-binder." The words sank into me like they'd been waiting. But I didn't understand.
"What does that mean?"
Mara inhaled slowly, deeply, the kind of breath that precedes ancient truth. "When the Rebirth storm touched this world, it did not only transform matter and life. It awakened something older. The Echo." She gestured to the glowing trees. "To life's memory."
I frowned. "Life remembers?"
"Everything remembers," Mara said. "Stone. Flame. Breath. The motion of rivers. The dying words of stars. The Echo is the sum of all that has ever been." She cupped her hand, and the air above her palm shimmered, fragments of sound, color, whispered memory. "And you," she said quietly, "are bound to it."
The lines of light I had been seeing pulsed in agreement. I shook my head. "I never asked for this."
Mara's eyes softened. "Gifts are rarely asked for. But they come when the world needs them."
"Why me?"
"Because you listen. Even when you think you aren't."
The Grove glowed brighter, vines shifting like living script. My heart pounded.
"I can't control it."
"You will. But first…" She looked toward the river, where the reflection of the stars shimmered unnaturally. "…you must meet her."
"Her?"
Mara nodded. "The Oracle Child."
We found her standing at the edge of the river where the water turned still and mirror-bright , a perfect circle reflecting constellations that didn't match the sky above.
A little girl. Barefoot. Pale hair drifting around her like strands of moonlight. Eyes glowing with galaxies, not pupils. She turned as if she'd been waiting for centuries. "You finally woke up," she said in a voice both young and ancient.
My blood ran cold. Mara bowed her head slightly, reverence, not fear. I stepped forward, hesitant. "Who are you?"
She smiled gently. "l am… Gaias child, her love. Born of the Eden storm." Her words thrummed like the plucked string of the universe.
"Are you human?" I asked.
"I am what humans become when the world touches them too deeply."
Her feet hovered a breath above the mirrored surface. Each step she took rippled outward, distorting stars.
"You hear the Echo," she said to me. "But you don't understand it yet."
"I don't understand anything."
She giggled, but it was the kind of giggle that carried the weight of supernovas. I felt suddenly small.
"Kailen," she said, "you are an Echo-binder… but that title has been given to others before you."
I blinked. "There were others?"
"Yes. In ancient ages. When the world was still learning how to breathe." She looked into the water as visions danced beneath her. "They listened to the memory of the earth. And the earth listened back."
She reached toward me. When her hand touched mine, the world expanded. I saw mountains forming, oceans cooling, creatures rising from dust, civilizations blossoming and burning, stars being born and dying in waves of color, the Rebirth storm crackling through reality like a pulse of living intention.
And then… Karura Haven. Not as it was. As it would be, a beacon, a target, a wound, a light. I staggered, falling to one knee as the vision tore away. The Oracle watched me with sad, knowing eyes.
"You feel it now," she whispered. "The weave. The weight. The truth."
"What truth?" I rasped.
"That there is no future without the past," she said. "And no evolution without sacrifice."
My breath trembled. "Why show me all this?"
Her expression darkened, a shadow passing over a star, "Because the world is listening to you," she said. "And the world is afraid."
She stepped back toward the mirrored river. The stars reflected beneath her feet began to distort — as though something heavy pressed against the sky. Something approaching. "The shadows are moving," she said. "The ones born of greed and hunger." Her voice lost its childish tone entirely. "They seek the children of the Haven. They seek the power of the Echo. They seek you."
My stomach dropped. "Who?" I whispered.
The Oracle's eyes flared like two small suns. "HelixCorp." The river shuddered, stars rippled. Her final words echoed through me long after she vanished into light, "They are coming."