NOTE: This may not be the final revision, published form may vary.

“What do you mean it will end me?” My voice sounded like a jackhammer rattling through my bones. I watched Kiernan, a sigh escaping him like spent smoke.

“Just that, Malik.” His words were clipped with an academic flourish he probably reserved for explaining arcane theories to undergrads. “You will need to pour enough of your essence into it to break Lucien’s connection to the veil. You. Your Echoborn soul. It will destroy you in the process when you use it against him… You will die, Malik.”

The last words fell, like a tombstone dropping into place. My mind went strangely quiet. Die. Not the kind of temporary inconvenience that usually happened. This was the real deal. The big sleep.

Mira stood at my side, quiet as a lighthouse in this storm. She shifted barely, but I caught it. Her eyes cut between Kiernan and me, there was a question she didn’t dare ask out loud. I didn’t need her to. I already knew what she was thinking, I was thinking it too. There’s got to be another way. There has to be.

Kiernan saw it too. You’d have to be blind not to. The way her shoulders were drawn tight, like a wire pulled to snapping. 

He let out a breath like it hurt coming out. “I wish there was another way, Mira. Gods, I’ve clawed through every theory, every occult text, researched everything to the veil and back again. There’s nothing. Lucien’s change started with Malik. And it ends with him too.”
He looked at me then, like I was already a memory.
“And I’m sorry as hell for that.”

Her eyes, dark and deep as a moonless night, found mine then. In their depths, I saw the unvarnished fear that she wouldn’t allow her lips to utter. It was a familiar fear, one we’d shared in countless close calls, but this time, there was no plan B, no desperate gamble to pull us through. This was just… the end. She didn’t voice the plea that was drowning in her gaze. Instead, she straightened her shoulders, a spark of defiance. “I’m hungry,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady, considering the seismic shift in our reality. “Let’s go eat.”

It was her way. A desperate grab for normalcy in the face of the absurd. A refusal to let the impending darkness consume us before it was truly upon us. I nodded, the gesture feeling strangely foreign, like an actor going through the motions. As we turned to leave, Kiernan’s voice stopped us momentarily. “Talk with Vex. He has answers.”

Answers, huh? Right. As if Vex would have a neatly packaged solution to existential annihilation.

The trail's vines and thorns pricked at us, tearing at our clothes, mirroring the way Kiernan’s words had torn through the fabric of my life.

“You can’t seriously be thinking about this,” Mira said, echoing the snap of a thorny branch as she pushed it aside. I could see the worry etched into her features.

“Mira, I understand you’re concerned.” I sighed, a pathetic understatement. “But we both know, I… we have had a good life.” The words felt like sand grating against my tongue. A good life. A whirlwind of impossible odds, close shaves, and the kind of love that burned brighter than any star. Was it enough to balance the scales against oblivion? “If the cost is my life to save the city, to save you, then I’m resigned to that.”

“Are you, though?” The question was a sharp jab, cutting through the thin veneer of my bravado. She knew me too well. Knew the fear that clawed at my insides, the desperate clinging to every last breath.

I offered a wry, almost imperceptible smile. “No. But you know, brave face and everything… right?” It was a pathetic admission, a plea for understanding, and she saw through it.

“You’re as stubborn as always,” she said, with a weary affection. We rounded a corner, the greasy glow of the diner sign pulling us in.

“I may be,” I conceded, pulling open the diner door, the familiar scent of stale coffee and fried food hitting me. Mira stepped partway in, then paused, turning back to face me, her expression dead serious.

“If you go and get yourself dead,” she whispered, a promise, a threat, and our old joke rolled into one. “And I mean really dead, I will find you in whatever afterlife there is and kill you again myself.”

“I’m sure you will,” I chuckled along with her. 

We slid into a booth and ordered. The silence that fell between us was the kind that only two people who knew each other inside and out could share after a disagreement that cut to the bone. My sandwich tasted like cardboard, the coffee bitter, but I chewed and swallowed, going through the motions, my mind a tempest of swirling thoughts.

Could Kiernan be wrong? He was brilliant, no doubt, but the Echoborn reincarnation was a mystery even to humans and the rigors of science they threw at it. Speculation on his part, as I’d told Mira, a theory born of desperation. Maybe I could take a few more punches. Maybe I’d just get back up, scraped and bruised, but back up nonetheless. The thought was a lifeline, flimsy but real, in the vast ocean of despair.

Finally, Mira broke the quiet. “I’ll be with you to the end, you know that, right?”

My eyes met hers, and in them, I saw not just love, but an unwavering resolve. It was a silent affirmation of everything we were, everything we had built. “Yeah,” I said, finishing off the last bite of my sandwich, pushing the plate away, and motioning to the waitress for the bill. It was a simple word, but it carried a thousand promises.

“We should probably talk to Vex again,” Mira said, adjusting her beret, her practical nature reasserting itself even in the shadow of impending doom. She stood, a slender silhouette against the diner’s grimy window.

Vex’s building that hulking edifice of polished granite and smoked glass loomed before us like a watchful gargoyle. We walked into the plush foyer, the air suddenly full with the scent of lilies and expensive disinfectant. The doorman gave us the evil eye, just like he always did. It was a familiar routine. He saw us as riff-raff, a smudge on the pristine facade of Vex’s eccentric world.

“We’re here to see Vex,” I simply stated.

“I’m sure you are,” he retorted devoid of any genuine emotion. Then, to my immediate irritation, he turned to Mira, completely dismissing me. “However, I am sorry to inform you that Mr. Alderan is out of the city on business.”

“That’s just great,” I mumbled, the words filled with sarcasm. Out of the city. Just when the fate of my soul hung in the balance, Vex decided to play hide-and-seek. “Did he at least say when he would be back?”

The doorman’s lips, thin and bloodless, barely moved. “Neither did he let me know that, nor did he leave a phone number he could be reached at.” He took a perverse pleasure in delivering bad news, I was sure of it.

“Even better,” I grunted, a frustrated sigh escaping me. We turned to leave, the doors of the foyer seeming to mock our fruitless journey.

“However,” the doorman’s voice had an underlying snideness that made my teeth ache. “He did leave a gift addressed to a one, Malik Rune.”

My stride faltered. A gift? From Vex? I turned back, consternation on my face. The doorman, a moment of something almost akin to amusement in his dull eyes, picked up a small, meticulously wrapped package from the polished counter. He held it out, a small, brightly coloured bow perched jauntily on top. He read the tag aloud, his voice dripping with condescension. “‘To RUNEBANE'… how droll.’” He handed it over to me.

“Thanks,” I muttered, taking the package. I turned it over in my hand, walking away from the oppressive grandeur of Vex’s foyer, Mira’s hand finding mine, her fingers intertwining with a comforting squeeze.

We were barely out on the street, the damp pavement reflecting the city’s dull glow, when I tore into the wrapping. It was a notebook. As I flipped through the pages, a curious thought struck me: for all his eccentricities, for all his chaotic energy and scatter-brained pronouncements, Vex’s handwriting was immaculate. A work of art, each letter perfectly formed, each line a masterpiece. It was unsettling.

Back on the first page, the elegant script stared back at me, each word a cold slap to the face: ‘RUNEBANE, if you are reading this, I am most likely dead.’

My mind reeled. Dead? Vex? Gone? What kind of predicament had he gotten himself into? I held my breath, turning the page, braced for another blow.

The next page offered a typical Vexian twist, his infuriating personality shining through the morbid pronouncement: ‘Nah, just kidding, needed to take a little trip, but Kiernan and I discussed at length the sigil you would need to create. First off, sorry about your bad luck and hope you look me up on the other side. Next, I have left detailed instructions in here as to what you need to do. FOLLOW THEM TO THE LETTER.’

A mix of relief and renewed dread washed over me. Vex was alive, but the “bad luck”, my impending death, and the detailed instructions… felt less like a helping hand and more like a carefully laid out map to my own grave. The city curled around us, indifferent to the leather-bound book in my hands.

The last drizzle died like everything eventually does. Inside the office my fingers were already stained with soul ink and my own blood. The lamp threw shadows across the walls that mimicked the chaos in my mind.

Hunched over my desk like a mortician over a corpse, one hand clenched, the other holding the instrument of my demise. This wasn’t some backroom charm you find from a street vendor, cobbled together from the gutter. This was a pure Echo sigil pulled from my very soul itself. I could feel it breathing, pulsing like a second heartbeat trying to outpace the first.

Vex’s voice slipped into my mind like a scalpel: “To the letter, Malik. Every line, every curve, every point of resonance must be perfect. One slip, one deviation, and…Well your dead anyway.”

Vex didn’t trade in guesses, he dealt in absolutes. This was surgery on reality, and the patient was already bleeding out.

Flipping to the next page, my mind wandered. I’d done jobs with worse odds of success. Cracked wards held together by minor gods, walked into demon nests with nothing but brass and bluff. But this was the bill come due.

Lucien had torn open a door, a rift wide enough to drown the city, and Kiernan had handed me the key to slam it shut. Only it needed Echo essence. Mine. Of course.

A laugh scraped its way out of my throat, dry and hollow. Like it belonged to someone already halfway in the ground. The city had a thousand ways to kill you. I’d dodged most. But this one felt earned. A perfect little coda to my life.

I looked down at the sigil; curves like knives, points like teeth. It wanted to bite, and I was dumb enough to feed it. Each stroke had to be fueled by Echo, the stuff that kept me breathing when bullets and blades said I shouldn’t be. The marrow-deep curse that came with being Echoborn.

Now I had to rip it all out. Drain every last drop to fix what Lucien broke. Hell of a thing, going out not in a blaze, but in soul ink.

Every specter I’d ever picked up decided now was the time for a reunion. And then came my own face to greet me, younger, meaner, still thinking there was a way out. There wasn’t. Not this time.

And then there was Mira.

She wasn’t a apparition. Not yet. But if I screwed this up, she’d join the others. She’d die in the fire Lucien was stoking; a tide of blood and screaming and a shattered city. She deserved better. Better than this city. Better than me.

But she had me. And that meant Lucien had to go.

I dipped the quill into my wrist.

The soul ink shimmered at the tip. It hissed when it touched the bracelet, like it knew what it was being used for. I drew. Slow. Careful. Every line a piece of me pulled loose and then bound to the sigil.

The resonance inside me, that endless tune that marked me as Echoborn, started to fade. Like a radio losing signal. Like I was slipping away one frequency at a time.

Good. That meant it was working.

No going back now. No more clever escapes, no more loopholes. This was the end of the line. The final con. I was selling myself for the one thing I couldn’t grift; a shot at redemption.

The sigil took shape. It was beautiful, in the way a loaded gun is. A perfect mirror of what I was about to give up, and what I was trying to save.

Mira.

Let it cost me everything. Just let it be enough.