The air had teeth.
That was how Olyra described it as the group descended into the hollow basin known as the Clasp. The sun—if it could be called that—was little more than a crack of molten red in the ceiling of the sky. Shadows stretched unnaturally long. Even Mimus, whose Echo had grown sharper with each trial, felt his thoughts growing colder.
They weren't alone.
The Harrowers had arrived.
Rumors had circled since the first Tower Trial. Even Caldrin, who rarely indulged myth, spoke of them with a wary tongue. They were not Resonants. They didn't carry thrones. They didn't serve Houses. The Harrowers were something older—an answer the Curators had written before the question existed.
They came when someone got too close to the truth.
Mimus didn't speak of Vesyr's glyph. Nor of the dreams. Not yet.
But he felt the reason for their coming tightening around his spine.
---
"They hunt in threes," Ilyan said quietly, crouched beside a jagged ridge. "One to break the body. One to bleed the Echo. One to bind what's left."
"And how do we kill them?" Rhesk asked.
"We don't," said Neren. "We outlast them."
Olyra stood with her blade of whistling air drawn, her white eyes narrowed. "We split. Two groups. Confuse their tracking."
Mimus shook his head. "No. They want me."
"Exactly," Caldrin said, appearing from the fog, voice hard. "And we're not letting them have you."
"But they're not here to take me," Mimus said slowly, something clicking into place. "They're here to take what I've touched. Anyone who's carried Vesyr's name. Anyone who remembers her."
Ilyan froze. "Then we're all targets."
"Yes."
Mimus turned. The Clasp was a maze of collapsed ruins and bone-sunk pillars, carved with the names of forgotten factions. A perfect arena. And the Curators had chosen it well.
"We fight. Together."
---
They came at dusk.
Three shapes stepped into the basin, wrapped in Echo-ward robes that peeled the air around them. Their faces were covered in glass masks that reflected nothing but the viewer's fear.
The first Harrower was tall and thin, with six arms, each holding a different weapon—a staff, a chain, a chisel, a flute, a broken sword, and a mirror. Each movement it made fractured the air.
The second was armored in silence, its footsteps untraceable, its presence removed from Echo entirely. Even Mimus couldn't feel it until it moved, like a thought he hadn't thought yet.
The third was small. Childlike. Barefoot. It wept constantly, and where its tears fell, the ground forgot how to hold shape. Even time rippled slightly in its wake.
"Don't look at the child," Ilyan whispered. "Its grief carries weight."
Rhesk charged first, hammer cracking into the six-armed Harrower. It folded, then reformed, each arm shifting rhythm mid-motion. Olyra danced into the silent one's path, spinning her Echo into a ripple of wind-slice wards. Neren flanked the child, flames circling him like orbiting moons.
The child stood untouched, weeping. And Mimus… felt his memories bend.
He staggered.
Caldrin caught him. "Stay here. You're not ready."
"No."
He stepped forward.
He drew the memory of Vesyr—not her voice, not her death, but her resistance. The moment she chose to be forgotten, not because she had no value, but because value cannot be measured in memory alone.
His blade formed, heavy with that truth. Not just a weapon. A declaration.
The Harrower-child turned.
Its eyes were galaxies collapsed inward. It opened its mouth—
—and Mimus struck first.
The world bent.
Echo screamed. The Harrower recoiled, its grief cracking. For the first time, its sobbing paused. A fragment of silence.
Olyra shouted. Ilyan flared. Caldrin joined the fray, weaving memory like chainmail. Neren unleashed a wave of fire that curved midair to avoid touching anything living.
Rhesk shouted in defiance, cracking the ground beneath the tall Harrower. The mirror it carried shattered. And something inside it screamed—not aloud, but through the Echo.
The battle lasted longer than any trial.
The terrain changed as they fought. The Clasp responded to Echo—walls reformed, pillars grew, memories ruptured under pressure. Mimus saw flashes of his past between each blow: the crumbling gates of Uzelith, the mark beneath the well, the boy with the broken spear.
The Harrowers didn't fight to kill.
They fought to erase.
Mimus realized that only when the child-Harrower touched Caldrin's arm—and her Echo flickered.
For a moment, she forgot who she was.
He lunged, his blade flaring with Vesyr's sigil, and slashed downward. Not at the Harrower's body.
But at its intention.
The wound that opened did not bleed. It leaked names.
The Harrower recoiled.
The others followed Mimus's lead. Rhesk struck with history, Olyra with possibility. Ilyan used contradiction. Caldrin, when she remembered herself again, cut with forgiveness.
And in the end—
One Harrower fell. The silent one scattered like broken thought. The tall one retreated, hands empty.
Only the child remained, kneeling.
Mimus approached it slowly.
It looked up at him.
And for a moment, he saw not grief.
But remorse.
Then it vanished.
---
They regrouped at the mouth of the Clasp.
No one spoke at first. Breathing was enough.
Neren finally broke the silence. "Why didn't it finish us?"
"Because it learned something," Mimus said, blade dimming.
"What?"
"That Vesyr is not a dead name."
He looked to the ash where the child-Harrower had fallen.
"She's echoing through us."
And somewhere, in a room that didn't exist, a Curator cracked.
---
Above them, the sky of Varellen shimmered—not with stars, but with watching.
And for the first time, it blinked.