The world folded in on itself like paper catching fire.

Doran didn’t step into the Echo—she was pulled. The beacon’s red light speared through the night sky, then fractured, bending inward, swallowing her outline in a wash of crimson and gold. Her body vanished, but her awareness didn’t die; it dissolved, streaming upward like smoke through a keyhole.

For a moment, there was nothing but static.

Then—sound.

A low, resonant hum that grew into the shape of voices, hundreds of them, ...