Requiem of the Awakened

The world hadn't caught its breath since Hollow Market burned.

Even before the ashes cooled, rumors had turned to panic. Guild-run radio stations denied the footage. Private networks went dark. Informants disappeared. But none of it mattered.

Because the whispers always found a way through.

And they carried a single name: Malik Graves.

Across the ocean, in the fractured spires of Lysirath, an ancient being stirred.

Wrapped in stone and vines, it blinked for the first time in centuries. Not because it sensed a threat.

Because it sensed competition.

Malik sat beneath the remains of the warehouse, surrounded by the burned-out husks of failed soulforges and cracked summoning stones.

He wasn't meditating.

He was remembering.

The fire in his veins had calmed, but the storm behind his eyes hadn't faded. If anything, it was getting louder. Memory flashes came sharper now. Not dreams—lessons.

He saw himself in an obsidian hall, crowned in bone, commanding an army of the Forgotten. He remembered the feel of a scythe too large for any human hand, inscribed in three languages lost to time. He remembered battles that scarred continents.

But he also remembered a question he'd asked just before death: "Is this all there is?"

Now he was alive again.

And the question still echoed.

Naomi arrived without announcement, her coat dusted with ash. "You're on the radar now."

"I always was," Malik said. "Now they're admitting it."

She tossed him a data scroll.

He caught it, scanned the runes.

What he saw made him pause.

A bounty.

Tier Black.

Issued by the United Guild Authority.

Marked for indefinite apprehension.

Dead or soulbound.

"They don't usually do that," Naomi said.

"No," Malik replied, gaze narrowing. "They don't."

She took a seat beside him. "You made them look weak."

"No," he said again, more quietly. "I made them look obsolete."

A cold wind blew through the skeletal structure, rustling broken sigil plates and echo-sensitive filament cables. Malik closed the scroll and tossed it into the fire pit, watching the data crystal fracture and disintegrate.

From the shadows, Elaris emerged, her blades sheathed but aura taut.

"Guilds are losing control," she said. "But they won't fight fair."

"They never did," Malik replied. "Now they'll escalate."

"They already have."

Elaris held up a secondary scroll—this one marked with a blood-red sigil belonging to a faction Malik hadn't heard from in centuries.

"The Carrion Pact?" he asked.

Elaris nodded. "They've resurfaced."

Malik took the scroll and unrolled it, reading the ancient tongue without hesitation. A low hum settled into his bones as his eyes skimmed the lines.

"They want a meeting?" he murmured.

Naomi arched a brow. "Who the hell are they?"

"Cultivators," Malik said. "From before Guilds. Older than regulations, older than classifications. They follow the old principles of resonance and sacrifice. They were... extinct."

"Clearly not," Elaris added.

"They should've stayed that way," Malik said darkly.

Two nights later, they met in a cratered valley six miles east of New Seattle.

No light.

No noise.

Just ruins and the ghosts of cities that once stood tall.

Malik stood at the edge of the meeting circle, Anacaona at his back, Naomi and Elaris just out of view. Obsidian prowled the perimeter unseen.

The air pulsed.

Then they arrived.

Six of them.

Clad in funeral garb stitched from nightmare silk, their faces hidden behind visors etched with inverted runes.

They said nothing at first.

The one in the center stepped forward, holding no weapon but radiating Echo like an avalanche.

"You are the Gravewalker," the figure said.

Malik didn't respond.

"You wear the weight of a forgotten throne."

Still, Malik said nothing.

"We are the Carrion Pact. We served the old bones. We drank from the Font of Finality. We remember what came before."

Malik finally spoke. "Then you know why I burned it down."

The air stilled.

The Pact shifted uneasily.

"You are not the same," the lead voice said.

"No," Malik said. "I'm worse."

There was silence.

Then laughter.

Low. Metallic. Echo-distorted.

"Good," the figure said. "We came to offer a warning, not a challenge."

"Say it," Malik demanded.

"The Guilds fear you. But they are not your only enemy."

"Let me guess," Malik replied. "The Unknowns?"

The figure didn't answer directly.

Instead, he handed Malik a relic—a bone shard wrapped in silver thread.

"When you see the signs," he said, "you'll know what to do."

"What signs?" Malik pressed.

The figure pointed at the sky.

And then vanished.

So did the rest.

Not with magic.

Not with power.

Just gone.

Like they had never been there at all.

Back in the city, Malik stood on the roof of an abandoned hotel, wind whipping through his cloak.

The shard pulsed faintly in his hand.

Anacaona appeared beside him. "They fear you more than they understand you."

"They should," Malik said.

"But do you understand what you're becoming?"

He didn't answer.

Instead, he asked, "What happens when I remember everything?"

She met his gaze.

"You either ascend…"

"…or burn," he finished.

That night, a tear in the sky opened over the Eastern Reach.

For only a second.

But those who felt it woke up screaming.

It was the first echoquake in three hundred years.

And it bore his signature.

Malik Graves.

In the upper floors of a floating Guild citadel, twelve men and women convened in silence.

A chair sat empty.

The Sovereign Seat.

No one had sat in it for two decades.

One man, cloaked in deep indigo robes, stared at a holographic projection of Malik's fight against Talon Sigma.

"Unacceptable," he whispered.

Another nodded. "He destabilizes protocols wherever he walks."

"Then we kill him," a third offered.

"Or use him," said a fourth.

"We tried that," snapped the first. "He killed the recruiter and burned the dossier."

Then came the oldest voice in the room.

Worn. Fractured.

"Sheathed power is harder to destroy than drawn blades," the voice croaked. "If you strike him before he breaks his own limits, you might survive it."

"And if we wait?"

"Then he becomes what he was before," the elder whispered, "and this time… no one will seal him."

Meanwhile, Malik stood at the edge of a shattered temple deep in the Veil Wastes.

He didn't know why his feet brought him here.

Only that something called.

Inside, carvings older than time whispered in tongues lost to every living race.

He stepped forward.

The ground pulsed beneath him.

The walls glowed.

And then—

A scream tore through the chamber.

Not his.

Not from the world.

But from deep, deep beneath the layers of reality.

Something ancient.

And angry.

Malik fell to his knees, gripping his chest.

Visions exploded behind his eyes.

A throne room in ruin. His own body pierced with a thousand spears. His soul ripped and bound and hidden. Something stolen. Something sealed.

His fourth summon.

Not forgotten.

Not lost.

Trapped.

Somewhere beyond.

Waiting for him.

Screaming for release.

When he opened his eyes, the temple was gone.

The Veil Wastes had vanished.

He was on a mountain peak he didn't recognize, snow swirling around him.

Anacaona stood by his side.

"You blacked out," she said. "Echo-walked across three planes."

"I saw it," he muttered. "The prison. The fourth."

She said nothing, just nodded.

He stood, slower than usual.

More tired.

More… aware.

"I need to go back," he said.

"You're not ready," she replied.

"I wasn't ready the first time either."

As they descended the mountain, the world shifted again.

News of the echoquake spread.

Sovereign-class agents began to move.

The Guild mobilized its Spectral Division.

The Unknowns… watched.

And across distant skies, Malik's symbol—a scythe wrapped in bone flame—etched itself into the aurora.

For the first time in a thousand years…

The world remembered fear.