It started subtly.
Her glyphs — once soft, shifting spirals — began to glow longer between pulses.
Her steps grew slower, more deliberate.
Her silence… deepened.
Kael noticed first.
He said nothing.
He watched as she sat a little farther from the fire each night.
Listened as her breathing changed — not strained, not tired.
Just different.
Then came the first time she didn't answer when someone asked her name.
It was Maie, sitting beside her with a blanket and a drawing of a spiral staircase.
"What should I call you today?" she'd asked, like always.
Echo blinked.
And said:
"I think I'm almost done being called."
That night, Kael sat beside her at the edge of the field.
They didn't speak for a long time.
Then she said:
"Do you feel it?"
He nodded.
"The story's changing again."
Echo exhaled slowly.
"It's not the field this time."
"It's me."
Tama was the next to notice.
She found Echo near the Memory Tree, staring at her reflection in the puddle below the roots.
The glyphs shimmered across her fur — not in words, but fragments.
Half-runes.
Echo said:
"I don't remember which ones are mine anymore."
Tama placed a hand on her back.
"You don't need to carry them now."
Echo looked at her with eyes that had once held riddles.
Now they only held truth:
"Then what am I?"
Kael called a gathering that night — not formal, not urgent.
Just a shared fire, a circle, and Echo in the center.
Sera brought herbs.
Maie brought three stones and a question.
Tama brought a song — no lyrics, only a melody that bent gently at the edges, like breath caught in memory.
Kael waited for Echo to speak.
She did.
"I'm not fading."
"I'm becoming."
Someone asked what that meant.
Echo smiled, her glyphs pulsing slowly.
"I was born to guide someone."
"And I have."
She turned to Kael.
He didn't look away.
"I was not meant to be forever."
"I was meant to walk beside."
Tama wept silently.
Maie held her drawing tighter.
Sera closed her journal.
Kael moved beside her.
"You don't have to go," he whispered.
Echo tilted her head.
"Not gone."
"Just… elsewhere."
"I think the field needs a part of me to stay."
"And a part of me… to see what's next."
That night, the field pulsed.
Low and deep — not a quake, not a fear.
A recognition.
Echo lay by the fire, her glyphs flickering like fireflies.
Kael stayed beside her, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder.
She spoke one last time before sleep:
"You don't need a guide anymore."
"You are the path."
At dawn, she was gone.
Not vanished.
Not dead.
Just not there.
But in her place, where she had lain:
A spiral carved into the soil, glowing faintly.
Beneath it, a seed — not plant, not glyph, not artifact.
Something new.
Kael picked it up.
Held it in his hand.
It pulsed once.
Then settled.
The seed was placed in the Listening Archive.
Sera labeled it only with a single word:
"Echo."
Tama wrapped it in woven thread.
Maie sat by it each evening, whispering stories to it.
Kael… just returned to the fire each night and left space beside him.
That evening, he wrote:
She didn't end.
She translated.
Into the kind of presence that no longer needs to speak to be heard.
And when the story shifts again, I'll know where the echo lives.