***Echoes Beyond the Veil***
The Call
It began with the dreams.
Mira first heard them in the hush between waking and sleep—soft voices like wind through a canyon, speaking not in words, but in images. A tower of glass standing on the ocean. A lantern burning beneath a frozen sea. A feather that turned to flame.
The Tree responded too. Its roots pulsed with restless energy, and its leaves shimmered in unfamiliar colors. The orb, now fused with the Tree's heart, beat with a deeper rhythm—one that stirred not just the Balance, but something older.
One morning, Lena approached Mira with a message. "A vision came to me," she said. "From the Between. A shape stirring in its depths… something watching. And waiting."
Elric had already sensed it. His sword, long dormant, had begun to hum again. And Bram, still attuned to the Between, spoke of shadows coalescing in the far North—beyond the Gray Peaks, where the sky was said to end.
"The Balance may be mending," Mira said, "but the world beyond it stirs too."
And so, they prepared once more.
A new journey beckoned—across lands untouched by the old Keepers, where the Between flowed strongest and strangest. There were old names whispered by traveling windcallers—"the Deep Mirror," "the Lantern of No Flame," "the Choir Beneath Ice."
Legends, perhaps.
But Mira knew better.
The Balance had shifted—but it had also awakened something.
Something ancient.
And it was calling her by name.