ALORA: HALL OF ECHOES
Prologue
THE STORM CLAWED AT THE WINDOWS: desperate, violent. Wind howled through the eaves, and rain lashed the old glass in relentless torrents. Beyond the tall casement panes of the study, lightning fractured the clouds into veins of white fire, each strike followed by thunder that rolled slow and heavy, like a giant fumbling through the dark.Inside, the orange glow of an ancient brass lantern cast its gentle light across a cluttered desk. Leather-bound journals lay open beside a half-drunk cup of tea, long gone cold. The fire in the hearth had burnt low, its embers pulsing red beneath a crown of ash.Elias sat in a deep armchair, the lantern resting on the side table beside him. He gripped its handle absently with his left hand, scarred fingers curled around the brass, and stared into the flames. His right hand held a folded length of twine. Frayed at one end. Familiar.There was something about this dream. Even before it began, he could feel it pressing against the inside of his chest. Not fear. Not pain. Just absence. A hollow ache, as if something vital had already slipped loose.He had walked dreams for thirty years, slipping between sleep and fog to find the tethered lost. The calling passed to him with the death of his father: a quiet inheritance, bound by duty more than choice. Now, he was the last. The only one left. Sometimes, he wondered who would carry the lantern when he was gone.More and more, he wasn’t sure anyone would. Lately, he suspected even he might outlive the dream.He reached for the small glass bottle on the table, uncapped it, and drank a single sip. Bitter tincture, resin and root, steeped in memory. The old ritual of return, an anchor glowing low in his stomach.He tied one end of the twine to the lantern’s handle, looping the other to his belt.The thunder outside rolled closer, louder now, but inside, the world had begun to still. The wind thinned to a whisper. The fire dulled. His breathing slowed as the tincture took hold.The lantern flickered, then, without moving from the chair, Elias closed his eyes and the world fell away.Only the lantern remained, its orange flame shifting now to purple: the colour of passage, of thinning boundaries.He stood, surrounded by silence as the thick grey fog coalesced around him. He focused, willing himself downward through the twilight. The phantom flame of the lantern stayed behind. A new one burnt in its place; now the vibrant green that gave passage.The hall had formed: a mindscape of fractured corridors and half-formed paths. Mirrors twitched as if unsure what to reflect. Some showed his face clearly, others glitched or flashed fragments of strangers. The memory of structure lingered, but the dream was fraying.The lantern pulsed, pushing back the layers of other memories, and the maze uncoiled. The mirrors steadied and formed a familiar path. A door appeared ahead, not one of the soft, fog-like portals, but ancient stone. Moss clung to its surface, unchanging and unresponsive to touch.He stepped forward and let the current take him. Behind him, the phantom of the green flame flared, then vanished, left to dissipate in the hall. The lantern now burnt with a white flame, piercing and still. The tether was near.The pull took him forward. To the anchor. To his brother.He emerged into a field on the edge of a dream village, but the world rippled like a thread unravelling. It was too far from the Spire, and too much had been forgotten. Buildings shifted without logic. Windows climbed walls and vanished, doorways blinked in and out, entire structures leaned at odd angles before dissolving. It was no longer a place, just a memory trying to hold its shape with no one left to remember it.Far in the distance, barely visible through the fog, the twisted spire rose toward the sky, still tall, but decaying. Its structure bent slightly, as though straining beneath the weight of forgotten years. Its peak disappeared into the deep purple above.The sky above Elias flickered between dusky violet and dawnlight blue. Time was uncertain here. It didn’t hold the eternal twilight of Somn. This realm was memory-bound to something fading. Even the ground beneath his boots felt wrong. Too thin. Too quiet.A voice echoed from beside him. Quiet, but unmistakable."You found me. Again."A young man stepped forward. Square jaw. Sandy hair. Unchanged. Just as he had been thirty-five years ago. His form shimmered faintly at the edges, like light through water. He looked across the shifting village, then turned to Elias with a tender smile.The older man froze. That familiar ache of grief rose behind his ribs like a tide."This place… it’s only still here because of you," the young man said softly, eyes scanning the shifting ruin. "By what you remember. It wouldn’t have held at all if it was just me."Elias didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The fog. The flickering buildings. The weight in his chest."It’s falling apart… and so am I." His brother’s voice was steady, but quiet. "It’s been time for a long while. You know that. You’ve done more than anyone could. But I can’t let you keep holding this together, not for me.""There has to be a way," Elias whispered. "When you pulled the tether… I thought you might finally have the answer.” His voice cracked, desperation creeping in."The threads are too old. We tried everything. And I love you for it," his brother said, smiling gently. "But holding on like this... it’s fraying you too."They stood close now, the silent roar of unravelling space swelling around them."Mum and Dad have already passed into the Quiet," his brother said. "It’s time I joined them."Elias looked stricken. His brother reached out and rested a hand gently on his shoulder.“She wasn’t scared, you know. Mum. When the time came, she faced it like she always did. Calm. Certain.” He paused. “And I’m not scared either. You don’t have to carry me anymore. I don’t want to hold on and end up unravelled. No one knows what happens to dreamers who stay too long, but… I don’t think they pass through.”Tears spilled silently down Elias’s face. “You’re not a burden,” he said. “You’re my brother. If I have to return every night to remember you…”The younger man reached down, fingers brushing the lantern, and took hold of a thread of pure gold; unseen, but real. A thread spun from something deeper even than memory. The last tether to the waking world.“Sorry, Elias,” he whispered. “It’s time. And it will be okay.”The lantern flared. Not with fire, but with memory. Its glass shimmered with a soft, golden glow, radiating a warmth that came from something deeper than flame.“You can help the others now. Stop wasting your strength on me. You carry the lantern. You show them the way home.”A pulse surged outward, bright and alive with recollection. Laughter by the pond. Muddy shoes in the hallway. Fireworks blooming behind two silhouetted boys. Their mother’s voice, distant and warm. A brother’s hand, pulling him back from the path of a car.Elias stood still, washed in it until the memories began to shift.In the pond’s reflection, the second boy disappeared. The muddy footprints became a single trail. Only one silhouette stood beneath the exploding sky.“No…” Elias whispered. “You were there, Colin. I remember you were there.”But the images kept changing, calmly, firmly. His brother’s presence, gently removed. Each scene folding in, quietly closing around the absence like a book with a page missing.“Don’t do this,” Elias said, stepping forward. “Please. Not like this.”“It’s already done,” came the fading reply. His brother’s voice was growing distant. His form shimmered and thickened with fog.“You don’t need to carry me anymore. And I can’t carry myself. So I’ll let go.”The world collapsed in a rush of white light. The fog snapped tight. The tether had unravelled. He was already being pulled home.“I love you, dickhead,” came the final echo. Lighthearted and impossible in its weight. And then he was gone.
* * *
A crack of thunder rattled the windows. It struck close and vanished like an echo.Elias jolted awake in the chair, his breath catching like something had torn free inside him. The storm still raged beyond the glass, its rhythm unchanged, but the fire had sunk to ash, casting only the faintest glow across the room.The lantern sat steady in his hand, its orange light unchanged. The blanket still draped across his legs. The tea on the desk untouched. And yet, something inside him was different. Something lost, forgotten, just… gone.He looked down. The twine in his lap was tied to his belt and the lantern. His brow furrowed. There had been a reason for the ritual. He was sure of it. A name that hovered just beyond reach. A face half-lost behind a veil of forgetting. Someone he had come to find. But the memory had already gone. He could feel its weight, but not its shape. A shadow without a form. A presence without a tether.He rose slowly, joints stiff, and crossed to the hearth. Carefully, he placed the lantern back on the mantel. Its glow shimmered faintly in the darkened window. His reflection stared back, older than he remembered, eyes red-rimmed, though he hadn’t noticed crying.He stood there a long time, listening to the storm. It would pass. It always did.But the ache remained. gentle and steady. Like a name he should have known, or a story he had once promised to finish. And somewhere in the quiet that followed, he wondered if it would come back to him, or if that, too, was already gone.He blew the lantern out, and a twist of smoke curled into the air; the last memory of a flame that had burnt out.
Alora: Hall of Echoes. Coming soon...