An Echo of Souls

The first thing I registered was the light. It wasn't gentle. It was a sharp, insistent gold, slicing through a canopy of enormous green leaves and landing right on my eyelids. I squeezed them shut, a groan escaping my lips. My head throbbed with a dull, persistent rhythm, a drumbeat with no song.

My name is Lief.

The thought surfaced from the murky confusion like a single bubble rising through mud. Lief. It felt right. It felt like the only solid thing in a world that was tilting on its axis. Everything else was blank. A vast, terrifying emptiness where a life should have been. Who was I? Where did I come from? The questions were hooks with nothing to catch.

I pushed myself up on my elbows, the movement sending a protest through every muscle in my body. I was sore, a deep ache that suggested I hadn't just been sleeping. I was lying in a small clearing, carpeted with soft moss and dappled with that aggressive sunlight. The air was thick and heavy, smelling of damp earth, sweet decay, and something else… something floral and wild. Towering trees with dark, gnarled bark formed a tight circle around me, their leaves a shade of green so deep they were almost black. This place felt ancient, and it did not feel friendly.

Panic began to prickle at the edges of the blankness. My breath came faster, my heart hammering against my ribs. I was alone. Utterly and completely alone in a place I didn't recognize, with a head full of nothing.

I forced myself to sit up fully, my gaze darting around the clearing, searching for anything familiar. A road. A sign. Another person. There was nothing. Just the trees, the moss, and the oppressive silence that wasn't silent at all. It was filled with the chittering of unseen things, the rustle of leaves where there was no wind, and a low hum that seemed to vibrate up from the ground itself.

My clothes were simple, rough-spun trousers and a linen shirt, both stained with dirt and damp from the moss. They felt like a costume. As I ran a hand through my hair, feeling the grit and twigs caught in it, my sleeve slid down my right arm.

I stopped.

There, against the skin of my forearm, was a tattoo.

It wasn't just a tattoo; it was a work of art, stark and intricate. Solid black ink formed the shape of a wing. Not a bird's wing, but something else. Something reptilian and powerful. It started just below my wrist, the tips of the leathery pinions curling around the back of my hand, and swept all the way up to the crook of my elbow. Each feather, or scale, or whatever they were, was rendered with impossible detail. The lines were so fine, so perfect, they looked less like they were drawn with a needle and more like they had grown there.

I stared at it, my throat tight. I had no memory of getting this. No recollection of the pain, of the artist, of the decision to permanently mark myself with such a bold, strange image. It was alien. A foreign flag planted on my own body.

And yet… it wasn't.

As I stared, a bizarre feeling bloomed in my chest. A sense of rightness. Of completion. My eyes traced the powerful curve of the wing’s main bone, the sharp points of the membrane stretching between them. It felt familiar. It felt like mine. My fingers trembled as I reached over with my left hand and touched the ink. The skin was smooth, unblemished. But beneath my touch, I could almost feel a phantom weight, a ghost of power that resonated deep in my bones. It was a part of me. A part of me I didn't understand, just like my own name.

The wing was beautiful, and it was terrifying. It was the only thing I had that felt like a clue, but it answered nothing. It only deepened the mystery, a permanent, undeniable brand of an identity I couldn't access. I sat there in the sun-dappled clearing, a boy with no past, staring at the impossible dragon's wing on his arm, and the silence of the forest seemed to press in, waiting.

The waiting had to end. I couldn't just sit here and let the forest swallow me. The fear, cold and sharp, was a better motivator than the confusion. I pushed myself to my feet, my legs unsteady. My whole body felt like a stranger’s.

I scanned the clearing again, my search more deliberate this time. My eyes snagged on a dark shape half-hidden by the thick roots of one of the giant trees. It was a pack. A simple leather rucksack, its straps frayed and the hide scuffed and darkened with use. It looked like it had seen a lot of miles.

Hope, thin and fragile, flickered inside me. A clue. A piece of my own life.

I stumbled over to it, my knees protesting, and knelt in the moss. The buckles were stiff, but my fingers worked them open with a practiced ease that felt disconnected from my conscious mind. I tipped the contents onto the ground.

Disappointment hit me like a physical blow. There was no journal filled with answers, no letter from a loved one, no map marked with a destination called ‘home.’

There was a waterskin, made of dark leather and corked with a wooden stopper. I shook it. It was about half full. Beside it lay a small, oilskin-wrapped parcel. I unwrapped it to find several strips of dried, salted meat and a handful of hard, flat biscuits. Rations. Practical and impersonal. The last item was a small leather pouch containing a flint and a piece of steel.

Survival gear. That’s all it was. The tools of a traveler, a wanderer. Not the belongings of a person with a life. Whoever I was, I had been prepared for a journey. Or maybe I was just running. The thought sent another chill through me. Running from what?

A sound cut through the air, sharp and guttural. It wasn't a bird or any animal I could put a name to. It was a high-pitched shriek that ended in a low, gurgling sound, and it came from somewhere deep in the trees to my left. My head snapped in that direction, my heart seizing in my chest. Every muscle in my body went rigid.

The forest hummed. It wasn't my imagination. It was a low, resonant thrumming that vibrated through the soles of my worn boots, a constant, menacing presence. Now that I was listening, truly listening, I could hear other things. A heavy, rhythmic scraping sound, like stone dragging on stone. The rustle of something large moving through the undergrowth, its steps too heavy and deliberate to be a deer.

This place was not just wild; it was wrong. The air was too thick, the silence too loud, the sounds too alien. The tattoo on my arm suddenly felt less like a mystery and more like a warning.

I scrambled to gather the items, shoving them back into the pack. My hands were shaking, fumbling with the hard biscuits. I couldn't stay here. This clearing wasn't a sanctuary; it was an exposed stage. I was prey, and whatever was making those sounds was the predator.

I slung the pack over my shoulders. The weight was a small, cold comfort. It wouldn't do me any good if I was found. I had no weapon. No knowledge of this terrain. All I had was a body that ached, a head full of ghosts, and a growing certainty that if I didn't move, I was going to die. My gaze darted from one dark opening in the trees to the next, searching for a path, for any sign of a way out. The fear was a living thing now, coiling in my gut, urging me to run. Run anywhere.

Just as I was about to plunge blindly into the suffocating wall of trees, another sound broke the unnatural quiet.

Snap.

It was close. To my right. It wasn't the heavy scraping or the guttural shriek from before. This was a small sound. The sharp crack of a dry twig under a boot. It was a sound a person would make.

My blood went cold. Was it one of the things that hunted in this forest? Or was it someone like me? The question was a razor's edge. One answer meant a swift, brutal death. The other… the other meant I wasn't alone. That hope, the one I had crushed moments ago, surged back, so fierce and desperate it almost buckled my knees.

I had to know.

Moving with a caution I didn't know I possessed, I slipped behind the trunk of a gnarled tree, its bark rough against my cheek. I peered around the edge, my breath held tight in my chest. The forest floor was a mess of tangled roots and deep shadows. I saw nothing. But I heard it again. A soft rustle of fabric against leaves. Closer this time.

My eyes scanned the shadows, straining. And then I saw her.

She was standing with her back to me, about twenty yards away, near the edge of the clearing. A girl. She couldn't have been much older than me. Her hair was dark and pulled back in a messy braid that had started to come undone. She wore clothes similar to mine—dark trousers and a tunic, practical and worn. She stood perfectly still, her head cocked as if listening to the same menacing sounds that had terrified me.

For a long moment, I just watched, my heart thudding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. She was real. She was another person. The relief was so profound it was dizzying. But it was followed immediately by a new kind of fear. Was she a threat? Was she in the same situation as me, or was she a part of this place?

She turned then, slowly, and I saw her face. It was pale, smudged with dirt, and her eyes—wide and dark—were filled with the same raw, hunted look I was sure was in my own. Her hands were clenched into tight fists at her sides. She was just as lost and terrified as I was.

I knew I had to speak. The silence was stretching, becoming more dangerous than any sound. I took a shallow breath and stepped out from behind the tree.

“Hello?”

My voice sounded foreign, a rough crackle in the oppressive quiet.

She jumped, spinning around to face me, her body instantly tensing for a fight or flight. Her eyes locked on mine, wide with alarm. She took a half-step back, one hand flying to the hilt of a knife I hadn't noticed tucked into her belt.

“Who’s there?” she demanded, her voice trembling but trying for a strength it didn't have.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, raising my hands slowly, palms out. It felt like a gesture from a dream, something my body knew how to do on instinct. “I just… I woke up here. I don’t know where I am.”

Her expression shifted from outright fear to guarded suspicion. She watched me, her gaze flickering over my face, my clothes, my empty hands. “You woke up here?” she repeated, her voice skeptical. “Just now?”

I nodded, my throat dry. “In that clearing.” I gestured vaguely behind me. “I don’t remember anything. How I got here. Who I am. Nothing. Except my name.”

A flicker of something—recognition, maybe empathy—softened the hard line of her jaw. The tension in her shoulders eased, just a fraction. “Your name?”

“Lief.”

She was silent for a beat, her eyes searching mine. It felt like she was looking for a lie, for a trap. When she found none, she let out a slow breath, her hand dropping away from her knife. “Charley,” she said. “My name is Charley. And I… I’m the same. I woke up against a tree over there. Everything is just… gone.”

Charley. The name settled in the air between us, a second solid thing in this world of chaos. Lief and Charley.

We stared at each other, two strangers bound by the same impossible circumstance. The monstrous sounds of the forest seemed to fade into the background, replaced by the pounding of my own blood in my ears. I wasn’t alone. The thought was a lifeline.

“Do you have anything?” I asked, my voice still quiet. “Any idea what this place is?”

She shook her head, a stray strand of dark hair falling across her face. “Nothing. Just these clothes. This knife.” She paused, her brow furrowing as if debating whether to share something else. Her gaze dropped to her left arm. Slowly, she pushed up the sleeve of her tunic.

My breath caught.

There, on her left forearm, was a wing. It was the mirror image of mine. Where my tattoo swept back from my right wrist, hers swept back from her left. The same intricate black ink, the same powerful, reptilian design, the same impossible detail. It was a perfect match. A perfect pair.

Without thinking, I pushed up my own sleeve.

Her eyes widened, a sharp gasp escaping her lips. She took a step forward, then another, her gaze fixed on the ink on my arm. She stopped just a few feet from me, her eyes darting from her wing to mine and back again. The space between us crackled with a sudden, intense energy.

The tattoos didn't just look similar. They looked like they belonged together. Two halves of a whole.

The questions I had were suddenly dwarfed by a thousand new ones. This wasn't a coincidence. This was something else. Something deliberate. Whatever void we had been pulled from, we had been pulled from it together. I looked from the impossible wing on my arm to the matching one on hers, and then into her wide, shocked eyes. The fear was still there, but beneath it, a new feeling was taking root. A terrifying, undeniable connection. We weren't just two lost teenagers in a hostile forest. We were a matched set.

“What does this mean?” Her voice was barely a whisper, a thread of sound in the heavy silence. She didn’t look away from my arm.

“I have no idea,” I said, and it was the truest thing I knew. “I thought I was the only one.”

“So did I.” She finally lifted her gaze to my face, and her eyes were dark, swirling with the same vertigo I felt. The fear was still there, but it was being crowded out by a disorienting sense of wonder. “When you woke up… what do you remember?”

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. The movement felt slow, disconnected. “Just the name. Lief. The rest is… blank. It’s not just forgotten. It feels like it was ripped out. There’s a hole where it should be.”

A shudder went through her. “Yes. A hole. That’s the word for it.” She wrapped her right hand around her tattooed arm, almost protectively. “It’s a feeling, isn’t it? An ache. I keep reaching for a memory, any memory—my parents, a friend, my favorite food—and my mind just hits a wall.”

We were describing the same wound. An invisible, internal amputation. The knowledge was both terrifying and a strange, profound comfort. The sounds of the hostile forest—the distant shriek, the scraping noise—seemed to press in on us again, reminding us where we were. The moment of shock was over, and the reality of our situation came crashing back.

“We can’t stay here,” I said, my voice low and urgent. “This place isn’t safe.”

She nodded, her eyes darting toward the dark treeline. “I know. I heard… things.”

“Me too.” I gestured back toward the center of the clearing with my head. “I found a pack over there. Some water, dried meat. Not much.”

“I have this,” she said, her hand going back to the knife at her belt. She drew it from its leather sheath. The blade was simple, well-kept, but deadly. She held it with a familiarity that suggested she knew how to use it. Another piece of her past clinging on like a phantom limb.

We stood there for a moment longer, two strangers armed with a name, a knife, a few rations, and a matching pair of impossible tattoos. The world was a vast, predatory unknown, and all we had was each other. It wasn’t much. But it was infinitely more than I’d had ten minutes ago.

“Look,” I said, forcing myself to take a step closer. The air between us was thick with unspoken questions, but they would have to wait. Survival came first. “I don’t know who you are, and you don’t know who I am. But those things on our arms… that can’t be a coincidence. And whatever is in these woods, I don’t want to face it by myself.” I met her eyes, holding her gaze. “And I’m guessing you don’t either.”

Her expression was hard to read. She was assessing me, weighing the risk. Was I more dangerous than the unseen creatures in the trees? Her eyes were intelligent, cautious. She looked from my face down to my empty hands, then back up. She saw the desperation there, the same desperation she felt.

Slowly, she gave a single, sharp nod. “No. I don’t.”

The relief that washed over me was so potent it almost made me weak. A pact. A fragile alliance formed in the shadow of fear.

“Okay,” I breathed out. “Okay. We stick together. We find a path, any path, and we get out of this forest.”

“Agreed,” Charley said. The word was firm, sealing the deal. She sheathed her knife, the sound of the blade sliding into the leather seeming to finalize our decision.

We were a team now. A team of two amnesiacs with dragon wings on their arms, lost in a forest that wanted to kill them. It was a terrible plan. It was the only plan we had.

“We should look for a trail,” she said, her tone shifting, becoming more practical. The immediate terror was being pushed down, replaced by a focused will to act. I found myself admiring it. “Something that looks like it was made by people, not animals.”

“Good idea.” I scanned the perimeter of the clearing. It was all just a dense, tangled wall of green and brown. Nowhere looked any more promising than anywhere else. “Let’s circle the edge. See if we can find a break in the trees.”

We moved in tandem, a cautious, silent patrol along the edge of the woods. I took the lead, using my weight to push through low-hanging, thorny branches, while Charley followed a few feet behind, her eyes scanning the ground, the tree trunks, everything. Her focus was absolute. I found myself glancing back at her, at the way her brows were drawn together in concentration, the determined set of her mouth. She wasn't just looking; she was searching, her gaze sharp and intelligent. There was a competence in her that made the frantic terror in my own chest settle, just a little.

The forest floor was a thick carpet of moss and gnarled roots, making every step a potential trap. After twenty minutes of finding nothing but more trees, more shadows, and more unsettling silence, my hope started to fray. This clearing could be miles wide for all we knew. We could walk in circles until we collapsed.

“Anything?” I asked, my voice a low murmur.

“No, it’s all the same.” Her voice was right behind me, and I turned to see her stop, her head cocked. “Wait.”

I froze, every muscle tensing. “What is it? Did you hear something?”

“No. See something.” She took three steps to her left, her eyes fixed on a spot near the base of a massive, moss-covered oak. She knelt down, pushing aside a thick clump of dark green moss with her fingers. I moved to her side, my own curiosity overriding my fear.

Her fingers brushed against something pale and flat. It wasn't a rock. It looked manufactured, its edges too clean. “What is it?” I whispered, kneeling beside her. Our shoulders brushed, and a jolt, small but distinct, went through me. For a second, I wasn’t just aware of the forest or the danger; I was aware of her. Of the warmth of her arm against mine, the scent of earth and rain that clung to her.

“I don’t know,” she breathed, her attention entirely on her discovery. She used her fingers to dig carefully around the object, loosening the damp soil and roots that held it captive. It was a slow process, her movements precise. Finally, with a soft grunt of effort, she worked it free and lifted it into her hands.

It was a small tablet, carved from a smooth, grey stone that felt cool to the touch. It was about the size of my hand, heavy and solid. She held it out on her flattened palms, and we both leaned in to look closer.

The surface was etched with an image. It was crudely done, weathered by time and earth, but the figures were unmistakable. Two people, genderless and simple, were kneeling. Their heads were bowed in reverence before a third figure, one that dominated the small stone canvas: a dragon. It wasn't a monster. It was depicted as something immense and majestic, its wings spread wide, its head held high. It looked less like a beast and more like a god.

My eyes were drawn to the two kneeling figures. A strange feeling washed over me, a phantom sense of familiarity so strong it made my head spin. It felt like looking at a photograph from a dream. I glanced at Charley. Her expression was rapt, her eyes wide as she stared at the carving. I wondered if she felt it too.

“Look,” she said, her voice hushed. Her finger traced a line at the very bottom of the tablet, just below the dragon’s coiled tail. There, deeply etched into the stone, was a single word.

The script was alien, made of sharp, angular lines and graceful curves I’d never seen before. It wasn’t any language I knew, yet as I stared at it, the meaning seemed to bloom in my mind, an intuitive understanding that bypassed logic entirely. It was a command. A purpose. The first real clue in a world of absolute mystery.

The word was Seek.