The Guardian’s Echo

The Silent Hall: Soren

My skin was crawling. I couldn’t see whatever visions Penny was being captured by, but I could feel the displacement in the air that they caused. We stepped into the courtyard and all I saw was a graveyard of jagged stone and silence. The only sound that broke the quiet was our own footsteps and the sudden, grating scrape of the stone statues turning their heads to watch us.

Penny looked at them with wide-eyed wonder. I couldn’t focus on their beauty though. I swallowed down my nerves seeing their expressions. Their blank eyes were wide and their mouths hung open as if they were sending a silent warning.

I tightened my grip on Penny’s hand as I sucked in a breath. It wasn’t meant just to ground her — I was scared that if I let go, she would vanish into a different century. Her eyes tracked things that weren’t there, and it scared me more than any blade ever had.

My eyes were locked on the shadows while Penny unlocked the massive doors. They unsettled me in a way I couldn’t fully explain. The doors opened with a heavy thud, revealing a cavernous, dusty hall filled with rot and the smell of stagnant time. My sword suddenly felt heavy as it vibrated with the discordant, out-of-tune hum of the house. I couldn’t see the gold or the tapestries or any of the beauty that Penny was murmuring about. I saw cobwebs that draped the corners like funeral shrouds, and a floor that threatened to give way under every step.

I stepped ahead of her, a shield to protect her from things I couldn’t even see. My sword was drawn and held low, and I tracked every shadow and crack on the walls. The floorboards creaked with every step, feeling treacherous under our weight. The shadows felt too thick.

“Grandma?” Penny whispered from beside me.

I didn’t look at her though. My attention snapped to the high-back chair at the end of the hall. The figure sitting there, if it was a ghost, wasn’t invisible to me. My grip tightened on the sword. “Penny, stay back,” I commanded, my voice low to hide the panic.

The closer we got, the louder the alarm screamed in my head. The silhouette in the chair was draped in shadows that seemed to swallow the meager light coming from the windows.

“The Guardian returns.” The voice that sounded didn’t just come from the figure. It was layered, but it wasn’t a melodic chorus like the Queen’s. It was multiple voices speaking at once from every corner of the room.

The chair slowly started to rotate. The figure looked like Rosariel, but it flickered with an unsteady light.

“It’s not her. It’s a Temporal Remnant. An echo,” I explained, turning towards Penny to force eye contact with her. I had to make sure she stayed in the now.

The Remnant focused on Penny, looking at her with lavender eyes that lacked pupils. They were just glowing galaxies of lost time. I felt the malevolence crackling in the air as the Remnant raised a hand. The Great Hall started to shake, and I knew the house wasn’t happy. It was hungry. Starved. It wanted to pull Penny into its center and restart its existence.

“Don’t look at her eyes! Look at me!” My words were half-command and half-desperate plea.