The cave narrowed, then opened again, wider this time and deeper. The crystal underfoot shifted from jagged to smooth, like glass tumbled in waves. The crystal here was worn down by centuries of sound. Stronric paused just inside the new chamber's threshold. No wind, no breeze, but something brushed his beard, tugged at the edges of his thoughts. A pressure he couldn't place.

He stepped forward and the sound of his boot echoed once, then twice, then again… only slightly delayed. It wasn't a true echo. Not a rebound. It was repeating, parroting his motion like a stuck memory. He frowned, crouched, and touched the floor. Quartz, same as before, but here, it felt polished, groomed by passage. He brushed his knuckles along the ground. The sound chirped across the chamber, then returned a moment later, faintly warped.

He stood and whispered, "One more step."

The words echoed. Then echoed again, a beat too slow. "One more step."

"...more step."

"...step..."

And then silence. Stronric didn't like that. No natural cave would act like this. This wasn't just sound bouncing. This was a cave that remembered.

He took another step. The same line "One more step" played again, only louder, and this time the voice wasn't his. It was deeper. The voice scraped against his ears like iron and carried the depth that only came with age. This voice sounded old.

He froze. The voice had repeated with inflection not mimicry, but intention. He spun slowly, eyes sweeping the crystal forest. Spires rose like trees, each one humming faintly with motion, his motion. Every time he exhaled, the air caught on a nearby shard and carried. He could hear his own breath rebounding from a dozen angles.

And beneath it all, the barest scrape. The soft sound of footsteps, but not his own.

Stronric dropped low and moved sideways. He was barefoot again, and his skin was silent against the polished quartz. He followed the noise, not toward it, but alongside it until he found the spot where no echo returned.

Dead air.

He braced himself, breathing slowly, waiting for he didn't know what. Then something stepped out of the wall.

It was shaped like a dwarf but wasn't just a dwarf. It was him.

The creature was sculpted from semi-clear crystal, shot through with veins of silver and shadow. It moved like he did, broad and grounded, even mimicking his braided beard. Across its back, it carried a mirrored splitting axe identical to the one he carried now. When his crystal mirror raised its head, the eyes were hollow and soundless. The moment was suspended in silence, but then it spoke.

"I am no kinslayer."

Stronric recoiled slightly. That was his voice. The inflection, his pain expressed through it was a perfect recording.

The golem stepped forward, hands raised into a mirrored stance. While Stronric stood watching, unease pooling in his gut, the crystal dwarf charged him. It moved exactly like him, with all his weight, all his purpose. The mirrored axe swung low and wide, just like Stronric had trained it to. The crystal dwarf had no hesitation; it struck completely with no winding up. Just clean, lethal intent in its swing.

Stronric took a half-step pivot, turning his body to let the blade hiss past his hip. He felt the air shift, cold in the wake of that reflective blade. It missed by less than an inch. Too close.

The golem didn't stop. It spun with perfect follow-through. The gleaming crystal axe shot out and twisted like a hook to catch his ribs. Stronric ducked under it and countered with a rising uppercut. His iron-clad fist connected with the mirror's crystal side and rang like a cracked bell.

The sound split across the cavern sharp, jarring, and wrong. A moment later, he heard it again. The same punch repeated, the same impact returning.

He blinked. The echo repeated again this time softer, distorted, but still the sound of his punch. Except it wasn't.

A third repetition followed, then a fourth. Stronric turned his head as the air filled with noise. His strikes, his voice, his breath. Playing back at him from every angle. It was like fighting inside a mirror that reflected sound instead of light.

The golem stepped forward. Its posture was identical to his: left foot planted, right shoulder cocked, beard glinting like braided silver glass. Even the way it shifted weight between steps was his. Not just mimicking him, it was him. From the way he held his axe to the subtle twitch in his fingers before a feint.

And when it spoke again, it was perfect.

"I am no kinslayer," it said. But it didn't say it with anger or grief. It said it with mockery.

Stronric's lip curled. "Ye think wearin' my skin makes ye me?"

He lunged. Their axes collided mid-swing. The impact threw up sparks of fractured sound, ringing so loud the quartz pillars vibrated. For an instant, he lost track of everything vision, footing, even his breath.

The golem kicked out. Stronric caught the blow with his thigh and winced. Even with Ironhide, the pain drove up his leg like fire. He rolled with the motion. He tried to sweep the golem's legs out from under it, but it jumped a half-second before. It had seen the move coming.

Which felt wrong. The golem was moving with the instinct that felt natural to him. He growled and surged forward, using raw weight to force it back. They slammed shoulder to shoulder. His beard brushed against cold crystal. The creature's breath no, not breath, just the illusion of it rasped in rhythm with his own.

He shoved it back and it slid, but a crystal smile was forming on the golem's face. It was enjoying this.

"You think this is who I am?" Stronric snarled. "Just fists and fury and echo?"

The golem answered without words. It moved again not with force, but precision. It struck with the rhythm of himself. The crystal dwarf seemed to mirror everything he's been since the moment he entered this ancestor-forsaken dungeon. Angry, all instinct and brute strength. The version of him that fought first and thought later. It was Stronric the warrior, not the rune-smith.

It was good, too good. It forced him onto the defensive, blow after blow hammering at his guard, turning his own combat style against him. The strikes weren't wild. They were calculated and measured. Every movement was one he had made before.

The crystal weapon, it wasn't just a copy. It was his axe or all three of them.

As the golem stepped into the light, the crystal weapon shimmered and shifted. First, the axe was the compact form of his old throwing axe. Smaller but sharp, fast, and balanced for speed. Then the crystal shimmered and lengthened. It split into twin crescent heads with a central pike, just like Stronric's battle axe. The very one made for war and gore. Finally, the crystal shimmered again and the axe narrowed into a heavy wedge, the same shape as the wood-splitting axe he is carrying now. The axe was forged for utility but was deadly in his hands.

The axe was transforming with purpose, mirroring each weapon he'd used in this dungeon. Every motion the golem made called on a different form. It used the throwing axe to lunge with precision. The war axe to strike with force. The wedge axe to batter and break. It wasn't mimicking a blade. It was echoing the strikes that had defined him.

As Stronric battle at nearly equal battle he started to notice the crystal version of himself wasn't a learning form of himself. Instead, it was a series of memories from entering the dungeon to now, not a perfect image or full of the years before. It lunged in with a blow lifted straight from his duel with the necromancer, the battle that nearly ended him. It was a combination and correction of every fight, every failure and every misstep he made here.

Stronric was distracted by his revelation and thoughts as a downward slash feinted into a twisting backhand hook. Stronric saw it coming. He parried high, but too slow. The edge grazed his shoulder. Pain flared through the Ironhide, and his balance faltered.

Stronric staggered. The golem didn't press. It watched, as if waiting to see which move came next in the sequence. And suddenly, that scared him more than the blade. It didn't want to kill him. It seemed mindless in the most extreme of the word. The empty eyes that looked at him with a soulless conviction waiting for the next step in a sequence that would end him.

Stronric backed up a step, chest rising with each breath. The air here was thick with his own sounds, bouncing off the walls in a swirling mockery of memory. The cave was saturated. Every breath became a weapon against him. Every footstep gave it more fuel. He had to change the rhythm. He crouched low, let his axe scrape the floor behind him in a drawn out skreeeeek. The golem hesitated, confused. Good. He clapped a hand onto his thigh once hard. The golem blinked. Then it did the same.

Stronric immediately took three steps backward, spun, and shouted, "You don't belong here!"

The echo hit the walls once, twice then returned. But the golem's voice layered over his own, parroting the line with perfect precision. "You don't belong here," it said again. "You don't belong here."

"You don't…"

The chorus grew. "You don't belong here."

Stronric grit his teeth. His voice weaponized in the echoes just as his movements were too.

Fine.

If the thing wanted to echo him, then let it echo the part it couldn't understand.

The part he'd passed on.

Stronric changed.

He stopped fighting like himself.

He stepped into Rugiel's rhythm first. Stronric drew on Rugiel's broad, grounded, deliberate strikes. He started using large sweeping motions like forging strokes, each swing a full-bodied commitment. He let his blows drag, not with laziness but purpose, channeling weight from the hips the way she did when she danced in armor. Stronric stomped forward lunging out with his hip and shoulders thrust out in over dramatic movements before he tightened the stance. As he swung, two-handedly with no regard for defense, he spun the splitting axe 180 in his hand, so the flat side was wielded like a hammer. The crystal golem brought up its own weapon to block, but the weapon was melding awkwardly to mirror Stronric's own.

Stronric's blow reverberated through the creature while it was still morphing. Although the golem was able to block the strike, it staggered. A small crack formed on the haft of the crystal weapon, where the crystal was weakened by Stronric blow, during the weapons change. The golem quickly rolled away as Stronric prepared another swing.

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When the golem popped back up a few feet away, Stronric watched. The golem stuttered, trying to match this new form of Stronric's fighting. The creature lashed out, but overcommitted, unsure of how the new series of movements sound be. The crystal form trembled under the unfamiliar weight of the axe's position and the change in fighting styles. It could only mirror the initial strike.

Stronric expected this and didn't give his mirrored self a second chance. He pivoted mid-step, breaking away from Rugiel's form. His posture dropped low, shoulders rolled and footfalls light.

Bauru's rhythm.

The Crystal golems overhead swing lashed out, but Stronric was already moving. He moved without ceremony or structure. Stronric moved with the stalk of a hunter, sharp, twisting and unpredictable. Stronric weaved pasted the golem's retaliation, his stance narrowing into a crouch. The blunt side of the crystal axe was coming down with brutal strength, but Stronric was already inside the arc. He let the crystal haft glance off his shoulder while he dropped his own weapon into one hand and sent his other into a brutal jab to the golem's side. The blow was not meant to kill. It was meant to be bait.

The golem jerked from the impact. Stronric slid through his attack coming back onto his feet be hind his own crystal mirror. The golem jerked as it turned to face Stronric. The golems movements were no longer fluid; they were jagged and stuttering as its axe form changed to the throwing as form. The blade and grip shortening, more to the form that matched Stronric's new fighting form. The creature charge Stronric again, the crystal axe shift between the longer splitting and the shorted throwing axe. The creature's movements were choppy as it tried to pair Rugiel's power with Bauru's speed. In the wrong warrior they didn't belong together. The rhythm of battle and movements were wrong and fractured under the pressure of inconsistency.

Stronric smiled as he launched himself forward to meet the charge. Instead of meeting the golem's swing head on, like he would traditionally, he spun the axe and grabbed near the blade. He parried the blow like a knight parrying a sword. Stronric used the rebound of the blow to power a counterattack with the blunt edge of his axe to the golem's knee. The crystal dwarf managed to evade the blow, but it left its guard open, just as Stronric planned.

Stronric twisted and drove his elbow up under the golem's chin in a quick brutal motion. Before the creature could react, Stronric followed with a stomp to its ankle joint. The golem dropped to one knee, bringing its axe up and across its body to block Stronric's next strike. Its weapon flickered.

Throwing axe.

War axe.

Splitting axe.

The crystal weapon shifted back again, too fast. The crystal dwarf was too confused, unsure of which form or move to replay. It was trying to echo everything presented all at once, and it was failing. Stronric stepped back, breathing heavy, he wasn't just fighting like himself anymore. He was fighting like all of them, himself, his kin and students, his comrades he'd shaped.

He was fighting for and like the family that gave his rhythm meaning. He surged forward, shifting again. Rugiel's crash, Bauru's twist, his own iron wrath. The axe swung wide and low, catching the golem in its chest.

The sound that followed wasn't clean.

It wasn't music, it was crystal breaking. The crystal body split with a rising groan, thin cracks radiating from its sternum as the mirrored golem recoiled, its twisted face catching the light. Then, for the first time, it screamed not with a voice, but with the shattering of false form.

Stronric didn't hesitate. He closed the distance, struck the golem's side with the haft, spun with practiced precision, and slammed his boot into its chest. The creature staggered back, arms flailing, unable to reset.

Its axe clattered to the floor but didn't vanish. Stronric seized it before the golem could recover, raised the crystal weapon. Stronric lifted the crystal form of his battle axe overhead and drove it down into the creature's chest. The blade pulsed once, resonated deep, and the golem's entire form lit up, fractured from within.

With a final exhale of sound, no voice, just resonance, it shattered completely. Crystal scattering into a hundred gleaming shards across the quartz floor.

Stronric stood alone, chest heaving, heart pounding, the axe still heavy in his grip. It shimmered as he watched, shifting slowly from throwing axe, to war axe, to splitting wedge, then settled.

He crouched beside it and ran a calloused hand down its haft, the small cracks solidifying into one solid piece again. The crystal still hummed but didn't resist. It didn't change again. It was… waiting, tuned now to him.

Stronric exhaled. "You're a strange one," he muttered. "But maybe ye still have somethin' to say." Carefully, he focused on the axe of Hearth Fire and the crystal weapon changed shape. He swung the axe a time or two and then slid it into his sheath on his back.

And for the first time since he entered this cursed place, the cave did not echo it listened.

The tunnel ended in a chamber no larger than a smith's hall. The space was bare, no crystal trees, no quartz spires. Just smooth, cool stone. In the center stood a simple circular platform made of dark slate. As he ascended the three simple stairs, he could see the large outline of a circle and a shallow groove running between the think lines. From four equal points the runic lines and grooves ran inward, forming detailed dwarven runic shapes before all converging at a small dark dais in the center of the platform. Stronric followed the lines an approached the small table. The 4 lines came together but stopped abruptly at a small opening in the center of the daiz.

Stronric ran a finger along the runes, a memory of power sizzling just below his fingers. The Shard of the Silent Maw, looted from the crystal golem and tranced the lines of the runes that then extended out into the four lines exiting the stone at its top, bottom and both sides. It didn't hum, it didn't glow, it simply lay in his palm like a cool river stone even as it glittered in the low light. Stronric gently laid the stone into the small groove.

The stone slid into the groove easily, resting perfectly in the slot, welcoming home the missing part of itself. The runes were completed, but nothing happened. Stronric looked around expectantly, no energy, no hums, nothing. Stronric tugged on his beard wondering if he missed something along the way, when a quiet beat thumped below his hands. The single beat spread, vibrating down the dais and into the platform while simultaneously traveling up his hands, arms and into his chest. The thumping mirroring the beat in his own heart.

As the beating overtook his own heartbeat, his mind relived the moments he spent in this cave. He saw through the sounds playing in his mind the clash with the crystal golems, his stuttering of his feet when he saw the marioneted dwarves. "I am no Kinslayer" his own voice rang out. Time went back and he heard Rugiel's voice, firm and unwavering, Bauru's muttering and Dovren's warnings. Even the silence that followed Kara's frost seemed ever present. Time shot forward again as the screeching of the crystal version of himself shattered.

All of it had weight. Every battle, every doubt, every lesson he'd endured had left a mark. All of it had rhythm, a cadence to his steps, his breath, his choices. This was what Echo truly meant. Not repetition, but response. Not mimicry, but understanding.

Stronric opened his eyes.

Stronric pulled a simple practice stone from his bag, turning it over in his hand. The beating crescendo as if pleased with his unspoken choice. He set the roll of tools, given from Dovren, and pulled the fine point chisel and hammer. "One makes a sound and sometimes the world listens, sending its lessons back. Echoes."

His hands, though bruised and scraped, held steady. He set the chisel to the stone, letting the tip rest lightly against its smooth surface. He didn't force the tool; he didn't carve with aggression or pride. Instead, he listened.

He let the stone guide him, pausing when the rhythm became too much to bear. One stroke, then another. Each timed in rhythm with his breath, each aligned with the heartbeat of the cavern. The stone offered no resistance. It welcomed the touch.

No system prompt blinked into his vision. No arcane light surged through the floor. No hidden chorus sang. When the final line was etched, the shard flared not with brilliance, but with sound.

A soft tone spread through the chamber, perfectly pitched, clear as a chime struck in still air. The vibrations traveled down into the dais below, the sound seemingly traveling through the small channels running between the carved runes. It vibrated deep in his bones, not loud, but true and comforting. The Rune of Echo was complete. And Stronric knew, without question, it was his.

A faint white glow began at the Shard of the Silent Maw. Stronric watched as the light spread tracing the lines of the runes. Once the rune was completely glowing with a faint light, it sunk into the stone dais and disappeared. The light continued to spread across and down the dais as a faint hum of mechanisms or rock moving rumbled softly. The light reached the edge of the dais, and the stone table slowly splint in half before sinking into the floor. The grinding of stone grew lower as each small chuck of the dais slid below the platform's surface and whisked away. Stronric stepped back as the glowing light spread through the intricated runes making its way to the outer ring.

Stronric stood on the platform just outside of the last ring of the large circle. He still held his carved practice stone, now housing his rune of Echoes as the circle was completed. The glowing intensified, the vibrations and humming along with it, until silence.

Boom.

BOOM.

The floor cracked. The center of the circle began to open, sliding smoothly into a hidden alcove. Stronric would see stone steps, spiraling downward into the black hole. A last "Boom" echoed through the room as floor fished sliding away. Stronric took a step forward looking down into a hole, lined with the staircase, no end in sight. The depth stared back at him waiting. The chime lingered, not in the air, but in his bones, a quiet promise carried forward.

Stronric rested a hand on the rune shard at his side.

"Come on then," he murmured. "Let's see what waits below."

No echo followed.

Only silence that listened.

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