The Keeper of Echoes

(Paige’s POV)

From somewhere behind the shed comes Gregor, shoulders under my weight, moving slow but sure. My body lands on the mattress with a thud, hardly treated better than old tools left out in rain. The door shuts before I can catch his eyes, then the lock clicks - same sound twice now, familiar almost.

Silence.

Now the quiet feels changed. A low pulse runs through it. Her trust gives it weight.

Breath held, I hear my heartbeat sprinting ahead. Shaky after what just happened. Saying those strange lines pulled real dread from somewhere deep - like stepping close to a sharp drop. A single misstep, even a flicker of thinking too hard showing on my face, then she’d know it wasn’t true.

Yet she stayed still. Her eyes found only this - a broken pipe pulling in shadows.

Time drags itself forward. Still, she stays away - no demands, no questions pressing into my skin. That silence? It's deliberate. A gap opens where answers should be, wide enough for doubt to rush in. Left here, I start chasing thoughts that twist like smoke. Maybe I said what wasn’t meant to surface. Those images, half-real, begin looping without sound.

Time bends to me now. Every bit of food on the plate by the bed disappears into my mouth. Water goes down in long gulps, steady and sure. My fingers scrub through the chill of the basin, sharpness pricking skin awake - mind follows. Delirium fades like smoke. Not shattered. Tension held tight, ready.

Out of nowhere, the doorway fills with someone who isn’t Beatrice.

A quiet clink comes from the tray she holds. Vivian waits, steam curling above the cup beside the sweet, cold slice of cake. Her face shows nothing but irritation.

“Beatrice insists you need ‘fortification’ after your little episode,” she says, her voice dripping with disdain. She sets the tray on the table with a sharp click. “Personally, I think you need a dose of reality. But what do I know? I only finance this little asylum.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she scans me slow. I stand taller now, hair combed back neat. That hollow look? Swapped out - now there's just tired alertness, quiet but sharp. What’s different catches her attention without a word.

“Ah. The ghost returns to its body. How convenient.” She crosses her arms. “Whatever game you’re playing, it won’t work. He’s not coming. He’s hosting another dinner tonight. With her.”

A jab lands casually, yet her gaze stays fixed, hunting for cracks. My face shows nothing - though beneath it, heat blooms where the knife went in again. Dinner once more.

I focus on the practical cruelty. “Why are you doing this, Vivian? You wanted Noah. I’m out of the way. What do you gain from keeping me here?”

Her lips twist into a bitter smile. “What do I gain? Entertainment. The satisfaction of seeing the little upstart who humiliated me reduced to a puppet in a gilded box. And a business arrangement. Beatrice has… resources. Knowledge. She offers a return on investment more reliable than any trade ship. Your suffering is just a pleasant dividend.”

That means there's more at play than anger. Money matters too. One woman trades me like goods. Another takes part without hesitation.

“She’s using you too,” I say quietly. “You think you’re partners, but you’re just a setting in her story. The ‘hunting lodge.’ The jailer. When she’s done, this chapter will end, and you’ll be just another character she writes out.”

A shadow crosses Vivian’s gaze - just a twitch, gone before I can name it. Coldness rolls in right after, sharp as frost on glass. Save your words, she says, they’ll serve better when you lie again. Her back is already toward the exit when her voice cuts the air once more. The cake? From Lenora Havisham’s most loved shop downtown. A gift shaped like memory. Beatrice knew you wouldn’t taste sweetness without thinking twice

The heavy click of the latch breaks the silence. My eyes lock onto the dessert - smooth, flawless, too carefully made. It sits there like a little sculpture meant to celebrate someone else.

Not tossing it aside. Not crying about it either. Toward the table I go, lift it, then place a careful, unhurried bite into my mouth. Sugar coats the top - thick, almost too much. Cake so soft it feels weightless. Good. Yet somehow, also dust on the tongue.

Done. Each bit gone. The cup emptied. That bitter taste? I take it in. Lets me keep going.

---

Later, when darkness has no stars and the sky feels thick, a call arrives. Out of the shadows steps Gregor, face still as stone. He says only: She wants you there now

This is not something asked. Behind him I walk, toes touching chilly ground without sound. Not toward the sitting room do we head. Instead, a tight service stair appears, one I’ve never noticed, leading under, deep into the core of the place.

Cold, wet air fills the space. Stone walls replace plaster, uneven and raw. This is where the building meets earth. In front of us, a door stands - thick wood held by iron straps. Gregor pulls out a key. The lock turns. He shoves the heavy thing inward, steps back, nods toward the dark within.

A space like this isn’t some dark chamber underground. This place holds books, yes - but nothing like the quiet halls I know. Different somehow, right from the first step inside.

A circle of walls holds shelf after shelf, rising from floor to ceiling, made of deep-toned timber. Not filled with old poems or dusty histories wrapped in leather. These are diaries. Row upon row, possibly endless, uniform in shape, covered in dull gray fabric. In the middle stands one massive table - carved from ancient black wood - bathed in a pale green shine cast by glowing spheres sealed in glass boxes. Scattered throughout: diagrams of bloodlines, folded maps, sequences marked with dates, some stuck to panels, others piled on small tables.

There she is, Beatrice, facing away, planted by the desk. A plain robe hangs on her, dark and unadorned. Her hair falls free, touching her shoulders. Youth shows in the curve of her neck. Softness appears where I didn’t expect it. Yet every line suggests risk, quiet but sharp.

After a pause, her voice cuts through the quiet. Not once does she face him. The words come out flat. Just shut it, that is what she means. Gregor hears every syllable. Silence follows. Door still open, for now.

Heavy silence follows the shutting of the door. Metal clicks - lock sliding into place. Inside her private room, just us now.

Her question floats through the cold air - do you recognize these, Paige? The dim light catches the edge of a thousand blank journal covers stacked like bones. A pause hangs before she moves her hand toward them.

Silence comes instead of words. My feet move ahead, pulled like a rope around the neck. Right there, even with my eyes, sits the first shelf. No book titles line the backs - only names, dates carved deep. One reads: Althea R. – Cycle 127. Frost climbs my spine - Corvina L., Cycle 211. Then, quiet breath: Elara S., Cycle 87. Silence follows.

“They are the archives,” she continues, finally turning to face me. Her eyes are alive with a fervent, unsettling light. “Records of every iteration. Every time the story has looped. Every version of you, and every version of everyone else.”

She picks up a journal at random, opens it, and reads aloud. “‘Today, Christian presented the betrothal contract. I felt nothing but dread. I think I shall take a walk by the river tomorrow. Perhaps the current will grant me courage.’” She snaps the book shut. “Althea. Cycle 127. Two days after, she ended her life. Just a small change. His wealth still fell apart, though it moved more slowly once she was gone

She replaces the book and picks up another. “‘The Duke watched me today at the ball. His eyes are like frost on a grave. I must make him see me.’” She smiles thinly. “Corvina. Cycle 211. She tried to seduce him. Far from court, he sent her away because she played too deep in politics. In a quiet nunnery, sickness took her life

She walks toward me, the journal in her hand like a holy text. “You are different, Paige. Or Sandra. Whatever you wish to call the consciousness currently inhabiting this… role.” She stops inches from me. “You didn’t break. You didn’t run. You didn’t seduce. You bargained. You introduced a variable so chaotic, so fundamentally outside the narrative, that you broke the cycle.”

Her gaze is hypnotic. “The Duke of Ashes was a background character. A force of nature, like a storm or an earthquake. He was never meant to be a love interest. He was set-dressing. And you… you looked at the set-dressing and saw a man. You chose him. And in doing so, you gave him a choice. You made him real.”

Her voice shakes, caught between wonder and fear.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” I whisper, the scope of her madness finally coming into terrible focus. “You don’t just want to know the future. You want to control the story. All the stories. Forever.”

“I am the Keeper,” she says, her chin lifting with a fanatic’s pride. “It is my purpose to maintain the integrity of the narrative. To guide it toward its most elegant, most harmonious conclusion. Your ‘prophecy’ is just a symptom - a bleed-through from one cycle to the next. A glitch. But glitches can be studied. Understood. Harnessed.”

Back on the shelf goes the journal. She looks at me, really looks. The icehouse comes up - something from when she was small. A fall. Sounds came then, like murmurs through time. Not just echoes. More like pieces of someone else's days. That moment stuck. It pointed her where to go. There’s a weak point there, Paige. Where time begins to fray at the edges. Not just worn - split open. You? You’re more than near it. You reach right through. Your hands pull at what others only sense. Vision isn’t the word. It’s touch. You feel the strands shift

She reaches out and touches my temple. Her fingers are icy. “I need you to go back. Not just to the door. Inside. Down to the chamber. I need you to listen. And I need you to tell me what the voices say about him.”

A gasp stops my throat. Could it really be Noah?

“The variable,” she corrects, her eyes gleaming. “The anomaly. I have plotted every other character’s path across a thousand cycles. His is the only one that has ever truly diverged. Because of you. I need to know if his deviation is containable… or if he is a corruption that must be deleted from the script.”

Fury rises inside me, sharp and sudden, blurring what I see. Wipe him out. Her words turn the deepest, messiest, maddening, brilliant person I’ve met into something forgettable - a mark left by accident.

A weight I carried slips away. What fills the space feels sharp, like ice forming under skin.

That woman holds me prisoner. Yet she puts his life at risk.

That girl won’t survive what comes next.

Her eyes lock on mine, wild and unblinking. Slowly, I allow something true to rise - no longer shattered, no hollow shell, just someone who stayed standing. Who pushed through. That quiet fire shows, maybe for the very first moment.

Fine. Lead on, then - toward the icehouse we go. Silence follows my words, but I break it again: listening will happen now

A grin pushes through, lighting her cheeks. In that moment, victory feels certain. The lock waits - she believes it will give way now.

Funny thing is, she doesn’t know the key can kill. It looks harmless to her. Only fools trust shapes too quickly. That metal piece holds more than locks open. Danger hides best when polished smooth.

Now comes the moment when chaos breaks loose.