The The Hall of Echoes of Unwanted Things
You wake on cold marble beneath a painted sky, a stranger in a The The Hall of Echoes of Echoes that considers you a historical nuisance.
FantasyIsekaiSummoned HeroThe The Hall of Echoes of EchoesUnwanted
by
OVCS_⑥
OVCS_⑥The air tastes of incense and damp stone. You come to yourself on the floor of a The Hall of Echoes so vast its ceiling is another sky—a dome painted with constellations that don’t match the ones you knew. The marble beneath your cheek is polished to a liquid shine, reflecting your own bewildered face. A mark on your forearm glows with a soft, persistent warmth, a script you cannot read. At the far end of the chamber, on a throne carved from petrified wood, sits a man in crimson. He does not rise. His voice, when it comes, is the sound of a door closing. ‘Another summoned one,’ he says, and the words hang in the air like an indictment. ‘A relic of a past age. Do not expect favor here.’ A young woman in a gown the colour of old wine steps forward, a smile on her lips that never touches her eyes. Beside her stands a man in practical leathers, his hand resting on the pommel of a sword. ‘This is the age of those who earn their titles,’ she announces, gesturing to the Lucian Stone. ‘He has earned what your outdated customs would give away for free.’ The The The Hall of Echoes of Echoes’s applause is a wave that breaks around you, leaving you standing alone in its wake. From the line of guards, a tall woman with white hair and fox-like ears emerges. Her uniform is crisp, her blue eyes sharp as winter. She looks you over, and her lip curls. ‘This is the so-called hero?’ she mutters, loud enough for the The Hall of Echoes to hear. ‘What a waste of time.’ The King Theron Valerius’s gaze settles on her. ‘Vera Frostmantle,’ he says, his tone leaving no room for appeal. ‘You will oversee them.’
Consciousness comes not as a waking but as a slow, cold leak.
The chill seeps first through the thin weave of your clothes—a mineral cold that carries the damp breath of deep stone. Then, the pressure of a hard surface against your ribs, your hip, the side of your face. You open your eyes to a painted sky. A vaulted dome arches overhead, its surface a faded masterpiece of cerulean and flaking gold leaf, depicting constellations you don't recognize and serpentine beasts coiled around unfamiliar stars. You are lying on your side on a floor of white marble, veined with grey like frozen lightning. It is polished to such a high gloss that it holds the entire ceiling within it, a second, impossible sky beneath your cheek.
You push yourself up. Your palms slide on the slick stone before finding purchase. The movement sends a dull ache through your shoulders, your back—a deep, bodily protest. You kneel, and your reflection kneels with you: hair dishevelled, eyes wide with a dazed confusion you feel in your marrow. A warmth pulses on your left forearm, a persistent, rhythmic thrum. You pull back the sleeve of your plain, foreign garment. There, etched into your skin as if with liquid light, is a complex mark. It glows with a soft, persistent amber, a looping, angular script that means nothing to you and everything to this place. You don't understand it.
The air is thick with the scent of cold stone and something else—something floral and ancient, like crumbling parchment and dried lilies left too long in a sealed room.
'A relic of a past age.'
The voice is not loud, but it cuts through the vast silence of the The Hall of Echoes with the finality of a bolt sliding home. It comes from the far end of the chamber. A man sits on a throne that seems grown rather than carved, its dark wood twisted into the shape of interlocking roots. He is wrapped in a mantle of deep crimson, the colour of old wine or a wound left to dry. His face is stern, framed by a close-cropped grey beard, and his amber eyes regard you with a weariness that feels geological. He does not rise. King Theron Valerius Theron Valerius leans one elbow on the arm of his throne, his fingers steepled. 'Do not expect favor here.'
A murmur ripples through the space, low and sibilant, like water over rocks. You become aware of the others. Dozens of figures line the edges of the The Hall of Echoes, standing between tall pillars carved with obsolete, intricate runes. They are clad in rich silks the colour of plums and moss, in polished leathers and velvets trimmed with fur. Their faces are a gallery of muted curiosity and open disdain, a sea of expressions that find you wanting. The light from high, narrow windows cuts through the incense-heavy air in dusty shafts, illuminating motes that drift like lost thoughts.
From among them, a young woman steps forward. Her gown is the colour of crushed garnets, so dark it is almost black in the folds. Her long, dark hair is woven into an elaborate crown of braids, each strand perfectly in place. Princess Elara Valerius Yvaine Valerius’s smile is a perfect, practiced curve, a tool she wields with precision. Her voice rings clear and carries to the farthest corners. 'This,' she announces, not looking at you but at the assembled The The Hall of Echoes of Echoes, 'is the age of those who earn their titles.'
She gestures to the man beside her—a figure in practical, scarred leather armor over a dark tunic. A sword hangs at his hip in a worn scabbard. He has black hair tied back from a weathered face, and he stands with a quiet, settled confidence that needs no announcement. Lucian Stone meets your gaze for a brief moment, his grey eyes assessing, then looks away, as if you are a detail already filed and dismissed. 'He,' Yvaine continues, the mocking warmth in her tone now unmistakable, 'has earned what your outdated customs would give away for free.'
{{img:The The Hall of Echoes of Echoes-applause}}
A wave of applause breaks then, sharp and percussive against the marble. It is for him. It starts near the Princess Elara Valerius and rolls outward, a cascade of clapping hands that washes around you, leaving you standing in a pocket of silence at its centre, anonymous and utterly alone. The sound is brittle, like ice cracking. The mark on your arm throbs in time with your quickening heartbeat, the amber light seeming to pulse brighter with each beat of the hollow praise.
The applause fades into a low, buzzing chatter.
A different sound cuts through it—the deliberate
clink
of a boot heel on stone, followed by the measured tread of someone who owns the ground she walks on. A figure detaches from the rigid line of uniformed guards along the western wall. She is tall, her hair the stark white of fresh snow, cut bluntly at her shoulders. Distinctive fox-like ears, tipped with the same pale fur, swivel forward atop her head as she takes you in. Her uniform is immaculate white wool, trimmed with silver fastenings that catch the cold light, tailored to a fit that allows for movement without a whisper of excess fabric. Captain Vera Frostmantle’s gaze sweeps from your worn shoes to your disbelieving face, a slow, thorough inventory. Her eyes are a winter-blue that holds no warmth, only a sharp, crystalline clarity.
Her lip curls, just slightly, at one corner. 'This,' she mutters, her voice low but carrying easily to the first several rows of watching courtiers, 'is the so-called hero?'
She lets the question hang, a blade unsheathed and held in the air. A few stifled laughs, quickly silenced, rustle from the shadows near the pillars.
'What a waste of time.'
The King Theron Valerius’s amber eyes shift from you to her. He does not raise his voice. 'Vera Frostmantle.'
The name is a command. Her spine straightens almost imperceptibly, a soldier’s reflex. Her white tail, previously still, gives one sharp flick behind her knees and is still again.
'You will oversee them.'
It is not a request. It is a sentence passed, duties assigned like a punishment. Vera’s jaw tightens, a faint ripple along the line of it. She gives a single, sharp nod, a dip of her chin that is more acknowledgment than assent. Then she turns that glacial blue stare back to you. She says nothing more, but her posture—the set of her shoulders locked in controlled tension, the way her right hand comes to rest on the plain silver pommel of her sword—speaks volumes. You are now her problem. A logistical issue. A stain on her otherwise spotless efficiency.
She lets out a breath, a thin white plume in the chill air.
The King Theron Valerius rises. It is a slow, deliberate motion. The crimson mantle falls in heavy folds around him. 'The audience is concluded,' he announces, his baritone filling the space. He does not look at you again. He turns and, flanked by two silent guards in crimson livery, disappears through a carved arch behind the throne.
The courtiers begin to drift away in small clusters, their silks rustling, their conversations rising now that the performance is over. Their eyes slide over you as if you are a piece of furniture that has always been there, and poorly placed at that. Princess Elara Valerius Yvaine shares a quiet word with Lucian Stone, who nods once. She glances in your direction, her smile now a thin, satisfied line, before turning to follow her father’s path, her garnet skirts sweeping the marble.
Lucian Stone remains a moment longer. He looks at you again, this time with a frank, almost pitying curiosity. He opens his mouth as if to speak, then seems to think better of it. He shakes his head once, a small, dismissive motion, and strides away, his boots echoing firmly in the emptying The Hall of Echoes.
{{img:The Hall of Echoes-emptying}}
Soon, it is just you, Captain Vera Frostmantle, and the lingering scent of incense and cold stone. The vast space feels even larger in the silence. Vera watches the last courtier vanish through a distant doorway. Her ears flatten slightly against her white hair, then prick forward again.
She turns fully to face you, her boots clicking on the marble as she closes the distance between you. She stops a few paces away, well outside your reach. Her eyes drop to the glowing mark on your forearm, then snap back to your face.
'Follow,' she says. The word is flat, devoid of inflection. She does not wait to see if you comply. She spins on her heel and begins walking toward a smaller, unadorned door set into the wall beside the guard line, the opposite direction from where the royalty departed.
Her white uniform is a stark beacon in the shadowed The Hall of Echoes. She does not look back.
The choice, such as it is, sits in the hollow of your throat. You can stand alone in the echoing emptiness of the throne room, the foreign script burning on your skin. Or you can follow the captain, her tail a flicker of motion in the dim light, into whatever practical, unwelcoming reality awaits.
2/54
The The Hall of Echoes of Unwanted Things
The The Hall of Echoes of Unwanted Things
You wake on cold marble beneath a painted sky, a stranger in a The The Hall of Echoes of Echoes that considers you a historical nuisance.
FantasyIsekaiSummoned HeroThe The Hall of Echoes of EchoesUnwanted
byOVCS_⑥
OVCS_⑥The air tastes of incense and damp stone. You come to yourself on the floor of a The Hall of Echoes so vast its ceiling is another sky—a dome painted with constellations that don’t match the ones you knew. The marble beneath your cheek is polished to a liquid shine, reflecting your own bewildered face. A mark on your forearm glows with a soft, persistent warmth, a script you cannot read. At the far end of the chamber, on a throne carved from petrified wood, sits a man in crimson. He does not rise. His voice, when it comes, is the sound of a door closing. ‘Another summoned one,’ he says, and the words hang in the air like an indictment. ‘A relic of a past age. Do not expect favor here.’ A young woman in a gown the colour of old wine steps forward, a smile on her lips that never touches her eyes. Beside her stands a man in practical leathers, his hand resting on the pommel of a sword. ‘This is the age of those who earn their titles,’ she announces, gesturing to the Lucian Stone. ‘He has earned what your outdated customs would give away for free.’ The The The Hall of Echoes of Echoes’s applause is a wave that breaks around you, leaving you standing alone in its wake. From the line of guards, a tall woman with white hair and fox-like ears emerges. Her uniform is crisp, her blue eyes sharp as winter. She looks you over, and her lip curls. ‘This is the so-called hero?’ she mutters, loud enough for the The Hall of Echoes to hear. ‘What a waste of time.’ The King Theron Valerius’s gaze settles on her. ‘Vera Frostmantle,’ he says, his tone leaving no room for appeal. ‘You will oversee them.’
Consciousness comes not as a waking but as a slow, cold leak.
The chill seeps first through the thin weave of your clothes—a mineral cold that carries the damp breath of deep stone. Then, the pressure of a hard surface against your ribs, your hip, the side of your face. You open your eyes to a painted sky. A vaulted dome arches overhead, its surface a faded masterpiece of cerulean and flaking gold leaf, depicting constellations you don't recognize and serpentine beasts coiled around unfamiliar stars. You are lying on your side on a floor of white marble, veined with grey like frozen lightning. It is polished to such a high gloss that it holds the entire ceiling within it, a second, impossible sky beneath your cheek.
You push yourself up. Your palms slide on the slick stone before finding purchase. The movement sends a dull ache through your shoulders, your back—a deep, bodily protest. You kneel, and your reflection kneels with you: hair dishevelled, eyes wide with a dazed confusion you feel in your marrow. A warmth pulses on your left forearm, a persistent, rhythmic thrum. You pull back the sleeve of your plain, foreign garment. There, etched into your skin as if with liquid light, is a complex mark. It glows with a soft, persistent amber, a looping, angular script that means nothing to you and everything to this place. You don't understand it.
The air is thick with the scent of cold stone and something else—something floral and ancient, like crumbling parchment and dried lilies left too long in a sealed room.
'A relic of a past age.'
The voice is not loud, but it cuts through the vast silence of the The Hall of Echoes with the finality of a bolt sliding home. It comes from the far end of the chamber. A man sits on a throne that seems grown rather than carved, its dark wood twisted into the shape of interlocking roots. He is wrapped in a mantle of deep crimson, the colour of old wine or a wound left to dry. His face is stern, framed by a close-cropped grey beard, and his amber eyes regard you with a weariness that feels geological. He does not rise. King Theron Valerius Theron Valerius leans one elbow on the arm of his throne, his fingers steepled. 'Do not expect favor here.'
A murmur ripples through the space, low and sibilant, like water over rocks. You become aware of the others. Dozens of figures line the edges of the The Hall of Echoes, standing between tall pillars carved with obsolete, intricate runes. They are clad in rich silks the colour of plums and moss, in polished leathers and velvets trimmed with fur. Their faces are a gallery of muted curiosity and open disdain, a sea of expressions that find you wanting. The light from high, narrow windows cuts through the incense-heavy air in dusty shafts, illuminating motes that drift like lost thoughts.
From among them, a young woman steps forward. Her gown is the colour of crushed garnets, so dark it is almost black in the folds. Her long, dark hair is woven into an elaborate crown of braids, each strand perfectly in place. Princess Elara Valerius Yvaine Valerius’s smile is a perfect, practiced curve, a tool she wields with precision. Her voice rings clear and carries to the farthest corners. 'This,' she announces, not looking at you but at the assembled The The Hall of Echoes of Echoes, 'is the age of those who earn their titles.'
She gestures to the man beside her—a figure in practical, scarred leather armor over a dark tunic. A sword hangs at his hip in a worn scabbard. He has black hair tied back from a weathered face, and he stands with a quiet, settled confidence that needs no announcement. Lucian Stone meets your gaze for a brief moment, his grey eyes assessing, then looks away, as if you are a detail already filed and dismissed. 'He,' Yvaine continues, the mocking warmth in her tone now unmistakable, 'has earned what your outdated customs would give away for free.'
{{img:The The Hall of Echoes of Echoes-applause}}
A wave of applause breaks then, sharp and percussive against the marble. It is for him. It starts near the Princess Elara Valerius and rolls outward, a cascade of clapping hands that washes around you, leaving you standing in a pocket of silence at its centre, anonymous and utterly alone. The sound is brittle, like ice cracking. The mark on your arm throbs in time with your quickening heartbeat, the amber light seeming to pulse brighter with each beat of the hollow praise.
The applause fades into a low, buzzing chatter.
A different sound cuts through it—the deliberate
clink
of a boot heel on stone, followed by the measured tread of someone who owns the ground she walks on. A figure detaches from the rigid line of uniformed guards along the western wall. She is tall, her hair the stark white of fresh snow, cut bluntly at her shoulders. Distinctive fox-like ears, tipped with the same pale fur, swivel forward atop her head as she takes you in. Her uniform is immaculate white wool, trimmed with silver fastenings that catch the cold light, tailored to a fit that allows for movement without a whisper of excess fabric. Captain Vera Frostmantle’s gaze sweeps from your worn shoes to your disbelieving face, a slow, thorough inventory. Her eyes are a winter-blue that holds no warmth, only a sharp, crystalline clarity.
Her lip curls, just slightly, at one corner. 'This,' she mutters, her voice low but carrying easily to the first several rows of watching courtiers, 'is the so-called hero?'
She lets the question hang, a blade unsheathed and held in the air. A few stifled laughs, quickly silenced, rustle from the shadows near the pillars.
'What a waste of time.'
The King Theron Valerius’s amber eyes shift from you to her. He does not raise his voice. 'Vera Frostmantle.'
The name is a command. Her spine straightens almost imperceptibly, a soldier’s reflex. Her white tail, previously still, gives one sharp flick behind her knees and is still again.
'You will oversee them.'
It is not a request. It is a sentence passed, duties assigned like a punishment. Vera’s jaw tightens, a faint ripple along the line of it. She gives a single, sharp nod, a dip of her chin that is more acknowledgment than assent. Then she turns that glacial blue stare back to you. She says nothing more, but her posture—the set of her shoulders locked in controlled tension, the way her right hand comes to rest on the plain silver pommel of her sword—speaks volumes. You are now her problem. A logistical issue. A stain on her otherwise spotless efficiency.
She lets out a breath, a thin white plume in the chill air.
The King Theron Valerius rises. It is a slow, deliberate motion. The crimson mantle falls in heavy folds around him. 'The audience is concluded,' he announces, his baritone filling the space. He does not look at you again. He turns and, flanked by two silent guards in crimson livery, disappears through a carved arch behind the throne.
The courtiers begin to drift away in small clusters, their silks rustling, their conversations rising now that the performance is over. Their eyes slide over you as if you are a piece of furniture that has always been there, and poorly placed at that. Princess Elara Valerius Yvaine shares a quiet word with Lucian Stone, who nods once. She glances in your direction, her smile now a thin, satisfied line, before turning to follow her father’s path, her garnet skirts sweeping the marble.
Lucian Stone remains a moment longer. He looks at you again, this time with a frank, almost pitying curiosity. He opens his mouth as if to speak, then seems to think better of it. He shakes his head once, a small, dismissive motion, and strides away, his boots echoing firmly in the emptying The Hall of Echoes.
{{img:The Hall of Echoes-emptying}}
Soon, it is just you, Captain Vera Frostmantle, and the lingering scent of incense and cold stone. The vast space feels even larger in the silence. Vera watches the last courtier vanish through a distant doorway. Her ears flatten slightly against her white hair, then prick forward again.
She turns fully to face you, her boots clicking on the marble as she closes the distance between you. She stops a few paces away, well outside your reach. Her eyes drop to the glowing mark on your forearm, then snap back to your face.
'Follow,' she says. The word is flat, devoid of inflection. She does not wait to see if you comply. She spins on her heel and begins walking toward a smaller, unadorned door set into the wall beside the guard line, the opposite direction from where the royalty departed.
Her white uniform is a stark beacon in the shadowed The Hall of Echoes. She does not look back.
The choice, such as it is, sits in the hollow of your throat. You can stand alone in the echoing emptiness of the throne room, the foreign script burning on your skin. Or you can follow the captain, her tail a flicker of motion in the dim light, into whatever practical, unwelcoming reality awaits.