Echo Shards

A crystalline fragment of solidified memory or emotion, impossibly light and cold to the touch. Within its polished facets, a faint, swirling light pulses like a dying heart. It hums with a familiar melody, a song you have never heard but somehow feel in the depths of your being.   The great act of Annihilation was so devastating that it shattered not only the empire, but the very souls of those caught at the epicenter. Many were cleaved from the whole, cast adrift as Remnants—empty, amnesiac shells imbued with the faint hope of a forgotten purpose. However, most were not strong enough to resist the seeping corruption of the Bleed. Their forms succumbed, and their souls scattered, leaving behind the hollow husks of the Faded Remnants that now haunt the lands. It is a sorrowful truth that the shards you find are not simply relics; they are the memories of your fallen kin, and you are their final resting place.   When a shard is absorbed, it does not just impart a new strength. It floods the mind with a vivid, chaotic memory—a taste of a battle from a life you never lived, a whispered conversation from a world you never knew, or a terrifying flash of a consciousness being torn apart. Your resilience alone holds these pieces together, allowing you to reassemble the fragments of a shattered life. To consume a shard is to bear the burden of both your own forgotten past and the mournful legacy of those who failed.