Kael stared into the crackling hearth, the flames reflecting in his eyes like echoes of the trials he'd just faced. The marks on his arms still pulsed faintly, the swirling patterns of the fate-seal now etched all the way to his shoulder. A permanent reminder that fate no longer whispered to him—it listened. But power came with a price, and Kael was beginning to feel the weight of it.
They were camped beneath the old ruins of Verath's Spine, a crumbled city swallowed by the sands after the Shatter. Though the air was cold, thick with silence, the four of them—Kael, Syra, Jax, and Bren—remained quiet for other reasons.
Kael broke the silence first. "The world's changing faster than we are."
Syra, seated on a stone slab beside him, raised an eyebrow. "The world's been broken, Kael. It's not changing—it's remembering. And we're caught in the flood."
Jax snorted softly, polishing his repeater blade with a cloth that looked like it had seen war. "Philosophy hour again, huh? I miss when the biggest problem we had was crawling through collapsed tunnels."
"I miss food," Bren muttered. He lay with his arms behind his head, eyes on the ceiling. "And silence. I mean, real silence—not the kind that feels like the world's holding its breath before everything explodes."
Kael smiled slightly at that. Bren always had a way of grounding the moment. Even when their lives were at stake.
They'd been through the Echo Protocol. All of them. One by one, they'd walked into their reflections and come out different. Kael saw more now. Syra moved differently—as if part of her had become untethered from linear time. Jax's blade never missed. And Bren, quiet as he was, now spoke to the machines buried beneath the world like they were old friends.
"We can't stay here," Syra said eventually. "The longer we linger, the more likely we draw the attention of the Null Concord."
Jax's expression darkened. "Let them come."
"No," Kael said, voice sharp. "Not yet. We're not ready."
He stood up, brushing dust from his coat. His gaze scanned the horizon beyond the ruined window arch—distant dunes glowing silver under moonlight, the black outline of something massive curled like a serpent in the sandstorm beyond. The world beyond the Echo Chamber was shifting. Things were waking. Watching.
Bren sat up suddenly. "Something's wrong."
Everyone stilled.
Kael turned, eyes narrowing. "What do you mean?"
"The ground. It's vibrating… no, breathing." Bren placed a hand against the stone beneath them. "There's something alive under us."
Jax stood, blade unsheathed in a blink. "We need to move."
Syra already had her hand at her side, ready to draw her curved echo-dagger. "It's not alive in the normal sense."
Kael felt it too now—a low, constant pulse beneath his feet. A heartbeat. A memory. A buried warning.
"It's waking," Kael muttered.
And then the ruin erupted.
The floor cracked open in a flash of light and dust. A shockwave threw them all off their feet as an explosion of energy ripped through the chamber. Chunks of ancient stone and sand flew in every direction. Something rose from the depths—an enormous sphere of floating metal and crystal, hovering on tendrils of violet energy. Its surface pulsed with runes, some of them matching the ones etched along Kael's arm.
The sphere spoke—not in words, but in sensation. Images. Echoes.
"REMNANT SIGNAL... LOCATED."
The voice was mechanical, yet ancient. Alive, but hollow. It reverberated in Kael's skull.
"Fall back!" Jax yelled, dragging Bren to his feet.
Syra stood her ground, eyes glowing faintly. "No. This is a Gate Core. It's from before the Shatter."
Kael walked toward it, ignoring the protests of the others.
The Core pulsed again, scanning him.
"AUTHORITY SIGNATURE DETECTED: PARALLEL CODE KAEL V. ETHRAN."
The world seemed to stop.
"What did it call you?" Bren asked, stunned.
Kael's mouth was dry. "Ethran. That's… that was my family's name before they were erased from the registries. I never told anyone."
Syra's eyes widened. "Kael… this thing isn't just old tech. It's part of the Echo Net. The real one."
The Gate Core hovered lower, and a platform extended toward Kael like an invitation.
He stepped forward.
---
Inside the Core, time stretched like thread across a loom. Kael's body felt distant, his mind connected to a spiral of memories not entirely his own. He saw flashes—his mother's face, crying out as shadows consumed their home… a child's lullaby in a language he didn't know… and then a corridor of stars, where countless other versions of himself walked infinite paths.
A voice returned. Not the same as the last. This one was softer, almost familiar.
"You are not the first Kael. But you are the one chosen."
He saw battles across timelines. Realms that bled into each other. A version of himself that became a weapon. Another who fled until the end. Another… who built a new world from ruins.
"Fate fractures to reveal truth. Echoes bind what time forgets. You are the fracture. You are the tether."
Kael reached out instinctively, and a shard of the Core detached, embedding itself in his fate-seal. His vision darkened.
---
He woke to the sound of Bren's voice.
"Kael! Hey, buddy, you with us?"
Kael blinked, gasping as he sat up. He was outside the Core. It was gone—crumbled into mist and stone.
Syra knelt beside him, eyes full of concern. "You disappeared for hours. Maybe longer. What happened?"
Kael sat up slowly, the new symbol now etched into his collarbone burning faintly. "I saw… everything. Or maybe possibilities of everything."
Jax frowned. "And?"
"They're watching us. All of us. Something in the void beyond the Echo. Not just the Null Concord. Something older. It's moving through the fractures in time. Hunting anomalies."
Syra nodded solemnly. "And we're the biggest anomalies this world's ever seen."
Kael stood, his voice steady. "Then we find the next gate. We wake the rest. We unify the echoes."
Bren grinned faintly. "That's vague and terrifying. I'm in."
Jax gave a rare smirk. "About time we got a proper fight."
Syra looked to the stars. "Then we move east. To the Obsidian Teeth. That's where the next signal rises."
Kael tightened the strap of his cloak, his gaze sharp.
The war hadn't started yet.
But the storm had begun.