The air shimmered.
Kael had barely walked a hundred steps from the fallen dome when the bottle pulsed again.
But this time—
It didn't glow.
It resonated.
Not into the world.
Into him.
His vision blurred.
Not with heat.
But with presence.
A thread unfolded across the ground—thin, silver, pulsing in rhythm with his breath.
The bottle vibrated softly.
And a single line appeared across its surface:
"Echo Line detected."
Kael knelt.
Touched the thread.
It was warm.
Not physically—
but in thought.
Like someone had left their voice in the dirt.
A pulse shot through him.
He stumbled forward.
Fell.
And entered something else.
He stood in a desert.
But not one he knew.
Glass instead of sand.
A horizon made of lines.
And in the center—
a figure.
The same figure he'd seen before.
Tall.
Still.
Cloaked.
Holding a bottle that flickered like a dying star.
But this time—
they turned.
A voice entered his mind.
Not loud.
Not sharp.
But layered.
As if several thoughts were trying to say the same thing.
"Witness. Node. Carrier."
"They all chose names. None mattered."
"We are what's left after names fade."
Kael stepped closer.
"You… you left this line."
The figure nodded once.
Then raised their bottle.
It pulsed.
And Kael's pulsed in return.
"One line. One echo.
You hear me now because I forgot how not to be heard."
"They erased me. But the bottle remembers."
Kael's hands shook.
"What do you want?"
Silence.
Then:
"To see if you break where I did."
The world rippled.
The Echo Line fragmented—
shards of silver light pulled upward into the bottle.
Kael collapsed back into his body.
He gasped.
Looked around.
The thread on the ground had vanished.
But the bottle now glowed faint blue beneath its emerald circuits.
A dual resonance.
Temporary.
But real.
Kael stood.
His heart heavy.
His breath unsteady.
He had heard something not meant to remain.
Not meant to return.
But it had.
And it was waiting.
Somewhere ahead.