Dawn came sickly to Vel'Thara, the sun straining through ash-choked skies like a dying ember. Raka rolled his shoulders, testing the limits of his borrowed body as the suppression team assembled in the courtyard. The scout's muscles trembled. Too green, too weak for the Seed festering in his chest. But they'd hold. They had to.
"You look like shit," Sylva observed, tossing him a canteen.
Raka caught it one-handed. "Feel worse." The water tasted of iron and yesterday's battles. He spat onto the cracked stones, watching the liquid darken as it seeped between the fractures. Like blood. Like memory.
Kael's boots crunched on the debris as he approached. "Eastern vault's our priority. Tiv's scanners picked up a new glyph cluster. Different pattern." He handed Raka a pulsating crystal. "Suppression charge. Plant it at the epicenter."
The crystal throbbed in Raka's palm, its rhythm out of sync with the Seed in his chest.
"Papa, don't go!"
The child's whisper slithered through his thoughts. He gritted his teeth. "Not now". But his borrowed body reacted anyway. His muscles tensed. His fist clenched until the crystal's edges bit into flesh.
Claire noticed. "Problem?"
"Just … No, nothing." Raka lied, deciding not to talk it out.
Looking at it, Sylva grinned like a wolf ready for a hunt.
"About time I can do something fun again," she muttered.
Claire, organizing gear nearby, smirked.
"You bet. You've been busy all this time baby-sitting those new recruits, Sylva."
"Yeah. Now I can relax my nerves." Sylva laughed.
"Just don't overdo it. Else you'll get yourself killed." Kael cut in. Half reminding half joking.
The Breach
The eastern vault door loomed before them, its iron surface etched with pulsating Spiral glyphs that throbbed like an infected wound. Raka pressed his palm against the cold metal, feeling the vibrations beneath. Wrongness given form. The suppression charge strapped to his thigh hummed in discord with the Seed buried in his chest, two opposing heartbeats warring beneath his ribs.
"Last chance to turn back," Claire muttered, testing the edge of her dagger against her thumb. A thin line of blood welled up. Her blood sizzled as it hit the floor, the droplets hissing like wet fingers on a griddle.
Kael adjusted his flame-gauntlet, the metal plates clicking like a deathwatch beetle. His other hand absently touched the cracked insignia at his belt. It's Lorr's sigil, salvaged from the old master's armor. "Tiv. Final scan."
The engineer's lenses whirred, projecting a holographic map that flickered like a dying firefly. "Resonance at 89%. It's not just growing. It's memorizing our Ki signatures. That door's"
The door ruptured. Iron shrieked as it peeled apart, and Raka barely raised an arm in time. black tendrils whipped through the smoke, embedding in stone with wet thunks. When the dust settled, the vault yawned before them: a cathedral of frozen moments.
Hundreds of amber-hued spheres floated in the cavernous space, each containing a suspended fragment of time:
- A silver-haired woman sparring in a sunlit courtyard, her movements precise as a razor's edge
- A child happily drawing in her sketchbook, cheerful smile in her cute face.
- A burning city reflected in a dozen pairs of eyes, each reflection slightly different
"Don't touch the spheres," Raka warned, but Sylva was already reaching out.
Sylva's fingertips grazed the sphere.
- Laughter, bright as blade-steel, a silver-haired woman spinning with a practice sword.
- A child's sticky fingers pressing a scribbled drawing into her palm.
- The coppery stench of a battlefield, so sharp Sylva's throat clenched.
She wrenched backward, chest heaving. The sphere's surface rippled where she'd touched it, distorting the woman's face. Stretching her smile too wide.
"Sylva staggered back, wiping her hand on her thigh like she'd touched rot. The sphere's surface rippled, the woman's smile stretching ear-to-ear. Too many teeth, too many eyes.
"They're not just memories," she rasped. "They're hungry. And they remember us."
Tiv adjusted his cracked lenses. "It's Preserved memories. The Spiral's using them as anchors to..."
Then every sphere shattered at once.
Echoes Awaken
Memory-fluid flooded the chamber as the preserved figures twitched to life.
The silver-haired woman's practice strike became a killing blow.
The child's joyful smile while drawing, now wore a creepy grin as she revealed her artwork. Smoke slowly seeped from the paper, black and oily, coiling into something ominous.
The burning city reflections moved within their eyes.
"Suppression positions!" Kael's flame roared to life, casting monstrous shadows on the walls.
Raka's body moved before he could think. The dead scout's muscle memory guiding him as he ducked under the woman's sword. Their blades met with a shower of sparks.
For a heartbeat, he saw her face clearly:
Crescent-shaped scar. Sharp cheekbones. And then her eyes. She resembles someone he knew.
"Big brother," the echo whispered through rotting lips.
Raka froze. The words struck like a blade to the ribs. His grip faltered just for a heartbeat but the echo didn't miss its chance."
---
The air ripped. One of the burning city spheres burst, and the berserker staggered free. Charred muscle clinging to bone, its jaw unhinged in a silent scream. It lurched forward, joints bending like a puppet with cut strings. Every step sent charred flesh sloughing off bone, but it didn't slow. Couldn't slow.
Kael's flame roared. The fire caught its body, but the thing didn't stop. It never stopped. Just swung its blackened axe. Sylva barely parried; the impact slammed her into the wall. Stone cracked behind her skull.
"Fuck," she spat, blood on her teeth. "Tiv, tell me you've got a weak spot!"
Core Revelation
At the chamber's heart pulsed a grotesque fusion of flesh and glyphs:
- Crescent moons overlapping like phases
- Serpents biting their own tails in perfect loops
- A face pressing against the membrane (lips moving soundlessly)
This is the bridge Tiv had warned of. But these weren't random corruptions; the patterns formed deliberate crescents and serpents.
This is actually the woman's marks. Sereth.
Claire mercilessly pinned a child-shaped echo to the wall, her dagger at its throat. "I'm ready!" She yelled. The sketchbook was thrown away somewhere.
"I'm not" Sylva yelled back. She was busy fighting the berserker with Kael. They are overwhelmed by the berserker.
The core membrane bulged. A face pressed against it. Sereth's true face. Her mouth forming silent words:
"Break the cycle."
The words vibrated in his bones. The Seed in his chest burned in response, as if agreeing.
Raka plunged the suppression crystal into the pulsing mass.
The Price
White fire. Pain so vast it became color.
Then… nothing.
Raka woke to the taste of copper and the stench of his own burning flesh. The vault's ceiling swam above him, half-collapsed. Someone was dragging him by his collar.
"whole sector's unstable!"
"can't hold the corridor"
His charred fingers still clutched the crescent dagger, its edge gleaming unnaturally clean.
Alive. Again.
But as Kael hauled him to his feet, Raka heard what the others didn't. A child's whisper from beneath the rubble:
"Papa…?"
The voice was real. And it was right behind him.