It began with singing.
Not the melodic kind, but something deeper, more primordial. Vibrations that shifted the air itself. Elias stood at the base of a fractured tower, where windows blinked open and closed like eyelids. Inside, shadows moved like swimmers behind mirrored glass. It was a place no one had mentioned. A place Rae found in a dream she couldn't remember having.
They called it The Echo Mass.
No map marked its location, yet the rebels whispered of it as if it had always been there. Yshari warned him not to enter. "The tower doesn't take visitors," she said. "It remembers. And if it remembers you, it won't let go."
But Rae was already walking toward it. She didn't even hesitate.
Elias followed.
Inside, the world bent.
The first step was easy. The second pulled like molasses. By the fifth, he could hear his own heartbeat replaying half a second behind itself, off-beat and late.
And above him: a choir.
Dozens, no, hundreds of voices, all speaking at once. Some screamed. Some begged. Some simply repeated mundane phrases like incantations.
"No, I didn't mean to—"
"This is the only way—"
"He's not ready. Not yet."
They weren't recordings.
They were memories. Ghosts of choice. Echoes of choices never made. Some belonged to Elias. Most didn't.
At the center of the chamber, Rae stood with her back to him. She was watching the ceiling or what passed for one.
A massive shape floated above them. Circular. Metallic. Organic.It pulsed in time with the choir. A relic, but not like the others. This one wasn't dead. It breathed.
And when Elias stepped closer, it spoke.
"DO NOT CALL ME RELIC. I AM NOT DEAD YET."
He froze.
The voice came not from the relic, but from Rae. Her mouth moved with the words, but her eyes didn't shift.
"YOU ARE WALKER. YOU ARE LEAK. YOU ARE FRACTURE."
Elias stepped forward. "Let her go."
"SHE IS THE ECHO. SHE IS THE THREAD. YOU FOLLOW HER, ALWAYS. YOU NEVER ASK WHY."
Rae turned, and Elias gasped. Her face had become a prism, split into three layers, like slices of time. One Rae looked seventeen, another older, worn, scarred. The third was something else, eyes black as burnt glass.
And all three spoke together.
"WE REMEMBER. YOU DO NOT."
The floor shuddered.
Elias staggered back as walls peeled open like petals. Behind them were screens, all blank, except for one. It showed an image of Rae and Elias, far younger, sitting in a lab surrounded by unfinished cipher diagrams.
A timestamp in the corner read:[PROJECT ECHO: YEAR -2]
Elias's chest tightened.
There had never been a "Year -2."
Their first Leap had been Year 0. The codex was developed after.
So what was this?
Then Rae, the one with glass eyes, whispered:
"We've done this before. This tower. This city. This moment."
The choir roared.
He turned and saw them.
Hundreds of versions of himself, reflected in mirrored shards along the wall. Some older. Some younger. One with a missing arm. One with Rae's name carved into his chest. Another wearing the robes of the Watcher.
All stared at him in perfect synchrony.
All said the same thing:
"She never leaves. You always make her stay."
Elias stumbled backward. The tower reacted.
Lights flared. Sound dropped away. The only sensation left was the vibration of Rae's voice in his bones.
"The Echo Mass was never built. It was grown, from guilt. From recursion. From trying to save her too many times."
"And every time you leap, Elias, she unravels a little more."
He looked up. The metallic sphere—the living relic—descended.
But it no longer pulsed like a heart.
It opened like an eye.
And inside was no machine.
No relic.
Just Rae's face. Staring out. Trapped. Fractured. Timeless.
Yshari pulled him from the tower hours later.
He hadn't spoken. Hadn't blinked.
He just kept whispering a name.
"Project Echo. Project Echo. Project Echo…"
Yshari slapped him hard. His mind snapped back.
"What did you see?" she asked. "What happened in there?"
Elias stared at her.
Then at Rae, who stood silently beside them, her eyes normal again. But her hands were bleeding. In her palms, she had carved three spirals, the same symbol worn by the Order of Glass.
Except Rae had never seen them before.
Or so she claimed.
That night, Elias wrote a message in his codex and burned the paper after:
"I think the Watcher didn't create Rae.I think I did."