The descent felt like drowning in stone.
Ren's breath steamed in the frozen dark as the lift groaned beneath him, lowering into the bowels of Vel-Kareth. Walls of dead alloy slid past, engraved with sigils that pulsed as he passed, like eyes watching from behind ice.
"Vault Depth: 140 meters. Ambient corruption: 72%. Warning: Threshold breach imminent."
The System's voice had grown quieter lately. Not softer—just more distant. As if it, too, was being hunted.
Ren clenched the relic shard tighter in his hand, its edges warm against his skin. His brands itched beneath his jacket—sickly purple veins glowing faintly along his arms like spider cracks in glass.
Something's down here. Something old.
The lift shuddered, then halted with a sharp clunk.
The door peeled open like a scab.
Cold air oozed in. It smelled like regret and static.
The chamber beyond was vast—a hollowed-out cathedral beneath the city's bones. Columns of fossilized steel stretched to unseen heights, flanked by suspended cages of memory-glass, each housing ghost-flickers of forgotten people.
Some wept.
Some screamed.
Some just stared at him with hollow, knowing eyes.
"Welcome to Vault IX. Repository of broken legacies," the System whispered.
"Accessing: Codename GHOST VAULT."
Ren stepped forward. The echo of his boots sounded wrong—delayed, fractured. Time was thin here. Wounded.
In the center of the room stood an altar of obsidian and chrome, humming softly. Embedded in its surface was a core module shaped like a heart, pulsing with a heartbeat not his own.
"Legacy Interface detected. Host Calder, Ren: Authorization marginal. Soulburn stability: 42%."
"WARNING: Core interface may overwrite neural continuity."
Ren exhaled. "That's not the worst thing that's happened to me today."
He touched the module.
The vault screamed.
—
MEMORY DIVE: ENTRY 34 – OBSIDIAN REVELATION
"We were never meant to survive."
"The Echoborn were prototypes. Host shells for divinity. Failed gods wearing human skin."
"But Calder… he remembered too much."
Flashes:
A tower bleeding from its foundation.
Ren as a child, staring at a glass-eyed corpse calling itself Father.
The world fracturing as something inside him screamed: I REMEMBER EVERYTHING.
—
Ren staggered back, gasping. The brands on his arms flared white-hot.
His vision blurred. For a moment, he was everywhere: the forests, the city, the skyless prison-labs—all echoing with one name—
Calder.
"You were one of the first," the System said. "A failed godseed. But even failures leave scars."
[NEW PROTOCOL UNLOCKED: Echo Trigger — Burn a stored memory to unleash a soulburst. Limit: 1/day.]
Something shifted behind him.
A cage creaked open.
Ren turned slowly.
The glass had shattered. Its former occupant stood in the open air—tall, emaciated, wearing a hospital gown stitched from shadow.
Its face was his.
But older. Gaunter. With eyes full of things that never happened… or hadn't happened yet.
"Hello, Ren," it rasped, voice like razors dragged over old vinyl.
"I remember us differently."
Ren raised the shard. "You're a ghost."
It smiled. "Not quite. I'm the memory of who you were supposed to be. Before you broke protocol. Before you started remembering."
"System override detected."
"WARNING: Echoform breach. Probability of identity collapse—64%."
The Echo-Other stepped forward. Every movement shimmered like oil on water, as if the laws of reality barely tolerated its existence.
"I can show you the truth," it hissed.
"Let me in."
Ren's grip faltered. The shard pulsed, confused. Part of him wanted to drop it. Let the memory in. Be whole.
But the rest remembered—
The screams.
The way the sky wept light.
The way he burned.
"No," he growled.
He ran.
—
The vault corridor erupted into madness behind him—glass shattering, voices screaming in fractured dialects.
The Echo-Other chased him down twisting halls, rooms warped by half-loaded memories.
A classroom where all the children bled from the eyes.
A bedroom where a boy carved sigils into his skin to stop the dreams.
A morgue where all the corpses had his face.
He skidded around a corner—
—and slammed into a metal door stenciled in blood:
PROJECT: ECHOCHILD
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
It hissed open at his touch. No System prompt. No warning.
Just silence.
Inside: a small, sterile room with a single stasis pod. Dust coated everything.
On the far wall, in cracked red paint:
YOU WERE NEVER MEANT TO WAKE.
He stepped toward the pod.
Inside:
A child.
Maybe ten years old.
Asleep, but twitching—brands already glowing faintly on his tiny arms.
Ren's throat closed. "That's…"
"A backup," said the System quietly. "They planned for failure. If you broke containment, they'd regrow you. Start over."
Ren clenched his fists. "Erase it."
Silence.
Then:
"Confirmed."
The pod whined—then shut down. The light inside faded to black.
Outside, the Echo-Other shrieked in frustration—its access severed. It was collapsing, losing form.
"You erased what you could've been," it whispered from beyond the door.
"You're hollow now."
Ren touched the wall, the dead pod still warm. "Good."
[ECHOFORM EXILED. Core stability: +12%]
[Corruption reduced: 38% → 31%]
[Soulfire potential increased.]
He turned, walking back toward the vault's exit as the memory-glass cages flickered, then winked out one by one.
—
As he ascended, the lift groaned beneath his weight—but the world above felt quieter.
Less broken.
But not safe.
Never safe.
"Next waypoint acquired," the System said. "Sector: Glass Wastes."
"Objective: Seek the Archivist. She remembers how this all began."
Ren looked up through the lift shaft, the bruised light of Vel-Kareth bleeding through the cracks.
His voice was low.
Raw.
"Then let's dig up some more graves."