The sky above was artificial—fractured moonlight filtered through torn clouds like dying code. The skyscrapers groaned as if alive, breathing with decayed machine lungs.
Kael moved first.
"Spread out. Formation Delta," he commanded.
They didn't question him anymore. Not after what they'd faced in the Archive, not after the Construct, and definitely not after they saw the Axis shift reality itself.
Dren drew his rune-forged blade, eyes scanning. "So, what are these things?"
Kael answered without looking.
"Echoes. Not real beings. Memory threads corrupted by entropy. They're not just hostile—they're systemic."
Zarith was trembling.
"I can feel their thoughts," he whispered. "They're repeating… looping… screaming about a world that fell."
From the shattered metro station ahead, the echoes emerged.
Humanoid… but wrong. Glassy eyes. Limbs jointed at the wrong places. Armor fused with bone and algorithm. They shimmered—half fading, like glitched holograms forced into physical form.
"Contact incoming," Tessia said, daggers drawn.
They didn't roar. They didn't speak. They attacked in perfect, silent synchronization.
The first one reached Kael—and he didn't move. A rune flared at his feet, deflecting the blow like water bending around stone. He reached out and touched its head.
In that instant, Kael saw a thousand fractured moments:
– A child hiding beneath collapsed towers.– A man screaming into a screen that no longer worked.– A soldier dying under a broken moon, whispering, "They're not coming. It's just us now."
Kael tore his hand back. The echo crumbled into dust.
He turned to the others. "They're not enemies. They're… warnings."
Sera fired her crossbow. Another echo disintegrated. "Well, they hit like enemies."
Tessia dodged and stabbed two in a blur. "Any plan?"
"Yes," Kael said, walking forward. "We reach the Citadel at the city's heart. That's where the Axis houses the thread-source. The shard will align with it."
Zarith stopped cold. "You mean the thing that's rewriting this space?"
Kael nodded. "And the only thing that can open the path to the next fragment."
They sprinted through memory-ruins—ruined shops where still-flickering holograms sold coffee to no one, streets paved with fused bones and data, metro cars sliced by time anomalies.
Eventually, they reached the center.
The Citadel rose like a spire made of compressed failure—mirrors, iron, and obsidian. Pulsing with the same black-blue energy as Kael's shard.
Guards awaited them.
Not echoes.
Real projections.
Twisted protectors forged from ancient realities—a knight clad in red starsteel. A serpent of shattered glass. A woman who looked like Elira Vein, but with no eyes and golden circuitry instead of veins.
The Citadel spoke.
"The Earth was broken. Its children were denied transcendence."
"You carry the spark of recursion."
"One of you must remain behind."
Kael stepped forward.
"No. We all go through."
The ground split.
Challenge accepted.
[ END OF CHAPTER 22 ]