Chapter 7: The Echo Below
The sirens started just after dusk.
Downtown New Bastion—normally choked with nightlife and neon—was suddenly wrapped in chaos. Power outages rippled down block after block, lights sputtering like dying stars. People screamed. Glass shattered.
Rayven was in the cathedral's belfry when the pulse hit.
Not a sound.
A thrum—deep in the bones.
He staggered back, clutching the edge of the railing. The gauntlet on his arm lit up like lightning trapped in steel, the veins in his skin glowing silver-blue.
Selene rushed in, blades already strapped to her thighs. "Did you feel that?"
"Hard not to," Rayven grunted. "That was no tremor."
She tossed him a jacket and nodded toward the city. "Vein tunnel rupture. Something's clawing up."
By the time they reached the site, half the block had already been evacuated. Police cordons kept civilians back—but the ground itself had split in two, a wide crater opening in the center of the street like a festering wound.
From deep inside the chasm, a strange hum echoed—low, wet, vibrating with static and madness.
Rayven stepped to the edge.
Selene held him back. "Don't get too close. You're resonating hard. Whatever's down there is reacting to you."
Then came the voice.
"Heir…"
It wasn't spoken aloud.
It was whispered into Rayven's mind.
He froze. "Did you hear that?"
Selene looked at him. "Hear what?"
Rayven stepped closer. The voice was clearer now—groaning, mechanical, layered with something that sounded like grief.
"Come down… Forgotten one…"
Against Selene's warning, Rayven jumped into the crater.
The fall wasn't far—ten, maybe fifteen feet. But the second his boots hit the bottom, the world shifted.
He stood in what looked like a subterranean platform, cracked and ancient, runes glowing along the edges.
Pipes hissed steam. The air was thick with metallic dust. Old tunnels split off in every direction, pulsing faintly like veins under skin.
Then it emerged.
Lurching from the shadows—a twisted amalgam of flesh and broken armor, its spine arched like a scorpion's tail, crystal fused into what remained of its skull. One arm was metallic, jointed with gears. The other—a mass of writhing tendrils.
But its face—
Rayven gasped.
It looked like him.
Like a mangled, decayed version of his own face, cracked in places, eyes glowing dead-blue.
It hissed again, staggering forward.
"Forgotten… yet marked… again…"
Rayven lifted his hand. The gauntlet responded, bursting with radiant blue flame.
"Who the hell are you?"
The creature shuddered. "I was… once your shadow… before the seal… before the betrayal… I remember you…"
Rayven blasted it without hesitation.
The veinfire hit the monster like a tidal wave—sending it crashing into the tunnel wall, howling.
Selene dropped in behind him, swords already drawn. "Guess we're not talking anymore."
But Rayven wasn't so sure. His hand trembled—not from fear, but from recognition.
This thing was connected to him. He could feel it in his blood.
The creature lunged, its voice rasping.
"Buried city… stirs… all will awaken…"
Then, it exploded in a burst of static—its body disintegrating into metallic shards and dust. Gone.
Selene shielded her face. When the light died, nothing remained.
Just silence.
And that terrible hum beneath their feet.
Back at the cathedral, Rayven sat on the edge of the altar, staring at his reflection in a polished blade.
"That thing had my face."
Selene closed the door behind her. "It was an Echo Shade—remnant of a fragmented soul. Probably twisted by the Core's decay."
"It knew me. Called me Forgotten."
Selene looked tired now. "Because that's what you were. Your bloodline was erased from history. Your name struck from the records. The Core remembers only pieces."
He stared at her. "Then who betrayed me? In the memories? What happened to the last heir?"
Selene didn't speak for a long moment.
Then, softly: "He was consumed by the city's heart. The Core bound to his soul—but his mind shattered. That creature may have been a reflection of what he became. Or what you might become."
Rayven clenched his fists. "Not happening."
But even as he said it, he remembered the flicker in the mirror.
The armor.
The ash throne.
What if part of him was already breaking?
Far away, in a darkened room beneath Eastgate University, Rhea Vale watched the entire fight on her obsidian crystal lens.
Her golden eyes narrowed.
"He saw his Echo. And survived."
She touched the crystal.
"Activate Protocol Twelve. Begin phase two."
From the shadows behind her, several cloaked figures stepped into view—each with glowing sigils carved into their necks.
They bowed.
And the Watcher Order moved.