The lab fell silent after Kael's words. The broken terminals flickered.
Dust hung heavy in the air. Vega crossed her arms, leaning against a cracked pillar, her expression unreadable.
"Ghost or not," she finally said, "you've shaken the system's foundations. That echo… whatever it was, it was tethered to something ancient. Deeper than anything we've cataloged before."
Kael stared at the floor where the echo of Lysandra had once stood. Only faint shimmer-trails remained, pulsing and then vanishing into the void.
" I don't think she was just trying to replace the system," Kael muttered. "She was trying to rewrite it in her image.
No limits. No failures. No ghosts."
Niko sat against a nearby wall, pulling his knees to his chest. "Is it over?"
Terryl shook his head. "Not by a long shot."
A dull tremor ran through the facility. Vega tapped her data-glove, opening a localized scan.
Her eyes narrowed. "We've got activity—Rift bleed from the Sub-Core. It's unstable. The rupture may not have sealed cleanly."
Kael stood, his jaw tightening. "I thought we collapsed it."
"We did," Vega said. "But echoes aren't bound by time the way we are. A strong enough remnant can regenerate. Worse—someone could salvage it."
Terryl's expression darkened. "You think someone was watching?"
"I'd bet my last override key on it," Vega replied.
Kael turned toward the cracked entrance of the lab. "Then we clean it up."
"You just fought off an echo entity that could rewrite code," Vega said. "And now you want to go back in?"
Kael's system screen flickered behind his eyes.
[SYSTEM STATUS: ECHO PROTOCOL – STABLE]
[New Echo Detected: Sigma—Corrupted Architect]
[Skill Fragment Extracted: Recursive Override (Locked)]
[Processing Soul Residue…]
He could feel it. A ghost trace of her still lingered in him, coiled like smoke in his veins. Lysandra might've shattered, but pieces of her lived on—in him.
The Echo Protocol had absorbed something far more dangerous than data. It had absorbed will.
"I don't want to go back," Kael said finally. "But if we leave it, it spreads."
Terryl cracked his knuckles. "Then let's finish the job."The ruined zone outside was eerily still.
Riftlight danced along the debris, casting fractured shadows. Vega brought up a projection of the rupture site.
The Sub-Core had caved, but a tendril of corrupted system code was still leaking—like a vein that refused to close.
They traveled on foot, through what remained of the Forbidden Sector. The sky shimmered unnaturally, time-stutter anomalies freezing moments midair. A shattered Rift Beast hung motionless overhead, still caught mid-roar.
Niko walked beside Kael, quiet.
"She was wrong, wasn't she?" he asked. "Lysandra. About the system."
Kael nodded slowly. "Yeah. But she was also right about one thing—it's breaking. Just not the way she thought."
"I liked what you said," Niko added. "About letting it die."
Kael stopped walking. His reflection stared back at him from a twisted shard of glass embedded in a wall—flickering, almost glitching.
"I didn't mean the whole system," he admitted. "I meant the version of it that lets people like us fall through the cracks. The one that decides who lives and dies by a scan."
"You're going to rewrite it too, aren't you?" Niko asked.
Kael didn't answer. But his silence said enough.At the rupture site, they found it—an anomaly the size of a human heart, pulsing in and out of phase with reality. Runes shimmered around it, stitched with corrupted glyphs.
Vega whistled. "That's no natural bleed. It's a memory core."
Kael stepped closer. The anomaly pulsed in sync with his Echo Protocol.
[Echo Core Detected]
[Do you wish to integrate?]
[WARNING: Unstable Soul Signature Detected]
Terryl frowned. "This might be what Lysandra used to anchor herself. A leftover node."
"Or a seed," Vega added. "For someone else to pick up where she left off."
Kael narrowed his eyes. He could hear a whisper. Not Lysandra's voice—but something older. Deeper. Like a shadow beneath the code.
"I'll handle it," he said.
Vega stepped in front of him. "No. Not like last time. You almost burned out."
"I have to. The Protocol is the only system that can absorb something this corrupted without turning it loose."
Vega held his gaze, then sighed. "We'll anchor you. But if you start slipping—"
"Pull me out," Kael finished. "Got it."
He stepped into the glyph ring, and the Echo Core flared to life. The moment his hand touched it, a shockwave pulsed outward, freezing time around them for a split second.
Kael's vision inverted.[Welcome to the Soul Archive.]
He was standing in a white void, shaped like a cathedral made of data. Pillars of code spiraled upward. In the center, a chair.
Occupied.
A man sat there, dressed in layered system robes. His face flickered between a dozen identities.
"You're not supposed to be here," the figure said. "But then again… neither was I."
Kael stepped forward. "Who are you?"
"An old failure," the man replied. "First host of the Protocol. Before it had a name."
Kael froze. "You're the original Echo Reaper."
The man smiled. "I was a reaper. The system called me Project Anima. They made me to clean up the ghosts. But I became one."
He stood, walking slowly toward Kael.
"You're further than I ever got. Lysandra ? She was just the echo of the Architect.
One of the old system designers. She was trying to restore what broke. You… you're building something new."
Kael clenched his fists. "How do I stop it from consuming me?"
"You don't," the man said. "You learn to live with the scream."
He placed a hand on Kael's chest.
[Skill Unlocked: Recursive Override – Echo Class]
[Passive: Immune to system corruption under critical stress]
[Active: Can reset corrupted abilities to stable state]
[WARNING: Use at risk of soul instability]
Kael blinked—and the man was gone.He gasped back into reality, falling to one knee. The Echo Core had crumbled into dust.
Vega rushed forward. "You okay?!"
Kael nodded. "Yeah. I saw him."
"Who?" Terryl asked.
"The first one," Kael replied. "The first ghost."
He stood, a strange calm settling over him.
"It's over. For now."
Vega scanned the site. "Residual code's stable. No more bleed."
Kael looked to the horizon. Riftlight danced there—silent, hungry, endless.
Niko tugged at his sleeve. "Where to now?"
Kael smiled faintly. "Forward."