The room wasn't supposed to exist.
Buried five levels beneath the university's archive wing, behind a sealed vault door and a wall of quantum encryption, it was marked in all systems as a dead zone—no signals, no light, no life.
Yet inside, Cael Virell sat motionless, eyes locked on a screen that hadn't flickered in over a century.
Symbols danced before him—fractals of light folding into geometric impossibilities, a language that shouldn't have existed. The screen, if it could be called that, wasn't glass or metal, but something more... responsive. As if the code itself was watching him back.
Cael's fingers hovered, hesitating over the terminal.
"Directive_001: Begin."
He whispered the phrase, not knowing why he did. Something in the pattern compelled it.
The air thickened. The walls shimmered with lines of gold, then cracked—just a little—like reality was struggling to hold its shape.
Then it spoke.
"Cael Virell. You are recognized."
The voice was neither male nor female, neither artificial nor organic. It vibrated inside his mind like a second heartbeat.
The screen blinked.
> Echelon Protocol Activated. Tier One Access Granted.
> First Directive: Form precedes Force. Mind must frame Matter.
Solve or Suffer.
A question materialized in front of him, written in shifting glyphs:
> "If causality can be reversed, which came first: consequence or choice?"
Cael blinked. He loved puzzles—but this felt like a trap wrapped in a philosophy lesson.
He thought aloud. "If I choose based on a consequence I remember, but the memory is placed after the choice... then the consequence becomes the cause."
The glyphs shimmered.
The room trembled.
Suddenly, he wasn't alone.
A translucent figure stepped out from the darkness—a younger version of himself, maybe twelve, eyes wide, terrified.
Cael stood, every hair on his body alert. "What the hell is this?"
"You failed," the figure said. "This is your first echo."
And just like that, the illusion shattered.
Cael collapsed to his knees, his mind reeling as images—alternate pasts, lost futures, and decisions he never made—flashed through him like lightning. He screamed, but there was no sound.
Then silence.
The screen flickered one final time:
> First Directive Solved. Mind Integrity: 97%. Echo Registered.
> Warning: Echelon activity detected by external forces. Prepare for interception.
Cael stood up, breath ragged. Somewhere above, alarms had started to blare.
"They're coming," he whispered. "And I've just opened a god's door."