The dome gate hissed open with a hydraulic groan, revealing a staircase descending into the underground sector beneath Elyssia's main grid.
Sector 7A — once a research wing, now long-abandoned.
At least, that's what they told the students.
Ash, Elaine, Tarek, and three others stood at the threshold, their uniforms enhanced with field layers: mana-threaded boots, spirit-screen gloves, and one-time-use energy flares strapped to their belts.
Instructor Halren stood with them, arms crossed.
"This exercise is simple," he said. "Move through the corridor. Collect five energy cores from inactive drones stored inside. Mark your group safe and return. No combat. Minimal risk. These old labs are disconnected from the living grid."
Tarek swallowed hard. "Minimal risk always means maximum creepy."
Elaine smirked faintly. "You'll be fine."
Ash said nothing.
But he was already listening.
And the silence beneath them was not clean.
---
The stairs descended into dimness. No lights. Only the faint blue of their belt torches pulsing against the steel walls.
Ash took the lead.
No one questioned it. Even Halren didn't object.
It was like he belonged ahead.
"Smells stale," Tarek muttered behind him.
Ash said nothing.
He didn't smell dust.
He smelled echo.
And something colder.
---
The group passed rusted security doors and shattered monitors. Strange glyphs scrawled in an older dialect ran along the walls — instructions for spirit-wave calibration, bio-energy neutralization.
Elaine's eyes scanned everything.
"So much of this has been wiped from the upper system," she whispered. "Like it never existed."
Ash stopped.
Up ahead, a room stood open — wider than the others. Broken machines, surgical beds, containment pods.
But at the center…
A stone obelisk. Small. Barely a meter high. Covered in black vines that seemed to breathe slightly.
Elaine's breath caught.
"That's not tech," she said quietly. "It's… soul-grown."
Ash stepped closer.
The others hung back.
And then — the obelisk reacted.
Its surface shimmered once. Not with light — but with absence.
Then a shape unfurled from within it.
A figure.
Small.
Human-shaped.
But wrong.
Its body was made of fragmented spirit — shredded soul-energy, barely stitched together. Its face was blurred, as if forgotten even by itself.
A soul echo.
A remnant of a person who should have moved on — but hadn't.
Elaine gasped. "Those don't exist anymore. The Order purged them centuries ago."
Ash stared at it.
It hovered still. Breathing. Watching.
Then it whispered something:
> "Why… did you forget me?"
Ash blinked.
And for a second — just a second — he saw something behind the echo.
A memory.
---
—A man in a silver coat.
—Screaming.
—Being erased, not killed.
—Saying a name.
His own name.
> "Ash…"
---
The vision shattered.
Ash staggered slightly, catching himself on the edge of the obelisk.
Elaine was already moving toward him. "What did you see?"
Ash looked at the echo again.
Its body was collapsing.
Falling apart.
Returning to silence.
"I didn't see anything," he said.
Elaine narrowed her eyes. "That's a lie."
Tarek was staring at the now-faded ghost, pale-faced.
"What was that thing?"
Ash turned away.
"Let's collect the cores."
---
They moved on, no one speaking for a while.
Each of them found an inactive drone in various rooms — husks covered in dust and code scarring. They retrieved the cores — smooth, fist-sized crystal nodes.
Only Ash paused when he touched his.
Because the crystal hummed in his palm.
Not with mana.
But with resistance.
It flickered once.
Then stopped.
Like it recognized him.
And chose silence.
---
They returned to the surface without incident.
But Halren's expression shifted when he scanned the cores.
One glowed faint black instead of blue.
He looked at Ash.
Said nothing.
Just nodded and walked away.
---
That night, Ash sat beneath the tree in the orphanage courtyard.
The scythe inside him felt restless.
He opened the black book again.
> Page Seven:
> "The echoes are not gone.
They sleep beneath false peace.
When the world forgot death,
it forgot the ones
who died last."
Ash closed the book.
Felt the wind shift.
And turned.
Elaine stood behind him.
Silent.
Watching.
---
"You felt it," she said softly. "That soul echo."
"Yes."
"You didn't react."
"I listened."
She sat beside him.
Uninvited.
He didn't stop her.
"Most people scream the first time they see one," she said. "Even Order agents."
"I'm not most people."
She glanced sideways at him.
"No," she said. "You're not."
Silence.
Then:
"What are you really?"
Ash looked at the stars above the dome.
"I don't know."
"That's a lie."
He didn't answer.
But she saw it in his eyes.
Not denial.
Just… distance.
Elaine's voice softened.
"I don't think you're dangerous."
Ash blinked.
"Yet," she added.
Ash closed his eyes.
And whispered:
> "I am not what you fear.
I am what fear forgot."
Elaine didn't understand the words.
Not yet.
But she felt them settle around her like fog.
And something deep inside her shivered.
---
Far above, Sevina Vel reviewed the obelisk footage.
Her eyes narrowed.
"It responded to him," she said aloud. "The obelisk was designed to store last echoes."
A subordinate replied, "But he didn't trigger the soul echo, Watcher. The artifact initiated it."
Sevina's fingers curled.
"No," she said. "It recognized him."
She stared at Ash's paused image on the screen.
And whispered:
> "You were not meant to wake."