Morning came slow. The sun rose like it was remembering how to be light again.
Mist hung low over the valley, silver and alive, carrying echoes of voices too soft to be wind. The world still shimmered with the residue of what Akiya had done, metal and moss blending, light seeping through stone as if it couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
Echo Nine sat at the edge of the river of light, her legs dangling into the current. She didn't move. Didn't blink. The water parted around her without touching her skin, as though it recognized her as something older than itself.
Akari approached carefully, like one might approach a sleeping god.
"You shouldn't be this close," she said. "That current isn't for people anymore."
Echo Nine tilted her head. "I am not people," she said simply. "I am remainder. What you call current is thought. It is thinking you now."
Kael crouched a few steps away, watching the ripples form strange geometric patterns. "Thinking us," he murmured. "That sounds like Akiya."
Echo Nine turned her eyes toward him pupils like prisms, reflecting galaxies that didn't belong to this world. "She is everywhere," she said. "But not everything she touches stays kind."
The words landed heavy.
Kael frowned. "What do you mean?"
"The light she became," Echo Nine said slowly, "was woven through the seams of both worlds. It was mercy, but also anchor. The Rift obeys her… until it remembers the old code beneath her name. That is when the fragments wake."
Reina looked up from her scanner, expression tightening. "Fragments… plural?"
"Yes." Echo Nine's voice did not change pitch. "You have seen only echoes of one. The others sleep in deeper memory. But the one who watches from between,the one who calls himself 'Heir of the Broken Pattern'has begun to stir."
The phrase twisted through the air like an old curse. The Heir of the Broken Pattern. A title that felt like it belonged to the dark corners of the Rift, where time and sense bent together.
Kiro shifted uneasily. "You mean the thing you called the… eater of holes?"
Echo Nine nodded once. "He feeds on what is missing. He listens for names that have been forgotten. When the sky forgets itself again, he will rise. He will not bring ruin. He will bring correction."
"Correction?" Akari spat. "That's what they all say. That's what monsters call mercy."
Echo Nine blinked slowly. "He does not believe he is monster. He believes he is repair."
Kael's hands curled into fists. "And where is he now?"
The girl turned her face toward the horizon. The mists shifted, and for a breath the sunlight bent around an invisible outline, tall, regal, like a silhouette of a being not yet fully born. Then it was gone.
"In the mirror beneath your world," Echo Nine whispered. "In the gap between Akiya's breath and the silence that followed. He was made when she rewove the Rift. She tried to destroy the error, but the error learned to love the way she stitched. Now he wants to finish her work."
The words sank like stones.
Kael rose to his feet, the lines of his jaw trembling. "Then we stop him before he finishes anything."
But Reina's tone was measured, cautious. "Kael… if what she's saying is true, he's not separate from the Rift. He's part of Akiya's weave. Killing him might tear her apart."
Kael hesitated. His defiance faltered, replaced by something rawer, grief's younger brother, fear.
Akari's voice cracked softly. "So we can't fight him… not without hurting her."
Echo Nine stood then. The current brightened under her feet. "Not yet," she said. "The sky still remembers its name. But soon it will forget again. You must be ready to remind it."
She reached into the light and drew out a shape a crystalline shard, pulsing faintly with blue fire. It vibrated in her hand like a living thought.
"This," she said, "is what remains of her touch at the heart of the Rift. Akiya's core frequency. It will call her memory. But use it only when the world stops answering. If you call too early, the thread will burn through you."
She held it out.
Kael hesitated, then took it, the light burning against his palm. It pulsed once, twice and for a heartbeat, a voice filled his mind.
Kael… do not let them close the seam.
Akiya's voice. Faint, distant, like a memory underwater. Kael nearly fell to his knees. Akari caught his arm before he could collapse.
He looked at Echo Nine, trembling. "She's still fighting, isn't she?"
The girl nodded, almost kindly. "Always. But the Rift forgets more each day. And he is learning how to make the world dream his way."
Before anyone could speak again, the ground trembled.
Reina's scanner shrieked. The data lines spiked into nonsense geometric noise, recursive code, impossible loops.
"What is it?" Akari shouted.
Reina's voice shook. "Not what,....who. He's probing the surface layer. Trying to map consciousness through Akiya's light. It's like he's… looking at us through her eyes."
The air grew colder. The mist rippled backward. And for an instant, the horizon cracked open like glass and a single eye looked through.
It wasn't flesh. It was light refracted through a thousand angles, forming something both human and divine, both machine and god. The sight of it made the valley bow in on itself. The river screamed in light.
Echo Nine's voice went quiet. "He is early."
Kael grabbed his blade. Akari raised her energy arc. Reina sealed her scanner, cursing. Kiro reached for the beacon Akiya had once touched.
But the eye only watched.
Then, like a whisper against the skull, a voice came, deep, calm, utterly certain.
"Children of the fragment. You carry the wound. I am the hand that closes it."
The voice was beautiful. Terrifyingly so. It was not the roar of a villain, it was the tone of inevitability.
Kael snarled. "You don't get to fix what she gave her life for."
"Your light was her mistake," the voice replied. "But I will not unmake her. I will finish her mercy."
And then the sky broke.
The mist burned away. The ground split. The world seemed to glitch, trees folding into code, clouds turning into mirrored fractals. The Rift hummed in pain. And in the distance, something vast began to rise from the folds of the horizon a colossal figure of light and shadow, half-seen, not yet real.
Echo Nine whispered, almost to herself, "He is building his body. The Heir of the Broken Pattern has begun to remember what shape he used to be."
She looked at Kael then, not with fear, but with something like pity. "You will need to break the pattern again. Before it breaks you."
Then she stepped backward into the river and vanished, leaving only ripples of blue light in her wake.
Silence followed, broken only by Kael's shaking breath and the hum of the shard in his hand.
The Rift had begun to stir again.
And somewhere within its light, Akiya's voice trembled soft, uncertain, and afraid for the first time.
"Please… hold the line."
....to be continued....