1 — The Conversation Beneath a Dying Sky
[Astral Echoes Registered]
Echo — He Who Rebuilt the World
Echo — The God Who Sacrificed for Lesser Beings
Echo — Fate's Enemy
The crimson light didn't become a screen; it became resonance—a slow vibration that made thought itself bend.
No glyphs. No numbers. Only the universe reciting my existence in its own tongue as the new Astral System spun up and latched into Earth's bones.
I smiled—thin, exhausted, satisfied. The cycle had reset; the lattice of dungeons would harden humanity until I could return in full.
But my vessel—this stitched-together shell of nerves and oath—was fragile. Divinity bled through me with every breath. I drifted between matter and concept, rebuilding sinew and bone like a mason replacing bricks on a spinning tower.
"You have five years before the barrier falters," said a voice that made the dust forget its weight.
I flicked my hand to swat the speaker away. Wind ripped over the ridge—and folded around a figure instead of moving it.
Gaia.
Robes the color of rain-dark soil, hair like living forest, a beauty lethal enough to end wars if she still cared about mortals. Space refused to hold shape where she stood.
"Don't start," I said. "The dungeons will hold. Our bargain ends the day the barrier breaks."
Her gaze cut through me. "You speak like a sovereign while dripping power you can't afford to waste. Put it away."
Black radiance slipped free before I could stop it. The world flinched and raised a barrier around us on instinct—air turning to glass, light bending as if it had been caught misbehaving.
"If you still held your second core," she went on, "you could posture. Now you only erode what's left."
Pressure rolled out from her. Bones creaked, then cracked. I healed as they broke, funneling life-force through a vessel that objected to being divine at all.
"That pride will break you again," she said, voice finally softening. She opened her hand.
A crown of stone rested on her palm, an emerald pulsing at its heart. Beside it lay a seed—small, black, faintly luminous, breathing with the slow rhythm of Death itself.
"If you fail this time," she warned, "the cycle ends. Not in light. In silence."
Anger guttered out of me like a candle under sudden wind. "Then let silence learn my name."
The wind sifted her edges back into nothing. Only the crown remained in my hand, and the echo of her warning stitched into the air.
Five years. Then the test begins.
I turned to the horizon where the new system hummed in unseen circles, and continued the work of rebuilding the vessel that would have to hold me when the Sea opened again.
Scene 2 — The Society Aftermath
The briefing room smelled like sterilized mana and dried blood.
"You three have a bright future ahead of you. If ever there's a time you don't want the Guilds' constant drama, you'll always have a secure place in the Society."
Director Nicole Helstrong stood in the doorway until the hydraulic lock hissed, sealing us in. Her smile never reached her eyes. It wasn't flattery; it was a quiet contract being slid across a table.
After the Death Knight, most students were under medical or psych eval. Only three of us were called: Crow, Alexis, Thomas.
From what I knew, it was smart containment. Keep compromised witnesses away from compromised officials—especially when the Astral was involved.
"Alexis, can you believe it? Nicole Helstrong—the strongest SSS-tier in the country—is offering us a spot!" Thomas practically vibrated. "I need to tell my mom!"
Alexis didn't look at him. "Crow?"
I leaned back. "We performed above most veteran A-ranks. Holding a pseudo–S rank long enough for containment isn't small. But they can't publish it."
"Because of the four pseudo–King-rank monsters," Alexis said flatly.
"And because they weren't coded constructs," I added. "They were Astral residents."
Thomas blinked. "Meaning?"
"Meaning they had names once," I said, rubbing my temple. "We weren't fighting simulations. If they'd reached the portal and dragged that masked man back, we'd be planning funerals."
Alexis tapped her chin. "We only lived because you kept rhythm and Thomas doesn't understand fear. If your senses hadn't been that sharp—"
"I'd have died," I agreed easily. "But I could've stalled it. The Death Knight was still an A-rank with an element.
The Harpy was the problem—half a step into divinity. It used wind laws. Only my mana shell kept me from getting turned into a story."
Thomas scratched his head. "What happened to the berserker?"
"Gone," I said. "Whatever drew the Harpy away, it wasn't us. It was trying to bring the Knight's body—and something else stopped it."
"The masked man," Alexis said. "You saw him closer than I did."
"Barely," I said. "A light beard. A crimson eye turning gold for a heartbeat. Felt like the air bowed when he looked up."
"Expedition, fifteen years ago?" she asked.
"That's my bet," I said. "Half never came back. The survivors don't talk. Lords got involved."
Silence settled. The room felt smaller, like we were already being filed into categories we didn't choose.
Nicole's hand hovered near the door panel. "Rest while you can," she said at last. .
The seal sighed open; the hum of the hallway swallowed her. The room returned to the sound of vents and the taste of metal.
I looked at Alexis; she was already doing the math other people called instinct. Thomas grinned at nothing in particular. We were a team the way avalanches are a team—friction, mass, momentum.
We left without saying the obvious: no one mentions the masked man.
Scene 3 — The Prophet's Vision and the Black Sun
The prophet stood beneath the glass dome, arms outstretched, voice trembling with revelation.
"My God has given me a vision of the future — a future where humanity stands on equal ground with the Astral Gods!
When mortals shed their flesh for divinity, the key to the Astral Sea shall be born anew!"
I sat high above the stage, notebook open, pretending to record. From up here the "faithful" looked like insects orbiting a flame they didn't understand — Kings, Presidents, Guildmasters, every hand that ruled the world. Greed gleamed in their eyes, the hunger of predators who had learned to call ambition sacred.
Those who had fought in dungeons or stood at the edge of a portal knew better. The Astral world was not paradise; it was infection with a heartbeat. Each time one of its gates opened, monsters spilled through—mutations stronger and more numerous than before. We built walls, burned cities, called the losses containment. None of it ever felt like victory.
So when a prophet claimed the gods had spoken again, everyone listened. Everyone except the few of us who understood what divine "contact" cost.
My patron god was silent tonight, but I could feel him watching through me.
He had warned me once: Humanity never learns. They will pry open Pandora's box again just to prove it existed.
He hated his own kind—called them parasites that traded miracles for worship. Still, even he was quiet now, as if waiting for the next lie to unfold.
"The Age of Gods will return," the prophet cried. "Humanity shall lead the charge—"
A dry voice coiled through my head, not my own.
Insufferable fools. Keep banging on the doors of death and you'll wake its owner.
For a heartbeat I thought he meant himself, until I felt his attention drift—toward someone else. He's not talking to me.
The words echoed with weight my mind wasn't built to carry. The human brain filters divine speech for survival; remove the filter and you die—or worse, you understand.
I'd studied the explorers who tried. The lucky ones came back broken but breathing, eyes haunted by equations they couldn't solve. The rest… became scripture for the mad.
And yet those who endured were now the cornerstones of our age—Guildmasters, Scholars, S-Ranks—the few who'd glimpsed the Sea and returned with power that governments bowed to.
None of them were here tonight. That absence spoke louder than prophecy.
Rumor said they'd all flown to America, answering a summons that the public would never hear about. Whatever pulled them together made the world itself hold its breath.
He will have to step in again, my patron whispered, tone curiously mournful. What a cruel fate—to be born from the end and still clean the beginning.
He? My thoughts snagged on the pronoun. He'd never spoken about any being with reverence before.
The divine obey different laws—personifications of concepts pretending at emotion—but this was different. He spoke of the one who closed Pandora's box.
A name he refused to say.
The one he called the End who came before the Beginning.
A paradox given shape.
A god older than time yet born from its death.
Existence backward. A conclusion that preceded premise.
The logic cracked in my mind like glass under heat.
Stop thinking.
His command boomed through me, shattering breath and heartbeat alike. Only then did I realize I'd been holding air too long.
Whispers flooded the hall. At first I thought they were the crowd—but they rose from everywhere, from inside sound itself.
"Who dares to utter the name of Mine?"
The voice wasn't heard; it was experienced.
Sound became color, color became geometry. A choir began where language ended—music so beautiful it felt like bleeding.
Light bent. Space stretched. The world tunneled inward.
The Glimpses
I fell through history.
Wars no human record could contain.
Planets cracked and thrown like stones.
Stars forged into weapons.
Millions of mortal armies rewriting divine names with every death.
And at the center of it—
a man whose right arm burned like a law made visible.
An angel struck him from behind; he answered in the same breath, their blows canceling eternity for an instant.
Behind them waited a shadowed figure, smiling beneath a hood—a smile too aware, too patient.
The man with the burning arm turned, and his gray eyes—no, gold now, bleeding into red—met mine across the fold of creation.
"I see you. Child, this isn't your time. The more you know, the greater the weight you'll draw to your world."
His words bent reality around them. The vision buckled. I felt myself expelled—not pushed, rejected—from the madness I'd been unraveling into.
Return to the Hall
I gasped upright.
The music was gone. Silence pressed like water.
Every eye in the chamber was on me.
A black flame danced where I'd been sitting, devouring the chair without smoke. I looked down—my hands were covered in it. The fire didn't burn; it remembered.
The prophet had vanished. The audience cowered or prayed.
I clung to one image through the haze: the man's eyes locking with mine.
In that instant something passed between us—an image of a small house, an old woman, and a man meeting a familiar stranger. Knowledge disguised as memory.
You're very lucky, my patron whispered faintly. If he hadn't granted you a blessing, you'd be a monster by now.
The flames guttered out, leaving only ash and the hollow quiet of things too large to name.
I tried to recall the rest—the faces, the war, the paradox—but the memories slid away like water through cracked glass.
Only the echo remained:
The End who came before the Beginning is watching again.
I gasped. The world came back wrong and loud.
Guards had weapons drawn. Travelers formed containment rings, mana shells up and crackling. The prophet was on his knees, bleeding from the eyes and whispering prayers to no one.
Black fire climbed my forearms and devoured the seat beneath me. People shouted over each other:
"Vessel!"
"Contain her!"
"Before it takes root—!"
Up in the executive balconies, the faces of nations leaned forward—not fearful, calculating. To them I was no person. I was a door. A battery. An investment.
The containment circle tightened. Twelve signatures—two S, ten A—spooled power and locked to my position.
The air broke.
Helstrong Intervention
A single pulse rolled through the chamber like a tidal wall. Barriers shattered. Shields guttered and died. Every armed Traveler staggered as blue-white mana flooded the hall with the weight of a second gravity.
Simon Helstrong walked through the smoke.
"Enough."
He didn't shout. The word simply arrived with the force of law. His presence pressed against every mind until silence obeyed. The black fire bent away from his shadow, shrinking from the light that wasn't there a moment ago.
"Step back," he said.
No one moved. He let his aura rise another inch. Marble cracked under the strain. Shields dropped like paper.
He stopped in front of me and finally really looked—recognition softening his eyes. "Lily," he said, the way an older brother says a name he's had to say too many times. "You should've stayed away from these fanatics."
His hand touched the hilt at his side. When he drew the sword, temperature fell like a curtain. The blade hummed—metal tuned to something older than physics.
"If anyone takes another step," Simon said, quiet and final, "I will consider it an act of war against the Society."
Even the men who owned flags leaned back.
The room exhaled. Slowly, he sheathed the blade. The pressure faded enough for breathing to become an option again.
He looked me over once more, clinical and concerned in equal measure. "Your god cleanse you again, like usual."
I tried to smile—the harmless, curious expression he's teased me about since I was a kid hovering at Helstrong tables—but my face wouldn't obey. The brightness wasn't there. Whatever the Black Sun took, it didn't give back.
"You're not smiling this time," he said softly.
I shook my head.
His jaw tightened, the kind of grief a commander learns to carry without letting it break the scene. "Then it's worse than I thought."
He turned his head without taking his eyes off me. "Clear the hall."
Orders snapped. Boots moved. Power-players hid their greed behind diplomacy and filed out like people leaving a service they didn't understand. The containment ring retreated last, wary and ashamed.
When the echoes died, only the faint ring of soot remained where my chair had been, pulsing like a heartbeat that didn't belong to me.
"Walk," Simon said, voice gentler than his aura. "Before anyone else decides they own you."
We left together—Helstrong steel and a girl who had looked into the wrong sun and been told a truth no one in the room wanted to hear:
There are lines even knowledge may not cross.
And sometimes mercy looks like being refused.