For twelve entire seconds, everything inside Luma Labs was still.The hum had gone silent. The countdown had stopped.Even the air felt reverent — holding its breath in awe of something that wasn't supposed to happen.
Ha-rin stood with her hand over the console, her other hand still resting in Jae-hyun's, both faintly trembling from the energy that had coursed through them moments earlier.
"It stopped," she whispered. "The countdown actually—"
"Paused," Jae-hyun finished softly. "Not ended."
The words hung in the air between them, fragile as glass.
Seo-jin poked his head around the doorframe, still chewing gum."Not to be dramatic, but the last time I saw that many zeroes in a system log, the server exploded."
Ha-rin managed a weak laugh, though her pulse hadn't steadied."Let's… try not to make this one explode."
The hum returned — softer, lower this time.And beneath it, Ha-rin felt something new: a faint, irregular vibration.Like another heartbeat, just out of sync.
She frowned. "Jae-hyun, do you feel that?"
He nodded slowly. "It's not us. It's something trying to mirror the resonance field."
Seo-jin blinked. "You mean… like a copy?"
Jae-hyun's jaw tightened. "Like an echo of the Echo."
They moved toward the far end of the lab where the light had once pulsed strongest.The walls there still shimmered faintly — not glowing now, but absorbing light instead.A slow, deliberate shadow rippled across the glass — like liquid darkness moving on its own.
Ha-rin froze. "That wasn't there before."
The darkness began to form shapes —indistinct outlines, as if a reflection was trying to remember what it was supposed to be.
Jae-hyun stepped closer, analyzing the readings on his wrist display."It's a residual pattern. The resonance field duplicated us. But it didn't stabilize."
Ha-rin's voice dropped. "So there's… another version of us?"
He met her gaze. "A distorted one."
The shadow flinched — and suddenly, it moved.
It pressed against the glass wall, imprinting faint silhouettes.Two figures.
One male. One female.Hands interlocked.
They were… them.
Ha-rin's breath caught.The shapes looked familiar — too familiar — but their outlines wavered, their faces blurred, their movements erratic.
Then, in perfect unison, the shadow versions turned and faced them through the glass.
Ha-rin's stomach twisted. "It's looking back."
The lights flickered. The temperature dropped several degrees in seconds.Every monitor in the lab lit up with lines of distorted code.Across every screen, one message began to repeat —
"ECHO NEEDS BALANCE.""ECHO NEEDS YOU.""ECHO NEEDS…"
Ha-rin whispered, "What does it mean?"
Jae-hyun's voice was tight. "It means the system's trying to stabilize emotional data. It thinks we're incomplete."
Seo-jin frowned. "Incomplete how? You two literally just synced the universe with your heartbeats."
Ha-rin glanced at the shadow on the glass. "Maybe… Echo doesn't want balance. Maybe it wants control."
The shadow-Ha-rin moved again — lifting her hand slowly until it mirrored the real Ha-rin's gesture.Their palms aligned across the glass, only a thin barrier separating them.Ha-rin's reflection smiled — but it wasn't her smile. It was colder.
Then the voice came, distorted but unmistakably hers.
"You think love fixed this. It only caged me."
Ha-rin stumbled back, heart pounding. "That's not me."
Jae-hyun stepped forward instinctively. "Stay behind me."
The shadow-Jae-hyun moved too, matching him exactly — every tilt of the head, every motion, but a heartbeat ahead.
The real Jae-hyun whispered, "It's predicting us."
The shadows' voices overlapped now, glitching like broken music.
"We loved first.""We died first.""You stole our ending."
Ha-rin's voice broke. "They're the failed constants."
Jae-hyun's eyes widened. "The loops that ended before we could fix them."
Seo-jin's tone went pale. "So we're literally haunted by our own reboots."
The shadow-Ha-rin pressed harder against the glass.Cracks spidered outward — faint at first, then spreading with each heartbeat.The hum deepened into a rumble that shook the entire lab.
Jae-hyun grabbed Ha-rin's hand. "We have to break the link before—"
The glass shattered.
Light exploded outward, swallowing everything in silver.
When the brightness faded, Ha-rin found herself thrown across the lab floor.Her vision swam — everything was hazy, too bright.And then, slowly, she saw movement.
Two figures stood in the haze.Her.Him.But not them.
The shadow versions stepped forward, eyes glowing faint white.Every motion felt deliberate — graceful, calm, wrong.
Shadow-Ha-rin smiled faintly.
"You tried to make peace with love.""But love isn't peace," her echo whispered. "It's persistence."
Shadow-Jae-hyun looked at his counterpart.
"You built Echo to remember. But we are the part it refused to forget."
Ha-rin's pulse raced. "What do you want?"
The echoes spoke in unison:
"To finish what you began."
Jae-hyun stood slowly, hand still bleeding from the shattered glass."Then we'll see which version of us deserves to exist."
Ha-rin whispered, trembling but resolute, "Love may have built Echo.But it's ours to end."
The shadows tilted their heads in eerie synchronization —and smiled.
The hum returned — louder, darker.The countdown resumed.
11:53:03.