The highway ran straight into the horizon — and then kept going after the horizon stopped.
Kael blinked hard. "That's new."
The road ahead shimmered like glass under water. The sky bent downward, folding in on itself in ripples. It looked less like distance and more like a reflection.
Mira slowed the truck. "You seeing that too?"
Rae leaned over the dash, cables glinting under her collar. "That's not a mirage. That's an Echo Rift."
Kael frowned. "English, please."
"Residual resonance zone," Rae explained. "Where the moonlight didn't die — it just sank. You drive through that, you're not in Kansas or physics anymore."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "So naturally, we're driving straight into it."
Mira smirked. "That's the plan."
---
They crossed the invisible line an hour later.
The world flipped.
Sound vanished first — no engine rumble, no wind. The air turned thick, syrupy, dense with quiet.
Then color bled away — leaving everything tinted in pale blue-gray.
Kael stepped out of the truck. His breath fogged.
The city ahead was… wrong.
Buildings leaned but didn't collapse. Windows reflected stars that weren't there. The air shimmered with faint waves of light, like ripples over a deep ocean.
Signs of movement — shadows walking along the walls with no owners.
Ashveil's voice curled in his head.
> "You've entered an Echo Field. A city that remembers existing."
"Great," Kael muttered. "A city with memory issues."
Rae scanned the scanner. "This was once Valis District. Industrial hub, pre-Collapse. No record of evacuation. Officially erased fifteen years ago."
Mira cocked her rifle. "So what's keeping it upright?"
Rae's voice lowered. "Echo compression. The city is remembering itself into staying alive."
---
They walked past cracked storefronts and overturned vehicles, all frozen mid-motion like wax statues. Every sound they made—footsteps, breaths—came back twice, delayed, distorted, as if the air was processing it.
Kael's shard pulsed faintly. "Ashveil, why's this place… humming?"
> "Because something's still here. Something that refuses to forget."
Kael winced. "I was afraid you'd say that."
The street trembled.
At first it sounded like wind under metal. Then came the screams. Not human — mechanical, layered, echoing over each other until they became a chorus.
Shapes formed in the fog — twisted silhouettes of people with wires for spines and flickering eyes, like streetlights caught between frames.
Rae whispered, "Echo phantoms."
Mira raised her weapon. "Are they solid?"
"Usually."
"Usually?"
Rae didn't get to answer.
The nearest phantom lunged. Its body phased through a wall, reforming mid-air with a shriek that rattled Kael's bones. Mira fired, the bullet passing through — not harmlessly, but dragging light out of the creature's form like smoke.
Kael reacted. Instinct. His shard blazed, and a faint hum radiated outward — a shockwave that bent the world for a second. The phantoms staggered, flickering violently.
Ashveil hissed in his mind.
> "Good. You used resonance reflection."
Kael blinked. "I did what now?"
> "You answered their frequency instead of resisting it. You became their mirror."
He didn't have time to be proud — another phantom screamed and dove, claws extended. Kael ducked, slammed his palm to the street, and shouted on reflex, "Stop copying me!"
The ground responded.
Light fractured — a circle of silver cracks rippling outward. Every phantom inside it convulsed, their forms distorting before collapsing into glass dust.
Rae stared. "You're starting to bend resonance manually. That shouldn't be possible yet."
Mira gave Kael a sharp look. "You're evolving fast. Too fast."
Kael shrugged weakly. "I'd prefer 'just right.'"
---
They reached the center of the district hours later. The beacon signal was strongest here — pulsing faintly through the static like a heartbeat.
A massive tower loomed overhead — not metal or stone, but mirror.
Its surface rippled, showing glimpses of things that weren't real: oceans, cities, faces.
Rae whispered, "It's alive."
Ashveil's tone darkened.
> "That's not a tower. That's an Echo Core. The city's heart."
Mira cursed softly. "You're telling me this whole place is one giant… memory machine?"
> "A corpse that dreams it's still alive," Ashveil replied. "And now that you're here, it will want to share its dream."
The ground shook.
The tower pulsed — and for a split second, the entire city lit up like daylight.
Then the voices came.
Whispers spilling from the walls, layered over each other, thousands strong.
> "Don't forget."
"We're still here."
"The moon's eye sees all."
Kael's mark flared. The shard in his chest blazed white. He dropped to one knee as visions slammed through him: people running, sirens blaring, light tearing across the sky like a bleeding wound. The last night before the Collapse.
He gasped. "It remembers the end."
Ashveil's voice was low. "Then make it remember you."
Kael lifted his head. "And if I don't?"
> "Then you'll forget you ever existed."
---
Mira grabbed his shoulder. "Kael! You're burning up!"
Rae shouted something about resonance feedback. But Kael barely heard. The city's heart was calling to him, the tower's reflection widening, opening like an eye made of light.
Kael took one step forward. Then another. The reflections rippled, showing hundreds of versions of him — some alive, some ash, some walking backward.
He stopped just short of the tower. "You're not real," he whispered.
> "Neither are you," the tower replied — in his own voice.
The air fractured.
---