The entrance to the Deep Warrens wasn't a door.
It was a scar.
A jagged split in the lowest levels of Sanctum-9, sealed by runes so old their edges had worn smooth.
The air around it tasted wrong—cold, metallic, vibrating faintly like a creature breathing underground.
Aiden wiped sweat from his palms. "Who built this place?"
"No one," Vale answered. She stood beside them, cloak drawn tightly around her. "The ground opened during the Collapse. This wasn't artificial. It was… revealed."
The Ash Phantom burrowed into the shadows, its form dimming.
"I do not want to go in there," it said quietly. "Nothing alive does."
"Then why is there a Summoner down there?" Stark asked.
"Because something shaped like a Summoner was never meant to leave."
Not comforting.
Lira tightened her gauntlets. Her wolf spirit was restless, pacing, hackles raised.
Stark stared at the mark on his wrist.
The new line pulsed steadily, pointing downward like a compass.
No matter how he turned, it pulled toward the crack.
Like someone calling.
The Descent
Vale stepped forward first.
"I'll disable the surface seal. After that, your mark will do the rest. Be ready."
She placed her palm on the runes.
They flickered—glowing weakly, then brightening as if waking from a long sleep.
A deep groan rumbled through the ground.
"Vale," Aiden warned, "it's reacting too fast—"
The runes shattered like glass.
A gust of frozen air blasted out.
Lights along the corridor behind them flickered violently.
The earth under Stark's boots shifted, pulsing once—
like the chest of something enormous inhaling.
Lira swallowed. "That's not… normal air."
"No," Vale said. "It's spirit pressure. Old pressure."
Stark felt the mark burn.
His vision wavered.
For a heartbeat the world turned into chains and echoes—
Then he was back.
"Let's move," he said, voice steady despite the chill crawling up his spine.
They stepped inside.
The Warrens
The tunnel spiraled downward, deeper than any natural cavern.
Stone turned to alloy.
Alloy turned to runed metal.
And the metal turned to bone-like structures shaped by spirit energy.
Aiden scraped a finger along the wall.
"This isn't rock. This is… calcified residue."
Lira grimaced. "From what?"
Vale answered quietly.
"From Summoners. Their echoes. Their failures."
Stark's heart thudded.
The air grew denser the further they went, lit only by faint strands of silver-blue light running along the walls—threads of old spirit code.
The deeper they went, the more Stark felt watched.
Not by eyes.
By memories.
The Ash Phantom whispered, "You feel them."
"What?"
"The ones like you. The ones who tried to be Summoners. Hundreds. Thousands. The Architect discarded them when they didn't match his design."
Stark's breath caught.
He touched the wall—
and visions snapped into his skull like broken shards:
Hands reaching.
Chains binding.
Voices screaming through metal masks.
Names erased.
Souls burned to silence.
Stark ripped his hand away, gasping.
Lira grabbed him. "Stark! What happened?"
He forced breath back into his lungs.
"This place… it eats the ones who fail."
Aiden's jaw clenched. "Then why didn't it eat the one we're looking for?"
Stark didn't answer.
Because he already knew the truth.
The Architect hadn't discarded this one.
It had kept him.
The Chamber of Echoes
The tunnel opened into a vast chamber—circular, domed, lined with stone seats facing inward like an ancient arena.
But it wasn't the architecture that froze them.
It was the figures.
Hundreds of silhouettes sat in the seats—motionless, head down, each body suspended by faint chains of pale light.
They weren't alive.
They weren't dead.
They were recordings.
Memories.
Echoes of training long lost.
Lira stepped closer. "Are those—"
"Yes," Vale whispered. "Proto-Summoners. Early attempts before the Architect perfected the design."
Aiden's eyes scanned the rows. "How many?"
"Enough to make a civilization," Vale murmured.
The room hummed.
Then a faint voice echoed from the center:
"Finally."
A cold ripple traveled down Stark's spine.
A figure stood in the middle of the arena—tall, thin, draped in tattered robes woven with silver symbols.
But his body wasn't whole.
His left arm flickered like glitching data.
His right leg was partly translucent.
His chest glowed with a faint chain mark—but broken, incomplete.
His eyes opened.
They were the same silver-white Stark had seen in the vision.
Lira whispered, "That's him."
Aiden lowered his spear. "That thing is alive?"
"No," Vale said softly.
"It's something between life and echo."
The figure stepped forward; the ground flickered with each footstep.
"Stark," it said, speaking his name as if it had been waiting centuries to say it.
Stark froze.
"How do you know my name?"
The broken Summoner smiled.
"I learned it from the chain."
He lifted his incomplete wrist. The mark there was cracked. Infected.
"Your song reached me."
Stark's hand trembled.
"Are you… the lost Summoner?"
The figure's smile faded.
"No."
He touched his chest, where the mark glowed faintly.
"I am what was left when the Architect tried to make one."
Aiden muttered, "Great. Another experiment."
"No," the figure repeated.
"An echo. A failed key. A fractured harmony. But I remember enough."
He raised a hand.
The seats around them flickered.
All the proto-Summoners lifted their heads at once—hundreds of hollow eyes staring directly at Stark.
Lira stepped back, pulling Stark with her. "What are you doing?"
"Teaching him," the lost Summoner said. "He must see the truth."
A wave of spirit energy burst outward.
The echoes rose from their seats like puppets pulled by invisible strings.
Aiden lifted his spear. "Stark, we're surrounded."
Vale drew runes into the air. "Do not let them touch you. They drain sync."
The lost Summoner looked straight at Stark.
"Do you know why Summoners died out? Why the Architect ended us?"
Stark's voice cracked. "Why?"
The figure's broken mark brightened.
"Because he made us to obey—but we learned to choose."
He pointed at Stark.
"And you carry a choice he fears."
Aiden cursed as the echoes surged forward. "Talk later—fight now!"
Lira's wolf roared, flames erupting across the floor.
Vale unleashed a barrier that shattered when touched by ten echo-bodies at once.
Stark lifted his Soulgun—
but the lost Summoner raised a finger.
"Stark," he said calmly.
"If you shoot them, they will break. And their memories will become part of you."
Stark froze.
"What do you want?!"
The lost Summoner's silver eyes shone.
"To give you what I never had."
He touched his cracked mark.
"Permission."
"Permission for what?"
A faint, sad smile crossed his face.
"To choose your own chain."
The echoes charged.
The chamber shook.
Stark felt the mark on his wrist ignite—chains forming, tightening, responding—
Then—
Darkness swallowed everything.