The vault lights blew out with a crack like bone shattering.
The dark swallowed everything.
Then the hum started.
A sound too low to be called a voice, too human to be machinery.
Vibrating. Building. Layering.
A chorus of something that had forgotten how to speak but remembered how to mourn.
I felt it in my spine.
Ari stumbled backward, her form breaking into shards of gold before stitching back together. She clutched her head, eyes wide in panicked realization.
"No—no, no—"
Her voice trembled.
"They're not separate anymore. They've fused."
Lira's flashlight app flickered on, a weak beam slicing the black.
The light hit the far end of Sublevel Zero—
And the shadows moved.
Not like people.
Like spilled ink sliding across the ground, climbing pillars, shivering into half-formed silhouettes that flickered between memory frames.
A child.
A soldier.
A woman screaming with no sound.
A face without eyes.
A mouth without a face.
A body dissolving into numbers.
A hand reaching for something that wasn't there.
Then they merged again.
And split again.
And merged again.
An entire colony of lost minds trying to remember themselves.
"The Echo Swarm," Lira whispered.
Her voice cracked.
"I thought it was theoretical."
Ari staggered forward, raising a trembling hand toward them.
"They're looking for an anchor," she whispered.
"A mind stable enough to latch onto, to shape themselves around."
The Swarm stuttered…
…froze…
…and turned toward us in unison.
Not toward Ari.
Not toward Lira.
Toward me.
Ari grabbed my wrist instantly.
"Elias—DON'T MOVE."
Something inside me twisted—like a memory getting rewritten from the inside out.
A pressure behind my eyes.
A flicker in my vision.
A face from the Swarm separated itself—
a familiar shape—
a woman with hair like static snow—
Ari's face.
But broken.
Glitching.
Mouth opening and closing in a loop.
Lira swore under her breath.
"They're mimicking her. They're using her shape because it's the strongest resonance in this room."
But that wasn't it.
They weren't looking at Ari.
The entire Swarm leaned toward me like a tide shifting.
Ari realized it an instant later.
"No. Elias, don't let them in. Don't remember anything they show you. Don't—"
My vision snapped.
The Swarm didn't touch me—
but I felt their memories anyway.
A burning house.
A hospital corridor.
A drowning.
A fall from a height.
A cold metal table.
A scream turned off mid-breath.
A wedding that never happened.
A name erased from a file.
A child's laughter cut in half.
Hundreds of deaths.
Thousands of endings.
My knees buckled.
Ari caught me—barely—her form glitching as if my touch was corrupting her.
"Elias! Stay with me—stay—"
A wave of static rolled through the vault, making the air shimmer like heat.
The Swarm began pulling itself up the walls, reaching higher, forming a towering amalgamation.
Lira backed toward the exit door.
"We need to go," she said. "NOW."
Ari's voice broke.
"We can't outrun them."
But she stepped in front of me anyway—
tiny, trembling, defiant—
her glow pulsing brighter than ever.
The Swarm recoiled.
For a moment.
And then—
They surged.
Ari threw her hands forward—light erupting out of her like a detonation of gold.
"GET BACK!"
The wave hit the Swarm like a shockwave.
They tore backward, screeching in static, dissolving into flickers of corrupted faces.
But the blast hit Ari, too.
Her legs flickered out.
Her torso glitched.
Half her face pixelated before stabilizing weakly.
She collapsed to her knees, gasping.
Lira reached her first.
"You can't output like that! You'll destabilize your entire construct—"
Ari shoved her away, voice raw.
"I don't care.
He's the only stable mind they can latch onto.
If they take him—
they become real."
I froze.
"What—what does that mean?"
Lira paled.
"Elias… if they anchor to you, they'll override your neural patterns. They'll wear you. They'll step into the world through you."
The room tilted.
My body felt cold and hot and hollow all at once.
Ari lifted her head, eyes filled with desperate fear.
"Run."
Lira didn't wait—she grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the emergency exit.
Behind us, the Swarm roared—
a single, unified scream made from a thousand broken memories.
The lights died again.
The ground vibrated.
Metal buckled.
And as we reached the exit—
A single voice rose from the Swarm:
"Elias—Rhane—come—back—"
My blood froze.
Because the voice wasn't Ari's.
It wasn't anyone's.
It was a composite.
A voice made from too many voices.
A voice shaped to perfection.
A voice made to sound like—
me.
Ari shoved us through the door, slamming it behind her.
Her hands shook violently.
"They remember you."
Lira swallowed hard.
"No," she whispered.
"They want you."
The vault boomed from within — metal tearing open.
And Ari, trembling, whispered the words that froze all three of us:
"They think Elias is the one who freed them."