For the first time since the Echo manifested, the room felt too small to contain the truth it carried.
Sable leaned against his workbench, sweat beading on his brow, his eyes flicking between Kael and the Echo as if unsure which one was more dangerous.
The Echo—Kael's other self—kept his hand extended.
"I was chosen," he repeated quietly.
"Not you. Not this timeline. Not this body."
Kael didn't take the hand.
"Chosen for what?"
The Echo's smile was thin.
"For ascension. For continuation. For inheritance."
His expression darkened.
"For the Seventh Hypostasis."
A pressure descended over the room, subtle but suffocating—
like a truth too large for the air to hold.
Kael struggled to breathe.
"That… that can't be right. The Fragment appeared to me."
The Echo's gaze softened with something disturbingly close to pity.
"Fragments appear to whoever is still alive."
He tapped his chest.
"I am dead. You survived… by accident."
Kael's pulse faltered.
"So you're saying—"
"That you are an error," the Echo said gently.
"A deviation. A branch that wasn't meant to grow."
Sable exhaled sharply. "This is dangerous talk. Stop."
But the Echo ignored him.
"You weren't supposed to exist past the Third Convergence. I was. But my world collapsed, and the Hypostases cannot inhabit a corpse. So the Note followed the nearest viable instance of me."
He tilted his head.
"You."
Kael felt heat rising behind his eyes—anger, disbelief, fear mixing into something volatile.
"That's impossible. I've never even met the Hypostases."
"You don't have to meet them," the Echo said.
"They write around you."
---
The Echo stepped closer.
"Think, Kael.
Why do fragments of knowledge appear like silver text?
Why do you fall into visions not your own?
Why does your shadow blink?"
Kael's throat tightened.
That tone—
the Note—
ringing from his chest like a command issued by something ancient.
Sable spoke through clenched teeth:
"Echo, you're destabilizing the room. One more metaphysical spike and—"
The Echo raised a hand.
Sable fell silent, not by force, but by dread.
Then the Echo looked at Kael, eyes dark with memory.
"You inherited my destiny.
But you did not inherit my understanding.
You are carrying power that will destroy you from the inside."
Kael clenched his fists. "Then what do you want? To kill me? Take it back?"
The Echo laughed—quiet, almost broken.
"To kill you?"
He shook his head.
"No, Kael. Killing you would erase me as well. We are tethered."
"Tethered to what?"
The Echo pointed behind Kael.
"To the one who sits on the throne of mirrors."
Kael froze.
The image struck him again: the fractured crown, the silhouette, the impossible presence watching from beyond reality.
Sable swore under his breath.
"That throne is real…?"
The Echo nodded.
"It is the seat of Reflection. The place where all versions of a person converge."
Kael whispered, "You said you came to warn me."
"I did."
"What's the warning?"
The Echo's eyes turned cold as a winter star.
"If you continue carrying the Note, the throne will reach for you.
It will try to reclaim the version that was destined for it."
A pause.
"And when it realizes you are not me, not the chosen variant—
it will break you down to correct the error."
Kael felt something shatter inside him.
Sable stepped forward, voice sharp.
"Then why tell him? Why help him?"
The Echo closed his eyes.
"Because in my dying world, the last thing I saw… was myself."
His voice trembled.
"A version of me who still had the chance to run."
He looked at Kael, and something painfully human flickered across his face.
"I don't want to lose that version."
Kael swallowed hard.
"Then what do I do?"
The Echo stepped back into the dim lantern glow, his form flickering like a failing reflection.
"You must do what I could not," he whispered.
"Before the throne takes notice of the mistake."
Kael stared.
"…And what is that?"
The Echo's voice dropped to a whisper that made the shadows tighten.
"Find your original death."
A chill sliced through Kael.
"Why—"
"Because," the Echo murmured,
"you cannot truly exist in this timeline until you understand how you were meant to end in the last."
He pointed to Kael's chest.
"The Note did not choose you.
It awakened because you cheated something you were not meant to escape."
The room's temperature plummeted.
Kael exhaled a single word:
"Fate."
The Echo nodded once.
"Find the point where you died.
The point the world rejected.
The point the Seventh Hypostasis marked."
The lantern flickered, its flame dying again.
Darkness swallowed the Echo's form.
His final words hung in the air like a noose:
"Only by reclaiming your death can you reclaim your future."
Then the Echo dissolved—
peeling apart into ink-like wisps that sank into Kael's feet, merging with his shadow.
Sable stumbled backward.
"Kael—your shadow—"
Kael looked down.
His shadow now had eyes.
Watching him.
Silent.
Patient.
Knowing.
Sable whispered, horrified:
"…It remembers the death you don't."
Kael's breath shook.
"I have to find it."
He stepped toward the door.
Sable grabbed his arm.
"Kael. Where will you even start?"
Kael didn't know.
Until—
A sound rang through the room.
Not the Note.
Something deeper.
Older.
A heartbeat that wasn't his.
And a whisper unfurled in Kael's mind, in a voice made of fractured halos:
"Return to the place where your name was erased."
Kael opened his eyes.
"…I know where to start."
He stepped into the fog outside, his shadow following half a second behind.