The sky above Vasena's outer training grounds was steel gray, flat and cold. The field stretched wide, part hardened soil, part embedded with projector modules beneath the surface. High defense walls formed a ring around it, layered with dark metal that said this was not a playground. This was where the state decided who was worth keeping.
Children of genius stood in lines across the field. Black uniforms with deep green stripes fit their small frames with military precision. Some carried stun rifles, others composite batons, others small tactical modules at their belts. No one joked. No one whispered. No one wanted to test the limits of the instructor who had the field that morning.
Ryu stood in the central row. He was neither tense nor relaxed, his posture held somewhere in between. His eyes scanned the soil patterns, projector placement and wall angles as if reading a map no one else could see. In the corner of his vision, NV appeared as a faint overlay of text, almost transparent against the world.
Ryu drew in a slow breath. On his right, Kael stood with his jaw tight, clearly unhappy about being placed in the same row as him. To the left, Ren and Maelle exchanged nervous looks, unsure whether to be excited or afraid. Farther ahead, Lyra stood with the portable medical team, a white case at her side that did not carry ordinary medicine but equipment for handling injuries from extreme drills.
Instructor Darian stepped forward. His frame was broad, shoulders heavy with muscle, and his voice rolled across the field without needing amplification. "Today you enter the first stage of critical simulation," Darian said. "This is not just a physical test. It is a test of how long your head stays intact. If your mind collapses, your intelligence is useless."
A few students swallowed hard. Others managed to keep their faces blank, but their grip tightened on their training weapons.
"This simulation will measure your reaction to pressure, threat and failure," Darian continued. "Not all of you will pass. If you faint, withdraw, or lose control, it is recorded."
His gaze passed briefly over Ryu. There was something different in the way Darian looked at him. Not the usual evaluation, but a guarded watchfulness he did not show the others.
"Teams will be assigned. Each team must hold a safe point until time runs out. No solo heroics. If you abandon the point without tactical reason, it is an automatic fail."
Darian raised his tablet. "Team B-7, step forward." Names appeared on the display.
Ryu Alverion.
Lyra Veridine.
Kael Irath.
Ren Sorell.
Maelle Kord.
Kael clicked his tongue softly. "Of course," he muttered just loud enough for Ryu to hear. "Dragged into the same box as the anomaly."
Ryu did not react. Lyra shifted the strap of the medical case and walked toward them.
"I am assigned to your team as medical support," Lyra said. Her tone was even, but there was a quiet firmness under it. "If anyone experiences severe dizziness or blurred vision, you report immediately."
Kael glanced at Lyra, then at Ryu. "If he gets dizzy, is that normal or a crisis?"
Lyra did not smile. "If he gets dizzy, it is a crisis for you."
Ren and Maelle exchanged a quick look, unsure if she was joking.
Darian pressed a command on the console. The ground shuddered faintly. Projectors under their feet flared to life, spilling light that twisted into half-solid structures. Collapsed buildings rose from nothing. Burned-out vehicles flickered into view. Concrete barriers took shape alongside moving shadows in the distance.
The soundscape followed. Simulated gunfire. Distant explosions. Programmed screams that made the air feel too close to reality.
NV wrote.
Ryu swept his gaze across the forming terrain. "What is our position?" he asked.
Kael pointed toward a half-destroyed structure marked on their wrist displays as the safe point. "Three minutes from here. We start in open ground."
Lyra moved closer to him. "Are you alright?"
"I am not sick," Ryu replied. The answer was short, but his eyes did not fully match the field around him. They seemed to be tracking something that was not here at all. Fragments of the earlier neuro exam still clung to his body like residue. The white room. The boy with his face. The words about his father locking something inside his head. None of that had gone away.
Darian raised his hand. "Simulation begins in three, two, one."
A siren chirped.
Fog erupted from the ground, dense and cold. The open training field disappeared, replaced by a different world woven from light and code but solid enough under their shoes to feel real. Ryu adjusted his breathing. NV monitored his vitals in the corner of his vision.
Then something else appeared.
Not NV. Not system text. Just a faint line of thought that did not belong to the facility.
[..You again.]
Ryu almost paused mid-step. The voice was not loud, not heavy. It was a whisper that had waited for the smallest opening.
NV immediately flagged it.
Kael did not notice the change. "Move," he snapped. "If we reach the point late, every other team will use us for target practice."
Ren and Maelle ran ahead, weapons ready. Lyra followed just behind Ryu, close enough to catch him if his legs suddenly failed.
"Ryu," Lyra said quietly, "if that voice comes back, do not ignore it."
"Voice?" Kael looked over. "He is hearing something again?"
"Eyes front," Lyra cut in. "You do not want a training round to hit your head."
Kael muttered under his breath but obeyed.
They reached the crumbling barrier that marked the safe point. Holographic enemies started to surface from the fog, moving with unnerving speed. The simulation used faux rounds, but the shock delivered to the nerves was entirely real.
"Two on the right," Ren called, firing her stun rifle. Blue light rippled, striking one target. The hologram glitched, then vanished.
Ryu took position behind part of the wall, calculating approach angles.
NV fed him data without emotion. Ryu adjusted his stance, already anticipating lines of attack.
Then the other voice came back.
[..You know they are all weak, right.]
The words slipped between NV's lines, not competing, just inserting themselves.
[..If someone touches the girl, will you stand still.]
Ryu's breathing did not quicken. It lowered. His heart rate fell instead of spiking. His body was shifting into something beyond normal fight or flight.
NV raised a yellow warning.
Lyra fired when two enemies rushed from the left. "Ryu!" she called. "Cover front!"
Ryu moved. His body reacted on pure reflex. His training rifle snapped up, tracking three silhouettes. One shot, then a second, then a third. Every target dropped in precise sequence.
Inside his mind, the world was not that simple. The unknown voice laughed softly.
[..One day they will not move fast enough to protect themselves.]
Ryu tried to push the comment aside. The voice slid closer.
[..But you can make sure they are never touched.
If you choose to.]
A dark shape, undefined and formless, seemed to stand just behind him. Not in the simulation, but in a place deeper than sight. Behind his vision. Behind his breathing.
NV scrambled to keep up.
"Ryu, inner right!" Kael shouted. "You read patterns fastest!"
Ryu answered with movement only. He shifted into a position that gave him a view of three entry lanes. The rifle in his hands might as well have been part of his arm.
Enemies came in waves. Other kids fired, shouted, cursed, some half from panic, half from adrenaline. In the noise and flashes, there was a ring of strange quiet around Ryu. Not physical. Atmospheric.
The air near him felt colder by a degree.
Lyra saw it. She watched his back, too straight, too still.
"Ryu," she called, louder now, "answer me. Can you still hear me?"
He cut down two more targets on the right. Three seconds, three shots, three clean hits. He did not answer.
On the observation deck, graphs of Ryu's brain activity zigzagged violently. Helvar leaned closer to the monitor with a deepening frown.
"His dual resonance is active again," one technician said. "But look at this. There is a third trace overlaying them."
"A third trace?" Helvar asked. "In red?"
"Yes. New pattern. Not matching the other two."
Helvar's stomach tightened. "That is what worried me. We triggered something beyond memory." Darian watched the field below. "If he loses control, how bad does it get?"
"He is still human," Helvar replied quietly. "But a human integrating three cognitive paths will move like something else."
On the field, Lyra made a decision.
"Ryu," she said sharply, stepping closer, "if you do not answer, I will report to Helvar and he will shut down this simulation."
Ryu's head tilted a fraction, as if catching her voice through layers of static.
The other voice reacted immediately.
[..Ah. That sound again.
The one that made you fall back earlier.]
The tone carried something like amusement, tinted with irritation.
[..You go quiet every time she speaks.
Interesting.]
Lyra drew nearer until she was only a few steps behind him. She could see the tension along his shoulders. Not the jittery tension of panic, but the coiled stillness of someone holding back pressure from inside.
"Ryu," she repeated, softer but more precise, "it is me. Lyra."
The neural graph jumped. NV detected the spike. The dark presence did not retreat. It chuckled instead.
[..So she is your anchor.]
Ryu shut his eyes for a fraction of a second. Dangerous to do that in the middle of combat, but his body slipped into it under the pull of both voices.
In the unseen space within him, lines drew themselves.
On one side, NV glowed as cold text racing with instructions. On the other side, the dark smear of something shapeless waited, its edges leaking into the background.
Between them, the shadow of Ryu he had seen in the white room stood again. Same face. Same frame. Watching both sides, ready to lean one way if a line was crossed.
The unknown voice touched that boundary.
[..I am not fully out yet. But I can shake the cage.]
The ground trembled subtly. Projected enemies multiplied. The pressure rose.
"This simulation is off," Kael shouted. "We should not be getting this many waves."
Helvar watched the data. "It is not broken," he said. "The system is being bent."
Lyra closed the last distance and stopped right behind Ryu. She could feel a thin chill lifting from his skin, as if she stood near a silent machine running far above capacity.
"Ryu," she whispered, "if you cannot control this, hold on to one thing. Hold on to the voice you trust."
NV forced its way through the interference.
The other voice slid over it.
[..If anyone touches her, I lead.]
Ryu's heart rate shifted again. Not up into fear. Down into a preternatural calm. Too calm for a thirteen-year-old boy holding a rifle.
In that instant, one of the projected enemies broke through the perimeter. Not toward Kael. Not toward Ren. Straight toward Lyra.
The training blade in the hologram's hand would not kill her, but it would send pain ripping through her nerves and throw her to the ground.
Ryu saw it.
Something dropped inside him. Not a bomb. Not an explosion. A key, falling free of where it had been jammed for years. NV was too slow to intercept. The unknown presence smiled.
[..Now.]
Ryu moved.
There was no shout. No panic. He stepped forward with a speed that left Kael and the others struggling to track his motion. His feet barely marked the ground. There was no wasted noise in the way he cut across the space.
Lyra had not finished drawing breath for a scream when the blade neared her. Time stretched in a single straight line. Ryu was between them before the line finished tracing itself.
His eyes were flat. Pupils narrowed.
Breathing steady.
His right hand snapped around the attacker's wrist, fingers finding the precise point to crush the joint. His left arm crashed into the elbow at an angle that would have shattered bone if this were not a simulation.
There was no anger on his face.
No cruelty.
Just a quiet so deep it made the skin crawl.
Kael stared, mouth slightly open. "That is not any combat style they teach here."
Lyra watched the precision of his grip. She saw the way his fingers targeted nerves, the way his elbow struck to disable movement rather than merely knock away. It was not the strike of a fighter. It was the movement of someone who understood the body like a surgeon and had turned that knowledge into a weapon.
The projection flickered and vanished.
Ryu remained where he was, back to Lyra. He did not look over his shoulder to check if she was hurt. For that moment, his function seemed limited to one task: eliminate threat.
NV forced out a fragmented alert. He did not answer. The other presence pushed deeper.
[..Feel it.
The world is simpler when you stop feeling.]
Lyra saw his hand still curled as if the enemy's wrist was still there. The muscles in his arm were locked, not with fear, but with the kind of tension a machine has when holding a heavy load.
"Ryu," she whispered, barely audible, "is that you?"
He did not move.
Inside his mind, the white room surfaced again. The shadow version of himself stood on one side. NV flickered weakly on the other.
Between them, the blur that had haunted his thoughts thickened. Like someone walking closer from very far away.
The strange voice grew clearer.
[..Finally. One more step.]
The training field seemed to hold its breath. The simulation kept running, but everyone in Team B-7 cared only about the boy standing too still in the center.
Darian clenched his fists in the observation deck.
"If we do not pull him back now," Darian said, "we see the other side of that child."
Helvar kept his eyes on the data. "This is still the beginning." On the ground, only one person was close enough to touch Ryu.
Lyra stepped forward.
She knew the risk. She knew she could become the trigger instead of the cure. But she also knew one simple fact.
Her voice had pulled him back once. It might be the only thing that could again.
She raised her hand. Her fingers trembled, but she moved them anyway.
Her palm came to rest lightly on Ryu's arm.
"Ryu," she murmured, "it is me."
Her words slipped through the layers of noise, past NV, past the shadow and the blur, straight toward the point in him where he had hidden the one thing he still trusted.
NV detected it. The foreign presence did not fade. It laughed quietly instead.
[..That voice again.]
In the white room, the blurred shape lifted its head. A thin, almost pleasant smile formed across its indistinct face.
[..Fine. Then I will introduce myself when this is over.]
The ground trembled once more. Something inside Ryu's mind crossed a line that had never been touched before.
The simulation fog slowed, as if the entire virtual environment was pausing to watch. Gunfire noises cut out. Explosions faded. Holographic enemies froze where they stood, then dissolved. A heavy stillness dropped over the ruined buildings and shattered roads.
Ryu stood at the center of it all. He did not speak. His posture did not change. His eyes were half open, pupils thin, as if his focus was locked on something no one else could see.
Lyra's hand remained on his arm. The contact was small, almost nothing, yet it felt like an anchor thrown into a deep, fast river. It held him in place, but only barely. Something in him had already begun to move away.
It was not NV. Not the childhood echo.
Not the usual resonance of Echo-Mind.
It was something else. Something that felt like it did not belong to him, yet had lived in his head for a long time. NV flashed a full red alert.
Even NV sounded unsteady. The normally clean letters shook, elongated, then shrank, as if the system itself was straining under an internal weight.
In the observation room, Helvar watched the numbers break their patterns. "Darian," he said, his voice tight, "this is not standard stress. Look at his brain lines. Two peaks firing at once, then this…"
Helvar fell silent.
A thin red line appeared across the graph, cutting through every other wave. A signal that did not belong.
"What is that?" an assistant whispered.
Helvar felt the back of his neck prickle. "Third resonance," he said. "That is a type three echo."
Darian's jaw clenched. "So what we feared really is waking up."
Inside the simulation, the shadow version of Ryu stepped out from where it had been standing. It was no longer a translucent outline. It looked almost solid now, human in shape, yet its face remained disturbingly neutral.
NV flickered at the side of Ryu's perception.
The message fractured mid-sentence.
Then NV went silent.
Not shut down. Not logged out. More like pushed backwards, forced into a corner where it could not speak.
Lyra shivered. Something in the air changed. The chill was not from wind or simulated cold. It felt like standing near a machine that had been overclocked past its limit.
"Ryu," she whispered, "I am here."
His body showed no tension. No easing either. He was like a statue waiting for a command.
Kael stepped half a pace forward, somewhere between anger and fear. "What is wrong with him?" Ren swallowed. "It looks like… another mode." Maelle retreated a step, eyes wide. "I do not like the way he is looking at nothing."
Kael scoffed. "Looking at wha…"
He stopped. Because Ryu turned. Slowly. Very slowly. The look he gave them was not the gaze of a thirteen-year-old boy. Ryu's eyes were empty. Not alive. Not dead.
Not furious. Not sad.
They were like windows that refused to show what was on the other side. Lyra breathed in sharply. "Silent Echo," she said under her breath. From above, Darian reacted at once. "Shut the simulation down now."
Helvar lifted a hand. "Wait."
"For what?" Darian snapped.
Helvar pointed at the audio feed. "He is about to speak." Inside Ryu's mind, the white room warped.
Fine cracks spread across the floor like hairline fractures in glass. The space did not feel sterile anymore. Darkness leaked up through the cracks in thin lines, staining the white. The observer that had whispered from a distance, the one NV called an intrusion, stepped forward at last.
Now it had a shape.
It was still cloaked in shadow, still hazy at the edges, but the rough outline of a face emerged. It looked like Ryu, if someone had taken his features and stretched them thinner, sharper, older.
A faint smile curved its lips. The expression hovered between friendly and wrong.
"Finally," it said. Its voice was soft and smooth, much clearer than before. "I can talk without hiding between your resonances."
NV flickered in weakly, only a fragment of its usual presence. The dark figure turned its head toward the floating text and raised two fingers.
NV convulsed. Letters fragmented, inverted, scattered across the white like broken glass.
Then everything went blank. No text. No guidance. Silence.
The loss felt like the lights had gone out inside him. Ryu exhaled quietly, like someone who had been dragged too close to the edge of a cliff.
"You," he said, his voice low. "Who are you?"
The shadow smiled wider.
"Me? Names do not matter," it answered. "What matters is that I have always been here. Longer than NV. Longer than your mother's echoes. Longer than every playback they have forced on your mind. You have only just become ready to see me."
A faint line formed between Ryu's brows. "Why appear now?"
"Because something touched your core," the figure replied.
It glanced at Lyra through Ryu's own senses, as if looking out from behind his eyes, even though it should not have been able to. "That girl," it said. "The voice you hide at the deepest layer." Ryu flinched slightly.
The figure pressed its hand to his chest.
The motion was symbolic; there was no real contact. "Someone you gave a place. An anchor. That loosened the lock your father left behind."
Ryu's gaze sharpened. "My father would never create a monster."
"Correct," the figure said, tilting its head. "Your father did not create me." It leaned closer, until its shadowed face filled Ryu's vision.
"Your father tried to cage me."
The cracks in the white world widened.
From outside, Lyra's voice pierced through.
"Ryu! Look at me. Listen to my voice."
The figure lifted its head slightly. "Look. Listen. You are him and not him." It gazed down at Ryu again. "You are not just a brilliant child. You are an anomaly. Anomalies attract predators."
Ryu's fists clenched in his own reality.
"Why are nations outside Astryx hunting me?" The figure's smile turned colder.
"They are hunting you because they made me."
The world lurched.
On the training field, Ryu's body jerked as if a low current had run through him. His eyes widened for half a second, then flattened again.
Lyra stepped closer, fingers tightening on his arm. "Ryu! Follow my voice. Do not let go."
Inside, the shadow looked at her properly for the first time.
"That sound," it murmured. "The only thing that makes you inconvenient to use."
It leaned to his ear.
"Drop her. Then I lead."
Ryu's muscles tightened. His breathing sank to a rhythm that was almost mechanical.
NV remained dark. Helvar shouted orders over the comms. Darian reached for the manual shutdown.
Lyra held her breath.
"Ryu…"
The shadow smiled.
"I am stepping out."
In the real world, the simulation surged. Light flared from every projector. Wind spun up from the ground, artificial but violent enough to sting. Sand and dust swirled across the field. Students cried out and ducked.
At the center of the storm, Ryu opened his eyes fully. His irises were still dark, but a thin halo of pale white circled them like a fracture of light. Kael stumbled back. "That is not Ryu."
"Quiet," Ren whispered. "He can hear you."
Lyra stared. In those eyes, she saw two things layered together.
Ryu.
And something that was not Ryu at all.
"Ryu." Her voice shook. "Come back."
He looked at her. His face showed no emotion. From inside, the shadow spoke.
[..Say something to her.]
Ryu's lips parted. His voice came out low and dangerously calm. "Do not come closer." Lyra froze. Ryu continued. "I do not know who will answer you."
The shadow laughed silently in his mind.
NV remained silent. Helvar raised his hand over the master cutoff. Darian braced to force an emergency shutdown.
Before anyone could act, the shadow whispered one last line for him alone.
[..I have found you.]
Every light in the simulation cut out.
The field plunged into complete blackness.
In that darkness, Lyra heard footsteps. Slow. Measured. Moving toward someone.
She swallowed.
"Ryu?"
The answer came from the dark. "I still do not know who is speaking," he said.
And chapter sixteen ended there.
With a boy standing at the edge between himself and something born from him,
and everyone around him realizing that the problem was no longer just outside Vasena's walls.