Time fractured beneath his feet before he could even think.
Arin's chest heaved; shards of reality swam around him like splintered glass. Each fragment hummed with a faint energy that tugged at his Echo. Shadows writhed at his feet, twisting and curling, but he could feel it now, the power inside him, raw, alive, and awakening.
"You've begun to awaken," Silas said in a voice low and sharp, almost reverent. "Good. That's a start."
Arin shook his head, trying to catch his breath. "What. what am I? Why do I feel. all this at once?"
"You are the last Echo-Bearer," Silas said quietly. "You can touch time, see it, bend it… survive it. But only if you master it. Otherwise." His voice dropped to a whisper. ".it consumes you."
A gust of wind tore down the alley, scattering shards of shattered reality. The ticking that had haunted him grew louder, slower, faster, echoing from all directions at once. Arin's vision splintered into countless variations yet to occur: himself dodging collapsing debris, twisting around frozen spikes of metal, even striking the Chrono-Harvester—but in every timeline, the same outcome: the ticking never stopped.
Then a voice rang inside his head—not Silas's, not his own.
"Echo-Bearer… you cannot hide.
Arin spun. Nothing. Just broken alleys and shards of fractured reality.
Silas's hand clamped onto his shoulder. "It's testing you. Every heartbeat, every step… it counts you down. If you falter, it will devour you before you even realize it exists."
Arin's fists clenched. The Echo surged, pulsing through every nerve, every cell. Reality bent beneath his fingers as he shaped fragments of broken time into blades of energy. Shadows screamed and recoiled. A wall beside them split violently, the concrete fracturing into jagged shards that floated in the air. He pushed time forward, scattering the darkness apart with precision, feeling a rush of power he had never known.
The Chrono-Harvester hissed—a terrible, metallic, distorted sound that set Arin's ears ringing. It recoiled but did not retreat. Its hollow gaze was fixed on him.
"Not bad," Silas muttered, eyes narrowing. "But that was practice. That thing doesn't hunt for sport—it feeds. And now, it knows exactly where you are."
In Arin's chest, exhilaration mingled with fear. Inside him, the Echo stretched out, touching pieces of reality he never had dared to control. The world around him became fluid, a molten flow of glass that took form because of his will. He realized something terrifying: he was in a position to shape time itself—but he didn't know how far he could push it.
The shadows recoiled, then shifted. From the far end of the alley, a new figure emerged, older, darker, bending light and shadow around it like a living distortion. Its gaze pierced reality, patient, calculating, aware. Not moving, yet the world seemed to shrink toward it.
The voices in Arin's head screamed as one:
Run… fight… survive… or be erased.
Silas leaned in close, whispering, "There's no turning back now. You either control it… or it controls you. And with every heartbeat, it's learning from you."
The ground bucked beneath his feet. Cracks tore the alley open into jagged rifts of black void, pulsing with energy that didn't feel right. Arin's eyes went wide as the void seemed to bend outward, stretching to infinity as the edges of reality bled into it. His Echo pulsed in time with the beating of his heart, swelling outward to touch the fractured world around him.
He could feel time itself bending under his fingertips, small at first, then larger, stretching moments, reversing falling debris, slowing shadows. He couldn't control it perfectly. Every movement, every thought threatened to tear him apart if he miscalculated.
Silas's voice cut through the chaos. "Focus! Control it. Bend it to your will, Arin. You are the last Echo-Bearer. If you hesitate, it will kill you."
Arin sucked in a deep breath. Closing his eyes, he let the Echo course through him fully. He reached out with both hands, picturing fragments of broken time around him, like threads, weaving them into a net. Shadows collided with it, shredding and dissolving, but the void at the alley's end pulsed to life like a heartbeat, growing darker, deeper, hungrier.
The ticking grew deafening. Arin realized it wasn't a warning but a countdown, a lure, a signal. This figure, waiting in the shadows, was older than Chrono-Harvester, patient, infinitely more dangerous. It was not hunting; it calculated, learned, fed from every movement he made.
Arin's chest was on fire. His Echo roared in response, stretching, bending reality in shards, but he could feel it fighting back, pulling on him. Every second was a battle for survival, and yet… he felt alive. More alive than he had ever been.
The alley seemed to close in, the void expanding, the shadows clawing, the ticking roaring in his ears. And then, from the very cracks in reality, a voice deeper than anything he had heard rang: "The Bearer awakens… and so does the hunt." Arin's eyes widened. This was no longer only survival. It was a war he had been born into, one that had already raged across time. The Echo pulsed inside him, wild and alive, and for the first time, he understood-he could fight. He had to fight. Time was breaking around them, and in the cracks, something older than the Chrono-Harvester waited-patient, intelligent, and unstoppable. Arin's Echo flared, but would it be enough to survive what was coming?