The first sign that something was drastically wrong was the silence-so deep it felt like the world had stopped breathing.
Arin stumbled backward as the alley around him dimmed, colors leaching out of reality. The void cracks pulsed faintly, spreading like veins of darkness across the broken stone. Every pulse felt like a heartbeat… but not his. Something else was waking. Something older than the Chrono-Harvester. Something that shouldn't exist in any timeline.
Silas dragged him away from the widening rifts. "Stay close. Whatever is coming through-this is too early. It wasn't supposed to appear yet."
Arin swallowed hard. "What is it?"
Silas didn't answer immediately. His eyes were fixed upon the cracks, his jaw clenched and his posture rigid, like a man staring into an old nightmare.
Finally, he whispered, "The reason Echo-Bearers went extinct."
A chill stabbed down Arin's spine. "You said the Chrono-Harvester was the reason."
Silas shook his head. "No. The Harvester hunts people. This… consumes ages."
The void trembled, Time itself bending around it as if kneeling before something far greater. Arin felt pressure in his skull, the kind that made his Echo twist violently.
He could feel eyes on him.
Not one couple.
Thousands.
Watching through the fractures.
Studying him.
Learning him.
Arin stumbled backward. "Silas-we have to go. Now."
"We can't," Silas said in a quiet tone. "If we turn our backs in its presence, we cease. Not die. Cease. As if we were never born."
A shiver ran across Arin's skin.
And the cracks grew deeper, widening into a jagged shape, something like a mouth, or a doorway, or both. Out poured darkness in slow, intelligent tendrils.
Arin's Echo writhed, reacting instinctively. He raised his hand, and threads of fractured time coiled around him, sparking like thin glass. The power felt unstable, like holding a storm in his veins.
His heart raced.
"I can't fight that. I can barely control anything."
Silas slid a hand to Arin's shoulder. "You won't fight it. Not yet. You'll survive it. There's a difference.
The void convulsed.
And then the voice came.
Not spoken.
Not heard.
Felt.
A resonance that vibrated through every bone, every drop of blood, and every memory Arin had ever touched.
"—E c h o — B e a r e r—"
Arin gasped, clutching his head. "Make it stop—"
Silas grabbed his face, forcing him to look at him. "Listen to me. Don't respond. Don't look into the center. Don't acknowledge it.
Arin tried. He really, desperately tried.
But the void tugged at him like gravity. Like it knew him. Like it remembered him. The cracks widened, took on a long, distorted shape—an arm. Limbs of shadow curled outward, sharp and fluid, scrabbing over the ground with a sound like metal dragged over bone.
Arin froze.
"That—thing—"
"It's not here fully," said Silas quickly. "It can't enter reality yet. The Harvester's presence weakened time's fabric. That gave it an opening."
He pulled Arin closer. "Whatever you do, do not step toward it."
Arin nodded, shaking.
The shadow-arm scraped forward, reaching across the alley, searching, feeling the world in flickering pulses. The pressure increased, crushing, suffocating. Arin's breath caught as the Echo inside him surged violently.
He felt his pulse skip.
Then skip again.
His heartbeat wasn't keeping time anymore.
He wasn't attuned to the world.
No… no, not now.
Immediately, Silas caught on. "Arin. Focus. Keep your heartbeat with mine."
"I can't—" Arin gasped. His vision split into overlapping timelines: Silas was dead; he was devoured; the world was swallowed by the void. Futures spiralled around him like a storm.
His Echo cracked, sending sharp flashes of pale energy sparking from his fingertips.
Silas grabbed his hands. "Look at me! Not at the timelines—at me!"
Arin forced his gaze upwards. Silas's face was unyielding—severe, calm, composed.
"Breathe with me," Silas ordered.
Arin tried. Slowly, painfully, the timelines snapping around him blurred and began to collapse back into one.
The void-arm stopped dead in its tracks.
It felt the shift.
And then… it turned.
Not towards Silas.
Toward him.
Every crack in the alley vibrated.
The shadows contorted.
The void pulsed.
It had chosen him.
A cold voice seemed to whisper through Arin's bones:
"You survived your Awakening… so few do."
Arin stumbled backward. "It's talking to me—it's talking to me, Silas—"
Silas shoved him, hard. "Don't answer! Don't look straight at—"
But it was too late.
The void pulse hit Arin directly.
His vision shattered.
He was falling-no, floating-no, stretching.
Time bent and twisted, snapped like a broken reel of film. Arin saw echoes of himself-children, older versions, versions that never existed, versions that died young, versions that never awoke. All of them flickered around him violently.
He saw a world of empty skies.
A world of stopped clocks.
A world devoid of sound.
A world swallowed whole.
Then—
Silas's hand yanked him back.
Reality hit him like a brick wall. Arin slumped back against Silas, breathing heavily, covered in cold perspiration.
Silas's voice was a harsh whisper. "It marked you."
Arin's blood froze. "Marked… me?"
Silas nodded grimly. "It knows your Echo now. It will find you across timelines."
Arin stared at him in horror. "What do we do?"
Silas looked around: the walls, the rifts, the cracking reality.
"We have to go. This timeline is collapsing. The Harvester opened too many fractures, and that thing is using them to grow."
Arin lurched forward as the earth shook violently.
"What's happening now?"
Silas grasped his wrist.
His eyes glowed faintly, dials shifting inside them like tiny clocks turning.
"We're making our escape," Silas said.
Arin blinked. "Escaping where—?"
Silas pulled him close.
"To another timeline."
Before Arin could do anything, Silas slammed his hand against the air.
Reality split open like a curtain and revealed blinding white light.
Arin felt a weight upon him to go.
A second pull yanked him backwards.
The void-arm reached for him.
"Jump!" Silas shouted.
Arin didn't think.
He leapt. The shadow-arm snapped shut behind him— Just inches from his foot. The world blinked out. Arin plunged through a tunnel of fractured light, the timelines twisting around him… but where he landed next would determine not just his fate, but the fates of every Echo-Bearer who had ever lived.