CHAPTER 67: ECHO
The space in the lower cabin froze over in an instant.
The ship's low hum vanished, replaced by an unsettling silence. Before John could take another breath, the wooden walls around him melted into translucent shadows, dissolving like ink dropped in water.
Then reality shifted, morphing into something John remembered all too well.
He tried to orient himself, finding himself standing in the corner of a quiet hospital room.
The air here smelled faintly of antiseptic. Sunlight filtered softly through a thin window curtain, illuminating a bed where a young man lay. His black hair was messy, falling just short of his shoulders. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, and his beard was rough and unkempt—just as John always remembered.
Alex.
John's heart pounded against his ribs like a trapped animal. Seeing Alex again—the brother who had raised him, who had shielded him from the filth of the world when their mother died of sickness in the back alleys, who had taken every punch and every insult when the neighborhood children mocked John for being a whore's son—and seeing him still alive sent a surge of overwhelming emotion through his chest.
John instinctively lunged forward, his voice choking in his throat. "Alex—!"
His hand passed cleanly through the iron bedframe, as if he were a ghost.
Near the foot of the bed stood a tall man clad in flashy, colorful robes. He possessed a delicate, almost doll-like beauty. His rainbow hair flowed down his shoulders like a curtain, while his color-shifting eyes were locked onto Alex with an unexplainable emotion.
Jynx.
There was no theater to Jynx like John remembered, except for his lavish appearance. He looked more like a human with unique tastes than a god as he stood before Alex.
"You look terrible, my friend," Jynx said softly. His tone was strangely casual, carrying the familiarity of two brothers who had once shared the morning sun.
Alex turned his hollow eyes toward him. Beneath the exhaustion, a deep, concealed fury burned in his gaze—a bitter, jagged anguish forged over millennia of loss.
"Dying tends to ruin one's complexion."
Jynx let out a faint sigh, leaning his hands on the iron railing of the bed. He looked down at Alex, his expression almost pleading.
"It didn't have to end like this, brother," Jynx murmured. "You know why I did it. If she had just cooperated then… she wouldn't have died, ***. I swear to you, I didn't want to take her life. But she housed the Primordial Shard. It was the only way. The world is broken, ***! The laws are splintering, the dark is creeping in! If I collect them all... if I gather all the Primordial Shards, I can make everything whole again. We can restore paradise. Why can't you just see that?"
Alex's hands clenched into tight, trembling fists against the white sheets, his knuckles turning stark white. Tears of bitter grief spilled over his cheeks.
"You killed the woman I loved," Alex whispered, his voice shaking with rage as he remembered her body.
"You slaughtered her for a piece of old rock because your obsession with the Source has rotted whatever soul you had left! You call it restoring paradise, ***, but you're blind. Collecting those Primordial Shards won't make you a savior. It will awaken the Dark Being sealed beneath the heavens! It will tear what's left of creation into absolute nothingness!"
"I can control it!" Jynx insisted, leaning closer, his color-shifting eyes searching Alex's face for a single shred of understanding.
"We fought the dark together before, ***! We walked through the primordial fires, becoming the first mortals to become divine. Walk with me like you used to. Please... just tell me where you hid the shard."
Alex looked up at the god standing over him. For a long, agonizing second, the silence stretched between them, thick with the weight of countless years of lost brotherhood and shattered divinity.
Then, a faint smile touched Alex's bloodless lips.
"Go fuck yourself."
Jynx's eyes dimmed, the subtle warmth in his posture instantly vanishing into a vast void. With a single flick of his wrist, a thin, silver blade materialized in his palm and slid effortlessly straight through Alex's heart, leaving no mark behind.
"I'm sorry," Jynx whispered flatly.
Alex's body stiffened, but as the life drained from his eyes, his chest suddenly ruptured with a golden light. A brilliant, miniature star shot upward out of his heart, piercing straight through the ceiling and tearing through the fabric of space itself.
Jynx's eyes widened as the light vanished into the void—carrying with it the final piece of Alex's soul.
The hospital room shattered like glass.
John fell to his knees on the damp wooden floorboards of his cabin, gasping violently for air as cold sweat poured down his neck. An all-consuming fury boiled beneath his skin, his chest burning with a rage so visceral it made his blood feel like liquid fire.
Jynx. The bastard was the one who took everything from him.
"John."
John snapped his head up. Standing near the small wooden desk was a translucent, flickering specter of Alex. John opened his mouth to cry out, but no sound came.
"Listen to me closely, little brother," Alex's voice echoed softly into John's mind, his specter offering a distant smile.
"My time is completely up, and you need to know the whole truth… so just listen."
The specter hovered slightly above the floorboards, its golden light wavering. "Echo... the voice in your head that you've been listening to... Echo is a diminished fragment of my own consciousness. It is a fractured alter ego born from my soul, which attached itself to you when I transplanted the Primordial Shard into your heart."
John froze in utter shock, his hands trembling violently as he listened.
"When Jynx murdered the woman I loved and stole her shard, I managed to snatch it back from him and fled across the void," Alex's voice continued, solemn and heavy with ancient regret.
"I reincarnated into your world, born as a mortal infant with all my memories intact. I knew everything—who I was and my past life as a divine being. But I couldn't channel my divine energy, because the moment I used my power, Jynx would have detected my signature and descended upon our world to get to me... though it seems it was useless, he still found me in the end."
Alex's spectral image wavered, a tear slipping down his pale face. "Even so, I lived as a helpless human child. I watched our mother suffer and die, unable to use divine miracles to cure her without exposing us to the heavens. I raised you in those filthy streets—and even when I wanted to do better for you, I couldn't."
The specter's golden light began to flicker violently, dimming into faint embers.
"When I was dying, I transplanted the Primordial Shard directly into your soul to keep it hidden from the cosmos forever. After the transplantation, my mortal body actually began to recover... but that was when Jynx finally tracked me down and struck me."
Alex's smile softened into a final, heartbreaking expression of warmth. "I'm sorry, John. I'm sorry I couldn't save our mother. I'm sorry I left you with this terrible burden... but you must protect the shard. You must stop Jynx before he gathers the rest and awakens the Dark Being. Protect yourself... and beware of those who worship the dark."
With those final words, Alex's specter dissolved into a shower of soft, golden motes that sank gently into John's chest.
CRACK.
The sensation of spatial travel hit John like a sledgehammer to the skull.
When his consciousness snapped back to reality, the smell of damp timber and salt was gone. He was no longer in his cabin aboard The Walrus.
He opened his eyes to find himself sitting in a pitch-black, subterranean cell made of rough, moss-covered stone. Iron chains wrapped securely around his forearms and chest, binding him tightly to a steel chair. Bright purple suppression runes flickered along the links of the chains, completely sealing his Ether and locking his inner domain.
He was alone, and Raven and Lea were nowhere to be seen.
At that exact moment, the door at the end of the room creaked open, and someone stepped into the light.