The world snapped apart like torn paper.Kain fell through the Echo, not drifting the way he usually did but plunging, dragged downward by a gravitational pull he couldn’t fight. The sound around him warped into a deep mechanical groan, like the turning of ancient gears. His breath vanished. His body felt weightless and heavy at the same time.ThenEverything stilled.Heat hit him first.A suffocating wave of scorching air slammed into his chest, forcing a gasp from his lungs. When he opened his eyes, he saw fire. Fire everywhere. Flames spiderwebbing up walls of cracked concrete. Smoke coiling into a sky the color of bruised steel.He stood in what looked like the ruins of a warehouse blackened beams, melting metal, sparks raining from a collapsing overhead walkway.And in the center of the inferno…A man.Burning.Not screaming.Not fighting.Just standing engulfed in roaring flames that clung to his body like living vines.Kain staggered backward. His throat tightened. Even thoug

The night settled over the abandoned district like a held breath. The safehouse windows were blacked out, the hallways lit only by a single lantern Mara kept low to conserve power. Kain was in the training room, his palms flat on the table, breathing through the aftershocks of the Trap Vision. His heartbeat still thudded like a warning drum.Mara paced behind him, frustrated but trying not to show it.“You shouldn’t have pushed that deep,” she muttered. “Echoes don’t lie, but traps distort reality. They use your fear against you.”Kain swallowed. “I know. But I had to see. I couldn’t just ignore it.”“You could.” She stopped pacing. “That vision was designed for you, Kain. Dominion-level psy-tech. Someone knew exactly how you think.”The last words hung in the air like smoke.Someone knew.Someone was watching.Before Kain could respond, the lantern flickered.Then died.The whole safehouse plunged into a suffocating darkness.Mara froze. Not a sound came from her, but Kain felt her t

The fog around the dockyard thickened until it felt alive swallowing lights, muffling sound, twisting shadows into tall, watchful figures. The small escape boat bobbed against the wooden pier, its engine barely humming as Mara pushed Kain toward it.“Get in,” she whispered urgently.Kain climbed into the boat, still shaken from the Echo burst he’d unleashed. His hands trembled as he grabbed the edge. “Mara… Talia stayed behind. She’ll die.”Mara didn’t look at him as she untied the rope. “Talia made her choice. Right now, we survive because she bought us seconds.”Seconds.Not minutes.Not an hour.Seconds.Kain’s heartbeat thundered in his ears.Mara pushed off the dock and jumped into the boat beside him. “Stay low.”Kain did crouched down as the boat drifted away from the pier. The engine barely made noise, just a soft whir under the wood. They moved through the fog like ghosts.For two breaths, Kain let himself believe they had escaped.Then the fog shifted.Mara froze. “No… no,

The city roared above them sirens, shouting, helicopters chopping the smoky night air. Dominion searchlights swept over rooftops like hungry eyes. Kain and Talia ran through the tight alleyway, half­-dragging each other, slipping on wet concrete slick with the evening mist.“Kain this way!” Talia said, voice breathless but sharp.She pulled him toward a rusted maintenance gate tucked between two abandoned warehouses. A faded sign hung crookedly above it:AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY – CITY UNDERGROUND MAINTENANCEThe gate was padlocked, but barely holding together.Talia lifted a brick and slammed it against the lock.Once.Twice.The lock snapped.They slipped inside.The metal gate screeched behind them as she pulled it closed, sealing off the chaos of the docks.Inside was darkness.A heavy, damp, suffocating darkness.The kind that swallowed sound and memory at the same time.Talia flicked on a small flashlight she carried in her pocket. Its dim beam sliced through the black and reve

The deeper they moved into the forgotten underbelly of the city, the darker it became so dark that even the beams of their flashlights felt swallowed whole. The tunnels were relics from an old subway project abandoned decades ago, a maze of concrete arteries stretching beneath Syndecho like the veins of something ancient and half-asleep.Water dripped from overhead pipes in slow, rhythmic beats, echoing like a heartbeat. Their footsteps splashed through shallow puddles, the faint slosh the only proof they were still moving forward and not simply swallowed by the silence.Kain kept glancing behind them.The darkness felt aware. Watching. Listening.“Talia,” he whispered, because his voice felt too loud in the stale air. “You’re sure these tunnels lead out of the district?”“Yes.” She didn’t look back. Her pace was steady, but tension tightened her shoulders. “But these tunnels weren’t just abandoned. The Dominion used some of them decades ago for extraction routes and containment trans