Heir Rejected: Bound by the Legacy System

Chapter 9: The Echo Depths

The first step beneath Emberpoint was like crossing into another world.

Steel gave way to obsidian. Clean circuits morphed into jagged, fractured lines of corrupted data. Lights flickered unpredictably, casting distorted shadows along walls that hummed with old, unspoken grief.

Kieran led the way, his blade drawn but low. Beside him, Skye moved like a ghost, every step measured. Behind them, Lyra checked every motion tracker while Mira—barefoot and humming again—walked as if she’d been here before.

System Warning: Sub-layer anomaly detected.

Signal: Fragmented Null Pulse — Proximity 2.2km

Environment: Suppressed Override Zone / Echo Contamination Level: Critical

“This place isn’t just abandoned,” Lyra muttered. “It was sealed. Maybe even condemned.”

Kieran’s panel buzzed faintly, skipping every few meters.

“The system can’t read this level properly,” he said. “It doesn’t know if it exists—or ever did.”

Skye whistled low. “Glitched reality. Beautiful.”

“No,” Mira whispered. “It’s remembering itself.”

As they moved deeper, the architecture changed.

They passed through chambers warped by partial data restoration. Hallways ended in nothingness. Floors stuttered beneath their feet, sometimes revealing what looked like alternate versions of the same space—corrupted overlays from past timelines.

In one room, dozens of white suits—Override armor—stood fused to the walls, silent and unmoving, their visors cracked from the inside.

“What happened here?” Skye asked.

Mira didn’t answer. She simply reached out, brushing her fingers along the nearest armored chestplate.

It dissolved into code.

Lyra blinked. “That wasn’t just decay. That was a memory.”

Kieran felt it too. An echo. Not of sound—but of pain.

New Trait Gained (Temporary): Echo Sensitivity – Increased detection of system anomalies and past trauma imprints. Side effect: Emotional bleed.

He winced, clutching his temple.

Flashes danced across his vision:

A young soldier screaming as his override chip rewrote his memories.

A Null child in a white room, eyes wide as the system failed to catalog her.

Override agents turning their weapons inward.

It was more than suppression.

This level was a graveyard.

Kieran knelt before an old control panel, dusted with gray ash and static energy. His bloodline mark let him interface, even in unstable zones.

The logs weren’t just encrypted—they were corrupted intentionally.

He ran a partial restoration protocol.

Blackwell Experimental Node: Archive 34C – Echo Fracture Division

“They do not obey. The Nulls are unchainable.”

“Project Windglass terminated.”

“Execute Final Protocol: Seal the Depths.”

“Windglass,” Lyra said behind him. “I remember that name. It was a rumored kill-switch project. They tried to reverse-scan Echoes—break them down and rebuild them like programs.”

Skye’s voice was tight. “So what happened?”

Kieran scrolled to the last entry.

“Subject B breached isolation. Subject C vanished. Project staff self-terminated. Reboot failed.”

Silence stretched in the room.

“They didn’t fail,” Mira said, eyes wide. “They escaped.”

They reached the signal's edge at what looked like a collapsed observation chamber. A great glass panel stretched above, cracked and blackened by fire. Beyond it: a room where nothing moved.

The signal pulsed stronger now. Mira trembled.

“She’s close,” she whispered. “She never stopped crying.”

Kieran’s heart sank. “Crying?”

Then a noise echoed from the far chamber.

It wasn’t a sob.

It was a laugh.

Soft. Disjointed. Like a broken child’s toy caught in a loop.

Then came the voice.

“He doesn’t know. He brought the fire. He doesn’t even know what he is.”

Skye tensed. “That’s not Mira.”

“No,” Mira said. “That’s Subject B.”

They breached the glass, and stepped into the corrupted chamber.

At its center stood a girl—maybe fifteen—with mismatched eyes and limbs that didn’t quite match her proportions, as if grown from different datasets. One arm glitched occasionally, flickering into mechanical fragments. Her hair floated, as if underwater.

She smiled at them, teeth just slightly too sharp.

“Kieran,” she cooed. “The Heir who thought he chose war.”

Subject B – Classification: Echo Null (Unstable)

Override Note: Avoid contact. Fractured code cannot be recompiled.

Kieran stepped forward slowly.

“Who are you?”

“I was Bryn,” she said sweetly. “Then I was B-07. Now? Now I’m whatever the system fears most.”

“And what’s that?”

“A story it can’t end.”

Mira moved beside Kieran and whispered, “She’s broken. She let it in.”

“What’s ‘it’?”

But Bryn just began to hum, and the chamber shivered.

Bryn’s eyes locked onto Kieran.

“Do you know why they buried us? Not because we were dangerous. But because we didn’t fit. We didn’t follow the cycle. Echo. Override. Reset. Loop. But me? I remembered.”

“Remembered what?” Kieran asked.

“That the system isn’t a tool. It’s a storyteller. And you, little heir, are just its next fable.”

She snapped her fingers.

Reality broke.

Walls shattered into numbers. Gravity twisted sideways. Lyra shouted, grabbing Mira, who shielded them with a burst of null energy that disintegrated a wall trying to become a door.

Warning: Environmental Stability – 9%

Initiate Emergency Field Collapse? Y/N

Kieran refused.

He stepped toward Bryn.

“If you hate the system,” he said, “help us bring it down.”

Bryn tilted her head.

“And replace it with what? Another cage? Another lie?”

“We can rewrite it,” he said. “Together.”

She paused.

Then smiled—sadly.

“You’re not ready.”

Suddenly, Bryn screamed. A raw, digital wail that melted the air.

From the walls, Override code surged—creatures formed from fractured data, crawling like insects, blind and shrieking.

“They found her,” Mira gasped. “Override suppression protocol. They’re trying to delete her.”

“Can we stop it?” Lyra shouted.

“No,” Mira said. “But she can choose.”

Bryn stood defiant as the creatures closed in.

“You wanted a story, heir?” she called out. “Then remember me.”

A blast of white exploded outward—wiping the chamber clean.

When it cleared, Bryn was gone.

Only a trace of code remained.

Kieran picked it up.

Fragment Acquired: Subject B’s Memory – “Fireloop”

Embedded skill unlocked: Memory Flame (Chance to deflect Override rewrite attempts)

Mira walked forward, silent.

“She saved her story. For you.”

The team climbed slowly back toward Emberpoint.

None of them spoke much.

Skye was the first to break the silence. “We lost her.”

“No,” Kieran said. “We found her. She chose her end.”

“She wasn’t stable,” Lyra added. “But she showed us the truth.”

Kieran opened his panel.

Resistance Roster Updated:

Echo Nodes: 3 / 5

Null Variants Discovered: 2 / ?

New Threat Logged: Override Annihilation Protocol – “Fablekill”

“They’re rewriting tactics now,” he muttered.

“Because Nulls aren't just people,” Mira said softly, “they're disruptions.”

“And if the story breaks,” Kieran said, “the system crashes.”