Chapter 11: The Human Echo
Author: Olugbengapens
last update2025-10-28 20:05:18

The first thing Frank felt was “air.” Cold, sharp, unfamiliar it sliced through his lungs like frost. His eyes fluttered open, and the sky above him looked… wrong.

It wasn’t blue. It was cracked faint golden lines running through clouds like veins in marble. The world hummed faintly, as if still alive but fractured. He sat up slowly, groaning.

The ground beneath him wasn’t stone, nor dirt; it was some strange, translucent surface that rippled faintly with light.

His own reflection stared back at him, eyes faintly glowing, veins traced with gold. “…Still me,” he whispered. “Maybe.”

“Frank?”

The voice made him freeze. He turned. Elara stood a few feet away, pale, trembling, eyes wide with disbelief. Her hair was shorter, her clothes tattered, her hands wrapped in bandages. “Elara.”

His throat tightened. “You’re real.”

She hesitated. “I think so. You… disappeared. There was light, fireeverything went quiet.”

He took a shaky step forward. “How long?”

“Three days. Maybe four. The sky
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