2025-11-15 21:21:52Kain didn’t sleep.
He sat on the cold wooden floor of his apartment, back against the wall, the metal card resting on his palm like a living thing. Every so often, it pulsed faintly, as if reacting to him or calling to something inside him.
He didn’t understand it.
He didn’t understand anything anymore.
His father.
The Echoes.
The man in the black coat.
The hunters.
Everything felt unreal, but the fear in his chest was painfully real.
Don’t ignore the next Echo…
He shivered.
The room was silent, except for the low hum of the fridge that never fully closed and the faint whistling from the cracked window. Outside, the city moved on, unaware of the chaos unfolding in one tiny apartment.
Kain’s eyes burned with exhaustion.
When he glanced at the time, it was 3:42 a.m.
He rubbed his face and stood. His body felt heavy as if the new truth pressed down on him with invisible weight.
He stared at his reflection again. The same tired young man looked back… but something in his eyes was different now.
He wasn’t imagining it.
A faint glow amber, soft flashed beneath the surface whenever he focused.
He stepped back sharply.
“What the hell…”
He touched his cheek. His skin felt normal.
It was his eyes.
Something in them was changing.
Before he could examine it further, his phone buzzed again.
This time, it wasn’t the group chat.
It was an unknown number.
UNKNOWN: “They are near.”
Kain’s blood ran cold.
Another message followed instantly.
UNKNOWN: “Whatever you do, don’t go outside.”
His fingers trembled.
“Who is this?” he typed back.
No response.
Kain swallowed hard.
He turned off the lights and stepped toward the window.
Slowly…
Quietly…
He pulled back the curtain just enough to see the street below.
His heart stopped.
Three dark figures stood at the corner of the street.
Not moving.
Not talking.
Just… standing.
As if waiting.
As if listening.
As if smelling the air for him.
The streetlamp cast long shadows behind them, but something was wrong terribly wrong.
Their shadows didn’t move with the wind.
At all.
Kain stepped back from the window, chest tightening.
Don’t ignore the next Echo…
He squeezed his eyes shut.
Then
It hit him.
A sharp pulse of pain.
A ringing in his ears.
The edges of the room becoming distorted.
“No no, not now”
The Echo took him.
He couldn’t stop it.
His vision exploded into darkness.
Then light.
Then a scene he didn’t recognize.
He stood in a stairwell.
A stairwell with peeling paint.
Broken handrails.
A crack down the wall.
But he knew it
it was inside his apartment building.
He looked up.
A figure walked slowly down the stairs toward him.
A woman with no face.
Her outline blurry, her movements jerky, unnatural like something wearing a human shape.
Her head twisted too far to one side.
Her limbs bent wrong.
Her shadow was long too long and it crawled up the walls like black vines.
She whispered something in a voice that sounded like a hundred voices at once.
“Kain…”
He tried to step back, but his body wouldn’t move.
Her shape flickered closer closed
Then darkness shattered.
He snapped back into his apartment with a gasp, clutching the wall.
Sweat drenched his skin.
“Damn… damn it…”
He didn’t have minutes.
Not even seconds.
He heard it.
A sound from the hallway.
Creeeeak.
The stairwell door.
Slowly opening.
Kain froze.
His apartment felt like a trap with no exits. His breathing turned shallow and rapid. Every instinct screamed for him to run but where?
The door to the hallway creaked again.
He reached for his jacket.
Then stopped.
His hand hovered over the metal card on the table.
It pulsed once brightly.
Kain didn’t know how he knew, but he felt it suddenly:
It was warning him.
The creature he saw wasn’t outside.
It was inside the building.
Coming up to his floor.
Kain grabbed the card and shoved it into his pocket.
Then he rushed to the window.
He looked down. Third floor. Not high enough to kill him, but high enough to break something.
A sound.
Soft.
Wet.
Wrong.
A dragging noise outside his apartment door.
Kain’s breath caught.
Dragging.
Not footsteps.
She’s here.
He backed away from the door.
His heartbeat felt like it might tear through his ribs.
A faint whisper seeped under the gap beneath the door.
“Kaaaain…”
He clenched his jaw.
He didn’t know what this thing was.
But it was hunting him.
He had only one choice.
Kain pushed the window open and climbed onto the sill. Cold night air hit his face, mixing with the faint scent of rain.
The dragging sound grew louder.
Closer.
It stopped right outside his door.
Kain didn’t think anymore.
He jumped.
The fall knocked the air from his lungs. Pain shot up his side as he hit the ground hard, groaning. But he was alive. He scrambled to his feet, adrenaline taking over.
He staggered onto the street.
Then froze again.
The three dark figures at the corner had turned toward him.
Slowly.
In unison.
Their heads tilted slightly, like wolves that found prey.
“Oh God…”
Kain stumbled back.
Behind him, a window on the third floor burst outward shattered
as a pale, distorted shape forced itself through the frame, limbs twisting like liquid bone.
She dropped onto the pavement without a sound.
And she stood up.
Her faceless head turned toward him.
Kain’s entire body shook.
“What do you want from me?” he whispered.
The woman’s shadow stretched toward him like a hand.
“Kain…”
Her voice layered, echoing, wrong.
“Give us the Echo…”
He backed away.
“What Echo? I don’t have anything!”
The three men at the corner began walking toward him slow, deliberate steps.
Kain felt trapped.
Panic surged up his throat.
Then
A voice cut through the street like a blade.
“Move!”
Kain turned right as a motorcycle screeched toward him.
A woman wearing a black helmet stretched out her hand.
“Get on! Now!”
Kain didn’t think.
He grabbed her hand and swung himself onto the bike.
The faceless woman shrieked, a sound that cracked the streetlights and made Kain’s ears ring.
The rider hit the accelerator.
The bike shot forward, tires screaming against asphalt.
Kain looked back.
The three figures were running after them.
Fast.
Inhumanly fast.
The faceless woman crawled on all fours like a twisted spider.
“What are they?!” Kain shouted over the wind.
The rider didn’t answer.
She only yelled:
“HOLD ON!”
The bike swerved sharply, speeding into the night.
Kain clung to her waist as the creatures chased behind them
relentless, silent, unnatural.
This wasn’t a simple warning.
This was a hunt.
And the city had become a battlefield he wasn’t ready for.
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Chapter 24 : Another Hunter Appears
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
Chapter 23 : Trap Vision
The world still felt unsteady.Even after leaving the training room, even after Elara forced him to drink water and sit down, even after Jaryn triple-checked his pulse with trembling hands Kain felt like the floor was tilting beneath him, as though he was half inside the Echo and half outside it.He could still smell smoke.Still feel heat on his skin.Still hear the burning man’s voice echoing in his head:“You are the spark.”“You must choose who you save.”“I am what you refuse to become.”He pressed his palms to his eyes, trying to quiet the memory.It didn’t fade.Elara paced in front of him, boots hitting the concrete floor in nervous rhythm. She had pulled her hair back into a tight knot, but a few strands had escaped and fell across her face. Her jaw was clenched, her eyes sharp.Jaryn, meanwhile, sat on an overturned crate, elbows on his knees, staring at Kain like he was looking at a puzzle that didn’t make sense.“Kain,” Elara finally said, stopping in front of him. “Tell m
Chapter 22 : The Vision of The Burning Man
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
Chapter 21: First Controlled Echo
The room felt too small for what Kain was about to attempt.It was an old storage hall in the Safehouse, converted into a training chamber. Concrete walls. Steel rafters overhead. A single industrial bulb hummed above, flickering faintly like it sensed the tension in the air.Elara stood across from him, arms folded, her expression a war between confidence and fear.“Remember,” she said softly, “Echoes aren’t meant to be forced. You’re not manipulating the future… you’re listening to it. You’re letting it speak.”Kain nodded. His chest rose and fell too fast.He’d seen dozens of Echoes over the past few days flashes of danger, fragments of conversations that hadn’t happened yet, emotional shadows of moments seconds ahead. But they always came to him. Never once had he called one forward.And now he was supposed to summon one.“Okay.” He exhaled. “Tell me again. The steps.”Elara walked closer, stopping right where the light cut between them.“One: quiet your mind. Strip away everythi
Chapter 20 : Kain’s Training Begins
The next morning arrived gray and cold.Wind pushed through the cracks of the old safehouse, rattling loose boards and carrying dust across the worn floor. The place smelled of old wood, damp stone, and a hint of smoke from the lantern Eli lit hours ago.Kain stood in the center of the main room feet apart, shoulders tense, fists curled at his sides.His breath fogged slightly in the air.Aria circled him slowly, hands behind her back, eyes sharp and calculating.“So,” she said, “you want to learn how to control your Echoes?”Kain swallowed.“Not just control. I want to understand them. Use them. Before they drop on me and leave me gasping like an idiot.”Aria arched a brow. “You’re not an idiot.”“Did you see how I nearly tripped over a broken pipe yesterday?”Aria smirked. “Fine. A talented idiot.”Kain groaned softly, but a faint smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. Somehow, Aria’s teasing always made the fear settle.Eli sat on the floor nearby, leaning against a stack of crat
Chapter 19 : Orin’s Directive
The Dominion headquarters never slept.Not really.Even at midnight, the air inside the towering obsidian structure pulsed with quiet, controlled violence an orchestra of humming servers, surveillance drones gliding overhead, and soldiers moving in perfect formation through silver-lit halls.In the center of it all stood Commander Orin Voss, rigid and silent before a massive holographic screen.His eyes cold, calculating, unblinking were fixed on the feed glowing before him.Kain Hale.Alive.Growing stronger.And no longer hiding.The boy had awakened the Echo-Prime signature.Just like his father.Orin’s jaw clenched.“Commander.”A Dominion lieutenant approached with crisp steps and saluted sharply.“Sir, the Council has issued an update to Protocol 7.”Orin didn’t turn.“Proceed.”The lieutenant swallowed.“Effective immediately… the Hale target is classified Kill-On-Sight if capture is not guaranteed.”The room fell into a tense, metallic silence.Orin finally turned his head slo
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