The Echo War

Five

City of Masks

The ash wind howled behind them as Dren and Veyna approached the fractured city of Korr Vale a place where memory didn’t just linger in shadows, it screamed.

Korr Vale rose like a jagged wound in the landscape. Once a technological marvel, now a twisted echo of itself. Buildings tilted at impossible angles, held aloft by gravitational tethers that pulsed blue in the twilight. Antennae flickered with static atop rusted towers, scanning for intrusions both human and… otherwise.

The city wore a mask, same as its people.

And beneath that mask?

Nothing but madness.

Dren tugged his scarf higher over his mouth, eyes narrowing. “So this is where he’s nesting.”

Veyna nodded without looking at him. “If the rumors are true, he’s made a palace of ghosts. And he’s not hiding anymore. He’s building.”

The wind carried their steps down the sloped road that led to the gate. Above it, mechanical sentinels watched with red glass eyes. Their limbs twitched, half-mechanical, half-organic—remnants from the War of Shards. No one dared approach Korr Vale without a reason.

Luckily for Dren, he was the reason.

A scan-beam swept across their bodies as they stood before the entrance. The gate’s panel flickered, briefly confused by Dren’s biosignature. He braced for the buzz of alarms.

But none came.

Instead, the heavy gates creaked open with a groan like old bones grinding together.

“Not even a question,” Veyna muttered.

“That’s either very good,” Dren said, “or very, very bad.”

They entered the city.

Korr Vale was chaos incarnate.

The streets pulsed with shifting architecture, like the buildings couldn’t decide which year they belonged to. Stone, glass, obsidian, even timber in places all layered atop each other like strata of forgotten time. Above, floating market stalls drifted between skyscrapers that flickered in and out of existence. People moved with purpose, none of them showing their faces.

Everyone wore a mask.

Porcelain and leather, crystal and cloth. Some bore painted smiles, others permanent frowns. The air reeked of ozone and false memory. Dren kept one hand on the hilt of his sidearm as they wove through the city’s twisted corridors.

“Why the masks?” he asked.

Veyna’s voice was flat. “So the past can’t recognize them.”

They passed a woman hawking false childhoods in glass vials, a child dancing for credits while looped echoes of his own laughter played from a floating speaker. In every corner of Korr Vale, the impossible was mundane.

“Here,” Veyna said, stopping at a crumbling building marked with shifting sigils.

Dren looked up. The symbols rearranged themselves to form his face.

“Charming,” he muttered.

Inside, the air turned colder.

They descended a narrow staircase to a dark room lit by pulsating veins of neon memory-strands. A figure sat cross-legged at its center, behind a rusted desk overloaded with tech relics, projection shards, and a glass skull that hummed softly.

“Zel Orr,” Veyna said. “You still breathing?”

The figure turned.

His mask was a complex thing of bone and circuitry, one eye glowing blue, the other cracked and dark. “Only on days when it hurts less to exist.”

His gaze turned to Dren. “You’re taller than the last version.”

Dren stepped forward. “You know him. The other me.”

Zel Orr chuckled. “I know all of you. The Original, the Broken, the Kind, the Killer. Even the one who burned the Western Reach to ash. But the one you’re asking about? The one building the Masked Army? Yeah… I know him.”

Dren’s fingers clenched.

Zel stood slowly. “He’s beneath the city. Deep, where the memories curdle. He’s not just a man anymore. He’s a convergence point.”

“A what?”

“A fracture so deep the timeline split to accommodate him. He’s not just living your past he’s rewriting it. He’s creating legitimacy with stolen identity. And his believers? They’d bleed for him.”

Veyna’s voice was low. “What does he want?”

Zel leaned in, shadows warping around him. “He wants the Source. The Core memory that made you. The first pain. The first lie. Once he has it, he becomes you. Not a copy. Not an Echo. The real you.”

“And me?” Dren asked.

“Erased. Folded into his myth. Forgotten.”

They left the broker’s den with a location: The Breach Vault, deep under the old memory market.

Getting there wasn’t simple.

They had to pass through the Chapel of Reversal, a zone where time flowed backward for three-minute intervals, then re-corrected. Dren watched his footprints unform, watched a beggar age into a child and back again.

No one spoke here.

Speaking meant losing track of where you were in your own sentence. Or worse remembering things that hadn’t happened yet.

Once out, they crossed the Echo Bridge, where statues of every known version of Dren lined the path.

Some bore armor. Some held books. One had a crown of twisted metal.

They didn’t speak.

But Dren could feel them watching.

At the market, things went wrong.

It started with a boy no older than ten wearing Dren’s face.

He darted between stalls, trailing black static. Veyna reached for her blade, but Dren caught her arm.

“He’s just a kid.”

“No,” she said. “He’s bait.”

Too late.

The crowd parted as five masked figures emerged each perfectly mimicking Dren’s movements, expressions, and fighting stance. Echoes. Pure copies.

And they were fast.

The fight was brutal.

Dren ducked a blade swipe, landed a punch to one copy’s gut only to be struck by a mirrored blow a heartbeat later. Veyna engaged two more, her twin daggers humming with kinetic feedback. She moved like water, striking, dodging, flowing through chaos.

But they were losing.

Every move Dren made was predicted. Countered. Echoed.

They knew his instincts.

So he stopped thinking.

He fought wrong breaking his own rhythm. Punching where he should’ve kicked. Stepping left when his instinct screamed right.

That confused them.

One fell.

Another screamed and imploded into static.

Veyna drove a blade into the third’s throat, whispering a curse.

Then silence.

The remaining two copies retreated, but not before one whispered:

“He’s waiting. He knows what you fear most.”

The vault door was ancient a construct of steel, bone, and forgotten codes. Zel Orr’s key got them inside.

The room pulsed with power. Memory strands drifted like jellyfish, each tethered to a moment that hurt.

And at the center: a spire of obsidian. Floating just above it was a relic.

A device shaped like a spike. Half-syringe, half data drive.

The Pulse Emitter.

Veyna froze. “That’s Echo tech.”

“No,” Dren said quietly. “That’s me tech.”

He reached out. The emitter vibrated under his touch.

A projection flared to life his voice.

“If you’re hearing this… I failed. The fracture couldn’t be contained. The only way to end it… is to erase the root.”

The image showed Dren injecting the emitter into his own chest.

“No version of me survives this.”

Veyna grabbed his wrist. “You’re not him.”

“But I am,” Dren whispered. “Or I will be.”

“Not if we stop it now. Together.”

Before they could move, a slow clapping echoed from the shadows.

A figure stepped into the light.

Another Dren.

But older. Eyes colder. Wearing armor made of living memory threads that shifted with each breath. His mask porcelain, cracked, identical to Dren’s real face.

The Echo.

“You made it,” he said, smiling. “Finally.”

Dren raised his weapon. “This ends now.”

“No,” the Echo said calmly. “This begins. You’ve seen it how broken we are. Fragmented. Haunted. But I can fix it. We were never meant to be just one man. We were meant to be many. A legion. A myth. Eternal.”

Dren stepped forward. “You’re not me.”

The Echo nodded slowly. “Not yet. But I will be. Once you remember everything.”

The shadows shifted. More Echoes appeared. A dozen versions of Dren.

And then… Veyna moved.

She threw a pulse grenade shattering the moment.

In the chaos, she dragged Dren out, the emitter still in hand.

They fled.

They burst from the underground vault into the bleeding dusk of Korr Vale. The city behind them roared with alarms.

“They won’t stop,” Veyna gasped.

“I know.”

Dren looked at the emitter in his palm.

The kill switch.

The final key.

A weapon designed to sever the memory link between all versions of himself. To unmake the myth.

Veyna turned to him. “We end this. On our terms.”

He looked out across the city, where lights danced and lies wore faces.

Not yet hope.

But the first spark of defiance.

And Dren.. the Dren.. was ready to burn it all down to reclaim who he was.