The Echo War

Four

The Shadows That Answer

The silence was louder now.

Dren sat against a broken pillar inside the collapsed command dome, the anchor shard glowing faintly in his hand. The light faded slowly as reality stabilized around him. Veyna crouched nearby, eyes scanning the breach in the sky where the rift had just closed.

“Still breathing,” she muttered. “I’ll take that as a win.”

Dren didn’t answer right away. His mind was still drifting between images the shattering mirror, the broken timelines, the memory of the First Self standing at the edge of the Nexus Core like a prophet ready to tear open the universe.

“I saw where it started,” he said finally.

Veyna turned toward him. “What did he do?”

“He didn’t destroy the world for power,” Dren murmured. “He broke it… because he thought he was saving us. Thought that one version of us wasn’t enough.”

She studied him for a moment. “You still think you’re different?”

“I’m starting to think I’m exactly the same.”

Before she could respond, the sky groaned again.

Another rift?

No something else.

A pulse moved through the air like a breath drawn by a sleeping beast. Faint tremors whispered through the ground beneath them. Then

The world flickered.

Just once.

But it was enough.

Veyna stood up fast, weapon in hand. “Did you feel that?”

“Yeah,” Dren said, rising to his feet. “Something’s wrong.”

From beyond the crumbled edge of the vault, shadows began to spill forward.

They didn’t move like natural things. They rippled like ink in water, forming shapes that bled and reformed, human-like silhouettes laced with fire beneath their skin.

The Echoborn.

Not just echoes.

These were timelines made manifest. Versions of beings who had died screaming or twisted in other timelines, now pulled into this world by some invisible hand.

Their eyes burned silver.

Dren stepped in front of Veyna instinctively, even though he knew she could handle herself.

There were four Echoborn now, creeping into the ruins, their bodies flickering between armor, blood, bone, and shadow. Their mouths opened but made no sound just vibrating pulses that distorted the air.

“I thought the breach was closed,” Veyna hissed.

“It was,” Dren said. “But he left the gate open just long enough.”

The lead Echoborn raised its hand.

And the ground ripped.

A wave of kinetic energy blasted toward them. Dren dove right, Veyna left, just as the pillar behind them exploded in a burst of fire and stone.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a plan?” she shouted.

“Yeah,” he said, activating the blade at his hip. “We don’t die.”

The next few moments were chaos.

Dren moved like instinct. Like memory. Like something deeper than skill an echo of himself awakened.

He struck the first Echoborn through the center, but it didn’t fall. Instead, it split into two smaller forms, each just as fast, just as lethal.

“Great,” he muttered, blocking a flurry of razor-sharp strikes.

Veyna launched a charge round from her gauntlet, hitting one clean in the head. It exploded in a burst of dark matter but a second later, its pieces began to crawl back together.

“They’re not tethered to this reality,” she called out. “Killing them here is like stepping on a shadow!”

“Then we need to find the source.”

Another pulse rolled through the dome.

Dren turned, scanning then saw it.

A tear hovering above the ruins, barely visible. Like a wound in the sky stitched shut with thread made of fire.

“That’s where they’re coming through,” he shouted. “Can you collapse it?”

Veyna switched her weapon configuration, blue glyphs racing across her gauntlet.

“Cover me!”

Dren surged forward, engaging the nearest Echoborn in brutal melee. Sparks flew as blades clashed steel against something older, something wrong. One Echoborn shifted mid-strike, taking on his own face, grinning with teeth too sharp to be real.

“Still think you’re the real one?” it whispered.

Dren growled and drove his blade through its heart.

The shadow vanished with a scream like breaking glass.

Behind him, Veyna reached the tear.

She slammed her palm against the air where the rift hovered, channeling her energy through the anchor shard. Light flared pure white fighting against the bleeding crimson edges of the rift.

“It’s pushing back!” she shouted. “It wants to stay!”

Dren joined her, placing his hand over hers. The crown in his chest pulsed again, harder this time.

Words filled his mind not his own.

“Collapse is permission. Permission is choice. Choose.”

He did.

He focused, pulling the weight of every fractured self inward, forcing the bleed to stop. Not through power but through refusal.

He rejected the tether.

The rift screamed.

Then collapsed.

All around them, the Echoborn froze… then shattered into smoke.

Silence returned.

Veyna exhaled and stumbled against him.

He caught her.

“Nice work,” she said, chest heaving.

Dren didn’t reply.

His hand touched his chest. The crown sigil there was glowing brighter now, visible even through his armor.

It was waking up.

And it was hungry.

—

Later, back at the edge of the ruins, they set up camp in the half-gutted frame of a downed skycruiser. The wreck was old pre-Fracture tech but the shielding still held and it was better than sleeping in the open.

Veyna was working on her gauntlet, rerouting energy cells damaged in the fight. Dren stared out at the northern sky, watching the clouds turn copper as the moons rose.

“We need allies,” Veyna said after a while.

Dren nodded. “I know.”

“Not just soldiers. Survivors. People who’ve seen what this war really is.”

He looked over at her. “You have someone in mind?”

She hesitated.

“There’s a name I haven’t spoken in years,” she said finally. “A man who used to be the Warden of Veilspire.”

“That fortress city on the edge of the Dead Stretch?”

“Yeah. Before the collapse, he was one of the last Echo-Tamers. He could walk between timelines without falling apart. If anyone knows how to stop the First Self, it’s him.”

Dren raised an eyebrow. “And you trust him?”

“No,” she said. “But I owe him.”

He thought for a long moment.

“Then we find him.”

She looked at him. “We’ll have to pass through the Whispering Fields. Nothing but ruin, fallout, and fractured souls for miles.”

Dren smiled faintly. “Sounds like home.”

—

Far from the ruins, across the Voidscar Mountains, in a place that did not exist on any map…

A figure stood in a room of silver glass.

He watched Dren and Veyna through a fracture mirror suspended above a basin of still water. His face was hidden beneath a hood of stitched shadows, his hands clasped behind his back.

Around him, others moved faceless, cloaked figures, each carrying relics from fallen worlds.

“He awakens faster than expected,” one said.

“The crown stirs. The bleed responds,” said another.

The hooded figure tilted his head. “And the First Self?”

“Preparing. But… uncertain. This version is unpredictable.”

“Good,” the hooded man whispered.

He leaned closer to the mirror.

“Let him come. Let him gather his strength. It won’t matter.”

The water pulsed.

“We have her.”

For a brief moment, the reflection shifted—showing a cell. And in it… a woman.

Chained.

Eyes glowing faintly.

Whispering Dren’s name.