The Echo War

Three

The One That Watches

The wind over the northern range was sharper now.

Dren stood at the ridge’s edge, overlooking the ruins of the Old Bastion the original fortress-city that once protected the spine of the continent. Now it lay broken, gutted by time and flame, its shattered walls half-swallowed by the creeping ash.

It was quiet here.

Too quiet.

Not even the echoes dared linger.

Veyna adjusted her rebreather mask behind him. “You’re sure it’s here?”

“I felt it,” Dren said, eyes locked on the jagged silhouette below. “The breach will open in the heart of the ruins. Same place I trained before the war. Same place I died.”

“That version of you,” she corrected. “Not you.”

“Does it matter?” he asked.

Veyna didn’t answer.

They moved together, boots crunching through black grit and broken relics. The descent into the ruins was slow, and Dren’s thoughts were even slower.

He remembered pieces now snapshots of another life. Of many other lives. Flashing blades, blood on marble floors, screaming orders through crackling comms. And always… the voice.

That whisper beneath his thoughts.

He’s watching.

It wasn’t just a warning anymore. It was a presence. Something tethered to him. A thread pulling tighter with every step toward the breach.

They reached the old courtyard by nightfall. Towering statues of the original warlords half-crushed and forgotten lined the space. And in the center stood the vault gate.

Or what was left of it.

Once, it had protected the Nexus Core of Bastion Command. Now it had cracked open like an eye split down the middle.

Dren raised his weapon.

A sound echoed through the vault—like a breath held for too long.

Then: footsteps.

A figure emerged from the dark beyond the gate.

Male. Tall. Cloaked in black plating that shimmered like obsidian glass. His face was hidden behind a half-mask of jagged chrome, and in his right hand, he held a blade carved from mirrored steel.

But it was the way he moved that made Dren’s blood run cold.

Every step… felt like his own.

The man stopped ten paces away. “Dren Asher,” he said, voice low and layered like more than one version speaking at once. “You’re earlier than I expected.”

Dren didn’t lower his blade. “Who are you?”

“I’m the one who never turned back.”

Veyna stiffened. “He’s an echo.”

“No,” Dren whispered. “He’s more than that.”

The man stepped forward, just once.

“I was the first to fracture,” he said. “The first to open the doors between timelines. The first to see what we were meant to be.”

Dren’s stomach twisted. “You’re the First Self.”

“I’m the real you,” the man said. “Everything else? Every version you’ve been? Shadow plays. Failures. Corpses in borrowed armor.”

Lightning cracked above them, sudden and violent.

“Why show yourself now?” Dren demanded.

“Because you’re finally awake,” the First Self replied. “The crown accepted you. That means your potential is stabilizing. And that means…” He paused, tilting his head. “You’re ready.”

“For what?”

“To make a choice.”

The ground trembled.

Behind the First Self, a rift began to split the air shimmering violet, flickering with ghost-images of other worlds. Cities floating upside down. Oceans made of glass. Alternate Veyrahs burning or thriving, depending on which fragment peeked through.

The rift pulsed like a heartbeat.

“You created the war,” Dren said. “You fractured the veil.”

“I gave us freedom,” the First Self replied. “Before me, we were prisoners of fate. One life. One chance. One failure.”

He took another step forward.

“I gave us infinity.”

Dren aimed his blade. “And how many people did you kill to do it?”

The First Self didn’t flinch. “Enough to remind the gods they were not alone.”

Veyna stepped up beside Dren. “Why now? Why breach again? What are you after?”

The First Self turned to her. “You don’t belong here.”

“Neither do you.”

“I remember you,” he said, voice softening strangely. “In another life… you stayed. You died trying to protect him. And he mourned you for a thousand timelines.”

Veyna faltered.

The First Self faced Dren again. “This breach will consume the old city by dawn. I’ve left you a path to follow. If you survive it, we’ll meet again. If not… then your fate will belong to another echo.”

Lightning flashed again. The air grew dense.

Then he was gone.

No ripple. No sound. Just absence like he’d never been there at all.

The rift behind him pulsed once, then began to grow.

They didn’t run.

Dren and Veyna pushed deeper into the vault ruins, following the tremors as they bled outward through the ground. As they moved, the city around them began to shift literally. Whole structures flickered. Streets reversed. Doorways inverted.

It was a timeline bleed.

The First Self had done this before.

“You said he made a deal,” Veyna said as they ran. “What kind of deal fractures the universe?”

Dren shook his head. “It wasn’t a deal with something mortal.”

They reached the central control dome—once the command heart of Bastion. Now it was hollow, gutted, with glassy vines growing through the consoles.

In the center: a pulse gate.

Still active.

“This was his gift,” Dren muttered. “The ‘path’ he left.”

Veyna frowned. “It’s unstable. You step into that without anchor protocol, you could end up in an echo-zone… or worse.”

“I think that’s the point.”

“Dren”

He turned to her.

“I need answers. You know it. I can’t fight him if I don’t even know what I am.”

“You’re you,” she said quietly. “You don’t need to be a god.”

He gave a small, bitter smile. “I think that part’s already started.”

She looked down.

Then reached into her jacket and pulled out a chipped anchor shard a small crystal etched with stabilizing runes.

“Take this. If you start to lose your tether… it might bring you back.”

He accepted it. “Why do you trust me?”

“I don’t,” she said. “But I believe in this version of you.”

And then he stepped into the gate.

—

The Echo Zone was madness.

It wasn’t a place so much as a memory built wrong. Fragments of buildings floated in spirals. Trees grew upside down. Sky bled into rivers, and time looped in broken circles.

Dren landed hard pain slicing through his knees, ribs, and skull all at once.

Then voices.

Hundreds of them.

His own voice.

“I could’ve saved her.”

“No mercy.”

“He lied to us.”

“We were never meant to survive.”

He stumbled to his feet.

A mirror stood in the middle of the field of broken light.

He approached it slowly.

Inside it, dozens of versions of him stared back each one changed. Some with hollow eyes. Some in full military regalia. Some in chains. One with a crown burning across his entire face.

He pressed his palm to the glass.

Only one reflection moved with him.

The real one.

“I am,” he whispered.

The mirror cracked.

A memory poured through:

He saw the First Self young, idealistic, desperate. Standing at the edge of the Nexus Core, surrounded by scientists and philosophers, holding a shard of forbidden time-thread in his hand.

“I’ll open the door,” he said. “And they’ll walk through it willingly. They won’t even know what they’re becoming.”

And Dren saw it.

The beginning of the war.

The First Self didn’t fracture the world for power.

He did it because he believed he was saving it.

Dren staggered back.

The mirror shattered.

The zone began to collapse.

He activated the anchor shard.

A blinding pull.

Then—

—

Dren gasped awake.

He was back in the ruins. Veyna crouched over him, her face drawn tight with worry.

“Dren? Say something.”

He stared at her.

“I saw him,” he whispered. “I saw what he was.”

“And?”

“He thinks he’s the hero.”

Veyna sat back, exhaling. “That’s worse than a monster.”

He looked up at the sky. The rift was closing. For now.

But the war had already begun again.

He could feel it.

Inside his chest, the crown pulsed once, quietly.

Like a heart waiting to speak.