The Null-Saint floated silently above the fractured terrain, its presence warping the very air around it. With each pulse of its crown of broken light, the world shuddered.
Aiden stood with Elsira behind him, shielding her from the abomination's hollow gaze. The system flared warnings across his vision.
[Null-Saint of the First Echo: Sovereign-Class Aberration]
[Threat Level: Cataclysmic]
[Vital Core Signature Detected – DO NOT ENGAGE WITHOUT SUPPORT]
"Too late," Aiden muttered, drawing upon his core reserves. The stabilizing node behind him was thrumming with energy—still fragile. If the Null-Saint reached it, everything would unravel.
Kaela's voice cut through the comms. "We're inbound. ETA seven minutes."
"You don't have seven," Aiden growled.
The Null-Saint moved—not with footsteps, but by bending space itself. One moment it hovered, the next it appeared in front of him.
A swipe of its elongated hand launched a wave of null-energy, tearing the ground as if deleting it from reality.
[Emergency System Override Activated][Deploying: Temporal Anchor + Phase Buffer]
Aiden barely dodged, body flickering in and out of phase as he somersaulted backwards. Elsira screamed as the edge of the blast scraped her leg, dissolving part of her armor like paper.
The Null-Saint turned its blank face toward her.
"No—she's not yours!"
[Skill Unlocked: Echo Divergence – Tier I][Description: Allows temporary interface with overlapping Echoes to borrow abilities from alternate outcomes]
Aiden reached for the system's new function, and the world twisted. Time fragmented.
In an instant, he saw a dozen versions of himself—each facing this same foe, each falling, each dying. But one—
One survived.
He seized the thread.
[Echo Divergence Activated – Borrowing Ability: Pulse Rend (Version 12B-Aiden)]
Reality snapped back, and a surge of unknown power coursed through Aiden's arm. His blade crackled, not with light, but with phase instability—a weapon sharp enough to slice between possibilities.
He launched forward.
The clash shook the sky.
The Null-Saint blocked with a single hand, but the Pulse Rend left a glowing scar across its forearm. For the first time, the creature recoiled.
It bled.
A black mist that shimmered with the colors of dying stars leaked from the wound.
Elsira coughed, eyes widening. "That… that weapon's not yours. It doesn't belong in this timeline."
Aiden grimaced. "Doesn't matter. It's all I've got."
The Null-Saint howled—not a sound, but a wave of thought that crushed the mind. Aiden fell to his knees, blood streaming from his nose.
[Mental Integrity: 68%… 53%…]
[Countermeasures Available: Echo Resonance Sync – Elsira Varn]
Elsira placed a trembling hand on Aiden's back. Her Core shard flared.
"I'll anchor you. Just do what you must."
Their systems linked.
The feedback was instantaneous. Pain surged through both of them, but so did clarity. Aiden saw the creature's anchor—a hidden lattice of Rift circuitry embedded in its spine, drawing power from multiple convergences.
"That's its tether!" he shouted. "We break that, and it loses coherence."
Kaela's voice crackled again. "We're in range! I've got line of sight—"
Brant's gruff tone cut in. "I'm flanking. If this thing's got a back, I'll stab it."
Aiden launched upward with Riftstep, catching the Null-Saint's attention. It surged toward him with impossible speed, halos spinning faster.
Brant struck from behind—driving a compressed ether lance into the entity's exposed tether. It shrieked, a static scream that split the clouds.
Kaela's incantation flared behind them.
[Arcanotype: Reality Stitcher – Weave Field Deployed]
Time slowed.
Aiden activated Pulse Rend one last time.
He surged forward, cutting a deep, final line across the entity's spine.
The Null-Saint convulsed.
[Tether Severed. Entity De-coherence In Progress]
[Echo Stabilizing… Temporary Dimensional Lock Achieved]
The abomination collapsed into itself—folding into a sphere of pure black that blinked out with a soft chime.
Silence fell.
Elsira fell to her knees, breathing heavily. "It's not over. That was only one. A Herald."
Aiden wiped blood from his chin. "Then we prepare. We find where they're coming from. And we shut it down."
Kaela and Brant ran toward them, eyes wide with a mixture of awe and terror.
Brant panted. "That thing wasn't natural."
Kaela nodded. "That wasn't just an Echo anomaly. That was a designed incursion."
Aiden looked to the sky, where remnants of the rift still shimmered faintly.
"The real war's just beginning."
His system flared again.
[New Objective Unlocked: Trace the Source of the Sovereign Echoes]
[Codename: Project Origin Null]