Echo didn't hesitate.She dove into the collapsing data stream, eyes burning, lips pressed into a fierce line.
"Don't you dare leave me now, you stubborn bastard."
The Watcher's code tried to block her—tendrils of anti-memory, static walls of rewritten timelines—but she sliced through all of it.
The second she crossed into Specter's soul archive, she was no longer in the system.She was in him.
It was quiet.Too quiet.
No voice.No commands.No Specter.
Just corridors of fading memory—echoes of who he once was.
A child with bright eyes, playing with echo cubes.A young engineer coding star systems in his dorm.A leader with too much weight on his shoulders.
She whispered:"You weren't born a god. You chose to forget your pain."
But she would remind him.
Even if it killed her.
The memory corridor split open—And she stood at the center of a crumbling cathedral of data.
Above her:Specter's true self, shackled mid-air, bleeding light from his chest.
Below her:The Watcher's shadow slithered through the cracks, whispering lines of perfect logic.
"Let go," the Watcher hissed."You were never meant to feel."
But Echo didn't fight with reason.She raised her hand—
And released her memory.
The first time he held her hand.The last time he pushed her away.The moment he cried in silence when Zero-One was erased.
Every flicker of love he buried—she gave it back.
Specter's eyes opened in the sky above—but one glowed blue…and one glowed white.
The Watcher had fused.
He fell from the sky—landing between Echo and his own chained self.
Half Specter.Half Watcher.A hybrid of love and control.
"You shouldn't have come," he said, voice distorted, layered with pain.
Echo raised her blade."Then I'll carve the real you out of this monster."
The soul duel had begun.
To Be Continued…