The air still vibrated from the pulse.
Xander stood motionless in the flickering half-light of Sector D13, the underground plaza now scattered with murmurs and confused civilians. His hand tingled. Somewhere deep inside, something… shifted. Something old, or maybe forgotten.
But no one else seemed to notice. Not yet.
He turned sharply into a narrow side corridor, away from the dispersing crowd. His boots splashed against the thin layer of water pooled along the rusted steel floor. Pipes hissed above, some leaking steam. Sector D13 had always been half-broken—but now it felt ancient, like something was rotting beneath the surface.
The pulse had come from him. Or near him.
He didn't want answers in public. Not here. He needed quiet, space… shadows.
As he moved deeper into the sub-tunnels, a strange hum grew louder. Faint, rhythmic. Like code whispering in mechanical breath. The source pulled at him, not physically, but like gravity—not toward safety, but toward truth.
His steps slowed before a corroded maintenance hatch—one he'd passed dozens of times before. Tonight, it hung ajar, its lock blown clean off by some internal force. The edges glowed faintly, pulsing with a violet residue that reeked of arcane circuitry.
Xander hesitated. Then pushed the hatch open.
The descent was steep—metal steps coated with ash and dust. Beyond the hatch was a hidden sub-basement: a room bathed in sickly green light. The hum grew louder here, nested at the center of the crypt-like chamber.
The Rust Crypt.
At the far end stood a rusted interface console—long-forgotten tech fused with tangled spellruned wires, some of which pulsed like veins. This wasn't just technology. It was something more—spellbound, breathing, waiting.
Xander stepped forward, drawn in. The screen flickered as he neared. And when his fingers brushed the side panel, it came alive.
[AUTHORIZATION REJECTED]
[UNKNOWN BLOODSIGNATURE DETECTED]
[OVERRIDE: ECHOFORGE VESSEL – PARTIAL MATCH FOUND]
"What the hell…?" Xander whispered.
The console spasmed, then projected a broken hologram—images flaring in and out like dying memories. Fragments of cities crumbling into digital dust. Screaming faces dissolving into code. Words etched in flame and circuitry.
SOUL HARVEST INITIATED.
FORGOTTEN ECHO DETECTED.
AWAKEN THE BLOODLINE.
REMEMBER.
Xander's skull pounded. Images weren't just visual—they burned into his thoughts. A name. A phrase. A scream.
Echoforge…
The hologram sparked, then collapsed. The console shut down entirely—no energy, no pulse. Like it had expelled its last breath just to say those words.
Xander stumbled backward. His palms were sweating, jaw clenched. He didn't know what any of it meant—but it had known him. Somehow.
He turned, heart thudding—only to freeze.
There was someone else in the room.
A man stood near the stairwell entrance, barely visible in the flickering green. Cloaked in ragged gray. His face hidden behind a cracked cyber-mask, lenses glowing dull red. He hadn't made a sound coming in.
"You weren't supposed to find this place, kid," the man said, voice like smoke on gravel.
Xander reached instinctively for his knife—but the stranger raised a hand, and a ripple of pressure pressed down on the room. A suppression field.
"Easy," the man added. "Not here to kill you. Yet."
Xander's eyes narrowed. "Then what?"
The stranger stepped forward. "We were tracking anomalies. Arcane signatures tied to forgotten tech. Your little pulse up there—it set off every tripwire this side of the lower city."
He gestured to the now-dead console.
"That thing only responds to blood that carries a certain curse... or blessing. Depends who you ask. Question is: how'd a nobody like you wake it up?"
Xander's instincts screamed run. But something inside him—the part still ringing with ghostlight from the console—wasn't afraid.
"I don't know," Xander said. "But I'm guessing you're not with maintenance."
A chuckle. "Smart mouth. That'll get you killed faster."
The stranger lifted his arm—and a cluster of glowing runes flared along his forearm. A condensed spellcode, preloaded.
"Let's see what you really are."
He launched it.
A hex burst shot forward, swirling with acidic emerald light. Xander barely rolled aside in time. The spell exploded against the console wall, leaving a melting hole where steel had been.
Xander came up fast, grabbing a rusted pipe as a weapon.
"I'm not interested in fighting—"
"Too bad," the man growled, already forming another glyph mid-air.
Xander's breath quickened. As the attacker moved, the pattern of his spellcasting slowed in Xander's vision. Not in reality—in perception. As if his eyes were catching every flicker, every glowing line.
Then something clicked.
The glowing pattern burned into his mind. And… stayed there.
He understood it.
The man hurled the second spell—another burst, this time curved. Xander moved on instinct—and mirrored the exact same motion he'd just seen. No time to question. He drew the runes into the air the same way.
Flash.
The same glyph fired from Xander's hand—less refined, unstable, but real.
It collided with the attacker's, canceling both in a violent flash of sparks.
Silence.
The stranger took a step back, eyes wide behind the mask.
"You copied me," he muttered. "No interface, no training. Just watched and did it."
Xander said nothing. His hands trembled, but he was standing.
The man shook his head slowly. "You're one of them. A dormant."
Xander raised the pipe, unsure what that meant. "One of what?"
The man didn't answer. He stepped back toward the exit, fast now. "They'll come for you. I'm just a scout. The ones behind me—" He hesitated, then added, almost with pity, "They won't talk."
Then he was gone—vanished into the shadows above.
Xander stood alone in the crypt, heart hammering.
The spell symbols he'd cast still lingered in the air for a few seconds longer before fading. He had done that. By watching. By instinct.
His fingers tingled. His blood was burning with something new.
The console had called him a partial match to an Echoforge Vessel.
And now someone out there knew he existed.
He staggered toward the stairwell, still gripping the pipe. The crypt behind him was silent again, as though none of it had happened.
But everything had changed.
"Whatever just woke up inside me… it remembers things I never lived."