Kael stood frozen.
The Eye of Silence hovered above the dead tunnel, silent and terrible. Its countless blinking orbs moved without rhythm, studying him from every direction. There were no footsteps. No heartbeat. Just the sound of water dripping and the low hum of the Dream pressing against the edges of reality.
It wasn't like the other Echoes.
This one was aware. Awake.
And ancient.
> "You are fractured," it said, voice like breath over glass. "You carry stolen instincts. Wounds that remember."
Kael tightened his grip on his shadowblade. The Skein of the Hollow Fang stirred inside him, urging him to flee. But something deeper—colder—held him still.
He raised his head and met its gaze.
"I didn't come to beg," he said. "I came to take."
The Eye pulsed once.
> "Then you must give."
Chains clinked in the distance. The Labyrinth stirred.
---
In an instant, the tunnel vanished.
Kael found himself once again in the Echo-void, standing on a field of broken mirrors. Above him, threads of memory unraveled like a storm. The Eye of Silence drifted ahead, its voice whispering from every shard of glass beneath his feet.
> "To wield my echo, you must survive the burden of knowing."
The ground split.
And from it rose three figures—identical in form.
Kael.
Each wore his face. Each moved with his instincts. But their eyes were wrong—one glowed with hatred, one with fear, and the last with hollow emptiness.
The Echo had pulled fragments of him from memory—reflections of what he had been, and what he might become.
He had to fight himself.
---
The first came fast—rage-born, swinging wildly, his movements reckless but powerful.
Kael dodged the strike, but barely. The echo-blade the clone wielded was heavier, more brutal. A reflection of Kael's suppressed fury. It screamed with fire.
He weaved under a strike and sliced across the clone's back.
It vanished in a flash of burning red.
One down.
The second moved slower. More careful. This one trembled—but its steps were calculated. Strategic. It didn't want to fight. It feared him.
Kael lunged—but the figure twisted away, launching a blast of concussive shadow. Kael staggered, forced to his knees as a wave of doubt crept into his spine.
> "You're not ready."
> "You'll die like they did."
> "You can't carry this."
He grit his teeth and screamed—not with his voice, but with the Whisper of the Maw.
The psychic wave crushed the illusion.
Two down.
The last one stood still.
It didn't speak. It didn't move.
Its eyes were empty.
Kael stepped forward, cautiously.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
> "I am what's left if you stop climbing."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
Kael hesitated, then attacked—fast and true.
But the blade passed through nothing.
The final figure dissolved.
And the void shimmered.
---
The Eye descended, wrapping around him like a cloak of silence.
> "You understand now. Power is not given freely. It is paid for in echoes of the self."
Kael knelt as light pierced his mark.
The third Echo seared into his body.
---
[Echo Acquired: Eye of Silence]
> Type: Passive / Active Hybrid
Effect (Passive): Grants immunity to auditory illusions and hostile mental projections.
Effect (Active): Once per day, silence all sound in a 10-meter radius for 15 seconds. All movement within becomes undetectable and perception is distorted.
Stability: Semi-Stable (2/3 Fragments Collected)
---
Kael gasped and collapsed onto the cold tunnel floor.
Reality rushed back.
The Eye was gone.
The mercenary's body lay where it had fallen, still and silent.
He rose slowly, drenched in sweat, body screaming from the toll. But inside… he felt clearer. Calmer.
The noise in his head—the chaos of the city, the screams of the past—had dulled.
There was only focus now.
He looked at his hand, where the newest fragment of the mark glowed faintly violet.
Three Echoes.
Each one sharpened his blade. Hardened his soul.
He wasn't done yet.
Not even close.
---
As Kael stepped back into the surface night, stars blinked through the smog—faint, distant.
Somewhere in the city, others like him were beginning to stir.
Some to kill.
Some to rise.
He would meet them all.
But not as prey.
As the storm.
---
End of Chapter 5