Azure Hollow's Central Archive Node - "Echo Consolo: Architect's Eye"
Ashborn stood before the half-shattered console, the holographic archive still flickering around him like floating shards of memory. Lunavelle leaned gently into his side, her silver-feather chains softly curling in the low air pressure as she recovered from the dream-data sync.
Ashborn exhaled slowly, voice laced with quiet amusement.
"This world, Axis-E110... it had an author. No doubt about that. Built to house stories... but abandoned by its writers. Geez, guess the author forgot to finish their book and just started a new one."
A low, amused chuckle escaped him, dry but genuine. He looked around at the hollow grandeur of the Archive Hall, where every wall seemed etched with unfinished code,
Fragmented blueprints of potential timelines, character arcs, mythos threads, all unfulfilled.
From beside him, Lunavelle's eyes lit up, and her smile was wide.
"Tides at night..."
Her favorite phrase. A small, poetic agreement. A child's way of saying, "Even if it's broken, it's still beautiful."
Ashborn turned back toward the console, where the system voice resumed with an artificial rasp:
"Roor Memory Protocol Detected: Encrypted Thread - Priority Classification: Null Signature / Author Level."
His eyes narrowed.
"Author Level...?"
The screen flickered wildly as a new file tree attempted to open:
[Archive Locked - Dreamchain Access Required.]
Then a second line:
[Soul Signature: Compatible.
Override Permission: [Ashborn Lionheart] - Genesis Thread Variant Confirmed.
A low tremor passed through the console base. The air darkened slightly. Something deep in the data-matrix stirred, a shiver through sleeping algorithms long since buried the...
The Archive opened.
[CLASSIFIED LORE: "The Six Paradigm Factions - Axis-E110 Original Framework"]
Projected across the room in orbiting text and images, a lost piece of the world's meta-design unfolded before Ashborn's eyes.
• [The Arc Sanctum (Magic Paradigm)]
"Where will is law, and wonder is war."
° Built around the control of Arcana Strings, these mages don't cast spells, they write narrative effects into localized rulesets through incantation patterns.
Their castles float in paradoxical skies over inverted oceans of mana.
• Belief is power. Stronger Conviction = stronger spells,
• They once warred against the Evolution Faction over the right to rewrite fate.
• [The Cipher Choir (Technology Paradigm)]
"Gods are obsolete. Code is eternal."
° A technotheistic cult of AI-synced transhumans and neural architects.
° Their code isn't digital, it's causal scriptwork that programs event chains in reality.
° They wield Symphonic Engines, massive world-scaling logic machines.
° Their greatest weapon: The Logic Spear, which pierces timelines with rational collapse.
[The Celestis Covenant (Divinity Paradigm)]
"Miracles are designed, not granted."
° Divine engineers who manufacture godhood through concept Sculpting.
° They wield Faith Constructs, literal belief-formed avatars.
The Paradigm runs on Sacramental Law, a contract-based divinity system.
° Internal schisms exist between those who seek true Ascension and those enforcing the divine hierarchy.
• [The Memory Forge (Memory Paradigm)]
"What is remembered cannot be erased."
° A faction devoted to Memory imprint Weaponry-blades that carry inherited lifetimes of combat.
° Warriors burn their past to strengthen their future.
° Archives are alive, each vault a sentient recollection.
° Myth-class soldiers known as Time-Walkers walk parallel lives in combat.
• [The Adaptum Spiral (Evolution Paradigm)]
"We don't change to survive. We survive to change."
° Bio-weavers, morphic species, and limitless growth agents.
° Members constantly mutate to overcome any foe.
° Reality-Bending Mutation Trees allow for in-battle evolution.
° Stronger opponents cause more intense genetic breakthroughs.
• [The Dreamdrift Union (Dream Paradigm)]
"We fight with fiction, and rewrite with faith."
° This faction uses Dream Logic Coding to alter reality through symbolic perception.
° Their soldiers don't train, they believe they trained, and the world adapts accordingly.
° Everything here is metaphor made real:
Paper swords can cut stars if believed hard enough.
° Their leader vanished during the Echo Collapse, leaving the Dream Core unstable.
Ashborn's mind reeled as it digested the data.
Each faction wasn't a power group, they were interpretations of control, philosophies made real through metaphysical coding.
And then...
A final line appeared:
[Projected Author Signature: UNKNOWN - Codename: 'Mythroot Architect'"]
[World Logic Design Incomplete. Final Chapter locked. Candidate Chosen: Ashborn Lionheart.]
Lunavelle blinked up at him, her voice soft.
Ashborn... were you always supposed to be here?"
Ashborn stared into the holographic ruins of the world's soul. The dream-coded flickered like dying stars.
"Or I wasn't supposed to be... and now I am."
He stepped forward. His Genesis Thread pulsed slightly, as though resonating with the world's half-forgotten breath.
"Then let's finish the story they abandoned."
---
The room pulsed with low hums, echoes of once-forgotten code now trembling under Ashborn's presence.
His words cut through the synthetic silence.
"But it will be my history to write."
"I will be the author of this abandoned world."
It wasn't a boast. Not truly.
It was law, stated calmly by something that didn't care for permission. Not a mortal. Not a hero. Not even a rebel.
Just... Ashborn.
A Genesis Fragment made flesh, a paradox wrapped in creation's bones. He didn't burn with anger. He didn't yearn for power.
He was powerful. And then the world was made of unfinished thoughts
"There's no reason to wait for a purpose when I am the unresolved variable,"
He said, eyes flicking across the flickering projections.
His lavender star-shaped pupils began to spin, each spiral weaving across time-threads, story fragments, and cosmic scaffolds like a cosmic loom trying to force the universe to finish its sentence.
Lunavelle stood at his side. Her small hand, still faintly glowing with echo-light, tugged gently at his cloak, but not out of fear but out of curiosity.
Ashborn knelt slightly, lowering his voice into something gentle.
"Wanna go look for that missing Dresm Core?"
"Or..." his tone softened into something velvet-smooth, almost human,
"Which faction do you wish to visit first?"
Lunavelle smiled, beautiful in that ghostly, celestial child way. Her hair flowed behind her like ink in water. And her astral wings curled in delight.
"Mhm... Dream Core sounds yummy."
She paused, cocking her head like a cat sensing distant thunder.
"But... they're all watching. All six factions."
Ashborn's eyes didn't blink.
"Let them."
A pulse of Genesis Thread rippled behind his back, thin lines of shimmering existence briefly warping the room's gravity. Even the air began to remember what it meant to fear something greater than gods.
The console flared, glitching between coordinates.
"Dream Coe Fragment - Last Registered Pulse: 009.667-A - 'Choral Echo Chamber' - Border between Dream Paradigm and Memory Sector."
A rotating map unfolded in front of them stylized, surreal, like a child's dream stitched onto the carcass of a god. It marked a location deep within the Vestigial Dreamfields, an unstable place where thought becomes terrain, and sleepwalking warlords rewrite the weather with their regrets.
"Dream Core first, then," Ashborn concluded. "Time to wake up what's left of this world's imagination."
He rose, and the room dimmed as if bowing.
"Come on, darling. Let's go look for that Dream Core."
Ashborn grinned lightly, not with joy, but with the confident sharpness of something meant to rewrite the world. Lunavelle gave a soft hum, her body no larger than a small faerie now, curled on his shoulder like a queen wrapped in twilight silk.
She was barefoot, of course. Her weight was so light it didn't even stir his mantle. She sat upright like royalty born of stars and ocean whispers, legs crossed, humming a tune that never quite had an ending.
Together, they exited the decaying Library Temple, stepping out onto the mist-slicked Cyber Streets of Azure Hollow, a fractured fringe city where failed memories whispered in the neon fog. Holographic cats meandered across rooftops. Shattered billboards displaying ancient product jingles that no longer had a brand. Every few steps, reality glitched, just slightly. A lamppost might blink out and return as a tree made of glass. Birds flew backwards. The rain fell upward in pulses.
"Let's grab some food before we go."
Ashborn spoke casually, as if they weren't about to enter a battlefield where sanity melted like wax.
"Tides at night..."
Lunavelle sang the phrase with a smile hugging his head with her tiny arms. "Food first. Then dreams."
---
[Subzone: Sector VI-B - Hollow Market Strip]
They passed between two forgotten arc buildings and there it was.
A hovering sign buzzed overhead:
"BINARY BENTO - Serving What Remembers You Back!"
Ashborn stepped through the faded holo-door and found himself in a retro cyber-diner, lit in blue-orange stripes. It smelled faintly of static and grilled soulfish. A floating synth-cook,
Shaped like a jellyfish wearing an apron, rotated behind the counter.
"Welcome. Menu Loaded from your Memories"
Ashborn blinked. The table flashed.
[Charred Skybone Ribs with Neon Sap Glaze]
[Memory Thread Soup - Served Warm, May Induce Flashbacks]
[Midnight Pancakes from That One Time You Didn't Exist]
[Astral Kid Meal - With Dream Egg Toy Inside!]
"That one," Lunavelle pointed at the Astral Kid Meal, eyes wide.
"And extra blue sugar crystals."
Ashborn raised a brow. "You just want the dream egg."
"Mmhmm."
He ordered hers, then selected the Sky one Ribs for himself, dense, protein-rich, cooked on a gravity inversion grill. As they sat in the neon booth, the booth talked to them softly. Whispering about forgotten diners, lost customers, songs written by no one.
Lunavelle nibbled on her glowing dessert sticks, lips stained starlight blue.
"Ashborn..." she murmured.
"Hm?"
"When we find the Dream Core... will it wake up sad?"
Ashborn took a moment. Then spoke, voice quiet but certain.
"If it does... I'll rewrite that part of its dream."
"You'd do that?"
"I'm not just rewriting this world for myself."
He glanced at her. "I'm rewriting it for you too."
Lunavelle's wings twitched. She smiled, then shoved the dream egg into his hand like an offering.
"You can have it."
[Moments later - Departing the hollow, entering the Dreamfield Gate]
With their meal behind them and the synth-cook bowing farewell, Ashborn returned to the open roads. A tear in the sky had appeared, right on schedule. A spatial seam between Axis-E110's fractured logic layer, only visible under Genesis Thread Sight.
He stepped toward it. Lunavelle remained on his shoulder, now curled into a nap with a tiny feather chain clutched around his collar.
[Vestigial Dreamfields Detected - Warning: Unreal Terrain Ahead]
[Do you accept unstable entry?]
Ashborn didn't answer the system.
He walked through it.
---
Location: Vestigial Dreamfields - Outer Edge: Wailing Petal Barrens]
The world twisted. Grass no longer followed gravity. Trees had violin strings for leaves. The colors didn't match the temperature. Ashborn stepped onto a field of drifting petals made of solid light, each petal softly crying.
Lunavelle stirred awake and yawned.
"We're here, huh?"
"Yeah."
"...and it's already trying to pull us in."
Ahead, the terrain shifted, and stone bridges looped like Möbius strips. A river of words, made from whispered lines of dreams, flowed uphill and through the mouth of a statue with closed eyes.
In the distance, a figure was watching.
Humanoid. Dressed in broken pieces of faction armor, bits of Memory Forge and Dreamdrift colors clashed. Their mask. Was cracked.
"A proxy..." Ashborn muttered.
The figure stepped forward, raising a blade forged from apologies that were never accepted.
[Proxy Of the Lost Dream-Keeper]
• Type: Symbolic Echo Construct
• Abilities: Dream Reflex / Weaponized Guilt / Time-Looped Footwork
• Weakness: Conceptual Consistency
• Reward: Access deeper into the Dream Core Nest
---
---
---
[Vestigial Dreamfields - Zone: Wailing Petal Barrens]
Environment Effect: Sanity Shift (Moderate) Dream Logic Active - Symbolism now alters physics.
The pedal beneath Ashborn's boots whispered louder as the wind began to bleed. The sky above cracked slightly, revealing ink blots where stars should've been. The figure stepped forward, its armor twitching, scraps of Memory Forge engrams glitched across its shoulder, while ribbons of forgotten lullabies wrapped its waist.
It raised its blade, glinting not with steel, but regret.
The weapon was jagged.
Forged from the sentence: "I should have said something."
It didn't speak.
Didn't breathe.
Didn't need to.
Ashborn sighed.
"Just like that, huh? No words? No welcome? No hellos?"
He tilted his head, voice dry with mock disappointment.
"Geez... you're just like that bastard Null-Crown. At least he had the decency to appear outta nowhere and punch me in the face."
No response. The proxy raised its weapon again, this time, reality behind it shivered. Its form fragmented in thirteen directions at once, as if time couldn't agree on where it should stand.
Ashborn cracked his neck.
"Lunavelle," he said lightly, tapping her knee as she balanced like royalty on his shoulder,
"Sit tight, darling. Watch me fight this mannerless man."
"Tides at night..." she cooed with a sleepy grin, wrapping her feather chains around his collar like a little child tightening her safety belt.
With one thought, Ashborn summoned Aetherion.
It didn't just appear, it screamed. The space around his hand peeled open, and the blade roared into existence with a tremble so violent it cracked the glowing petal field beneath his boots.
The proxy launched forward without warning.
---
[Phase 1: Duality Slash - "If only..."]
The proxy disappeared mid-sprint, no sound, no motion trail, just a half-second of doubt projected straight into Ashborn's mind.
Aetherion's blade screamed to his left but the strike came from above.
The sword of regret split into two, past and present, and collided with Ashborn's shoulder from two timelines at once.
CLANG-BOOM!
Ashborn skidded sideways, dragged through a spiraling memory of his first breath, forced to relive his unborn cry in reverse. Blood didn't leak, conceptual recoil did.
Ashborn laughed.
"Oh... you think timelines feints are cute."
His [Genesis Thread] burst outward in a spiral web, [Resolve Thread mode] activating in an instant. His MP surged as his [Cosmic Core] hardened.
With a flick, Aetherion entered [Transcendental Shift] morphing mid-swing into a spear.
He lunged, not at the Proxy but at the possibility of where it might dodge.
"Let's dance, shall we?" He purred, voice stretching with vicious joy.
---
Ashborn vanished.
Aetherion's spear form pierced space itself, snapping a dozen petals into shrieking black dust. Behind the Proxy, an echo of Ashborn rose, delayed by one second.
Two Ashborns attacked from different timelines.
The first thrust struck the Proxy's hip, slashing through layers of apology flesh.
The second, the delayed echo stabbed its shadow, causing its past doubt to combust.
BWRRAAAM!!
The proxy screamed, not from pain, but from memory distortion. Its mask cracked further, revealing a swirling void of people's unspoken thoughts.
[Phase 2: Ritual Step - "Choreography of Guilt"]
The proxy danced.
That's the only word that fits. Its feet skated across the ground as the petals screamed louder, forming a storm around them. Every step rewound a few seconds of its previous wounds.
It pirouetted into a downward slash but Ashborn tilted his head, unimpressed.
"Pretty moves."
"Too bad I wrote the tempo."
He activated [Echo-Loom Spiral] his Genesis Threads responding to emotion. His eyes dimmed, calm, curious.
The treads shimmered with [Narrative Drift.]
From his memory... came a move.
"Spiral Collapse Barrage"
Born from a near-death memory on floor 17, a moment of pure chaos. Threads wove around Aetherion, which now became a fractal Whipblade.
Ashborn swung once.
The threads carried the momentum five more times in fractal delay, echoing the attack from different directions with increasing pressure.
Slice-slice-slice-Slice-SLAM!
The Proxy's dance shattered mid-motion. Its foot caught in an old memory, an apology it never gave.
Ashborn stood above it now.
"Tell me, puppet, were you made to protect the Dream Core?"
The proxy finally spoke, voice glitching like sobbing metal.
"I am... what's left... of who she wanted me to be"
"The Dream Core made me forget how to forgive."
Ashborn narrowed his eyes.
"Then I'll remind you with violence."
Suddenly, the Proxy unleashed Phase 3:
It stabbed its mask into its chest, releasing its face.
Not an identity.
A mass of regrets.
They swarmed the battlefield like ink ravens made of broken dreams, targeting Lunavelle.
"Ashborn...!"
She yelped on his shoulders,
"Nobody touches my spirit."
Ashborn's eyes burned white-violet.
He activated:
[Reality-Weaving - Zone Warp]
The ground around them shifted turning into a reflective dome of his own Genesis Pulse. The regrets bounced off their illusions, confused by the sudden metaphorical logic reversal.
Ashborn appeared behind the proxy, his presence radiating fury.
"You're trying to weaponize sadness in front of me?"
"I am sadness. Bound, sharpened, reforged."
He twisted Aetherion into [Conceptual Overdrive Mode.]
The blade began to glow with fractal phrases:
"Cutting through what never was said."
Ashborn's swing carved the air like the end of a prophecy.
Aetherion, glowing with fractal inscriptions, cleaved through the Proxy's hip with such precision that sound refused to follow. A clean, awful silence washed over the field as the Proxy was bisected mid-motion.
Blood didn't spill, regret did.
A thick, colorless ichor that crawled upward like reverse shadows, howling with every apology never made.
Ashborn stepped back, his stance relaxed.
His wild smile widened as the upper torso of the Proxy slumped forward, twitching.
"What a waste of potential," he muttered.
"I expected a dream to fight harder than this."
Lunavelle clapped once cheerfully.
"You cut the silence in half"
But the ground did not hold still.
The petals did not fall.
The world did not close the battle thread.
Instead...
The air held its breath.
Then--
The corpse spasmed once... then bent inward.
Like a puppet string pulled not by will but by narrative backlash.
The severed halves stitched together, not with muscle, but time scars. The wounds hissed with backwards laughter. The Proxy's body cracked in dozens of places. A second heartbeat pulsed not in his chest, but in the air itself.
[System Warning]
[Dream Anchor destabilized.
Temporal-identity Lock Broken.]
[Entity evolving into PRIME STATE through narrative recursion.]
Ashborn's eyes narrowed.
"...What?"
The Proxy rose but it wasn't him anymore.
---
[Phase 4: PRIME DREAM-ECHO - "THE NAMELESS REMORSE"]
A paradox: Not the Proxy's true self, but who he could have been, had he never failed.
Not memory, not hope, just pure potential wrapped in mourning.
His body now loomed over Ashborn at nearly three meters tall, armor no longer fragmented, but reconstructed from raw dream-logic:
• One half made of mirrored clockwork carved from confessionals.
• The other, a flowing robe of shifting apology-script, alive with spinning verses that reshaped themselves mid-sentence.
His mask was gone.
His face was blank, not entirely white, a perfect canvas for every identity he once failed to become.
From his back flared fixed spectral arms, each holding weapons of emotional weight:
• The Sword of Final Words.
• The Grief-Hammer of Silence.
• The Dagger Forged From a Mother's Scream.
• A Whip of Abandoned Letters.
• And two mirrored hand-axes, named Would Have and Should Have.
The battlefield itself cracked, shifting violently.
The petals turned into spinning paper faces that whispered guilt into Ashborn's ears. Gravity inverted. The stars blinked
"...You were arrogant to believe I was just a puppet."
The Prime Echo's voice was not singular, it was everyone Ashborn ever ignored, overlapping.
Lunavelle's face twisted in confusion, holding tighter to Ashborn's collar.
"Ash... he feels like... guilt that came to life."
Ashborn chuckled.
"Let him dance. He's stronger now."
"I might have to try."
---
[Battle Resumes - High Intensity - PRIME FORM VS COSMIC KNIGHT]
The Prime Echo moved first. Faster than dream-light, he blurred forward, three weapons moving simultaneously.
• The Whip of Abandoned Letters snapped at Ashborn's throat, its words binding like memories never forgotten.
• The Sword of Final Words followed, slashing at his shadow, not his body attempting to sever his future intent.
• And the Hammer of Silence dropped from above, aimed at crushing Ashborn's voice itself.
[Cosmic Thread Mode: VOID + RAGE SYNC]
Ashborn's eyes widened, but his body didn't falter.
His Genesis Thread exploded into action, two threads latching to the incoming weapons three snapping putward in angular defense.
"You're loud for a corpse that never spoke before."
With [Void Thread] active, Ashborn blinked sideways, dodging the whip through symbolic misinterpretation (he believed it was a necklace, and the world complied).
The Sword of Final Words missed but only because Ashborn deleted that specific timeline branch via spatial rewrite.
The Hammer of Silence, however, landed.
It crashed into Ashborn's side, sending him hurling across the petal field. His ribs bent. The sound around him was deleted. He couldn't hear himself scream.
He rolled and bled stardust, stood up laughing.
"Okay. Okay... now we're playing for real."
The battlefield warped further.
• The sky now rained letters Ashborn never
Wrote.
• A colossal clock spun above, counting down from nothing.
• and the Prime Echo split into three parallel versions, each reenacting a moment where someone gave up on him.
They all attacked.
Ashborn called out, his voice partially erased:
"Lunavelle, don't blink. Watch what happens when a memory tries to rewrite a Genesis Fragment."
He activated-
[Mythoscape Flux - Storyweaver Initiation]
His threads burst into radiant myth-script.
Each word burned.
"Cutting through what could have been."
"Erasing the guilt of gods."
"Overwriting loss with legend."
Aetherion roared in response, changing into its [Tri-Blade Fractal Form.]
Ashborn leapt, gravity inverted.
He flew upside down, warping space with every pulse of his wings.
He clashed blades with all three Echoes at once, his strikes enhanced by:
• [Cosmic Fusion: Light + Entropy + Memory]
• [Genesis Surge Echoform Clone: His delayed phantom mirrored the same three moves, five seconds behind.]
Together, Ashborn and his Echoform began a dance of brutality:
• Slicing through regret made flesh.
• Smashing narrative structure into shards.
• Burning wounds that never healed with Chrono-Fire from his Nephilim Bloodline.
The Prime Echo shrieked a hundred voices overlapping in pain.
But it was not over.
The clock above stopped.
All motion froze.
The Prime Echo reached upward, grabbed the ticking hands, and reversed time for himself only.
Ashborn blinked. His wounds reopened. His threads fell slack for 0.3 seconds.
The world warped once more.
---
---
---
Ashborn stood calmly as the sky bled backwards and the battlefield twisted again into a floating spiral of glass petals and nightmare echoes.
"Hey Lunavelle, get inside my soul."
"You don't want to get caught in this."
She didn't argue. Her little wings fluttered once.
Then, like a drop of moonlight, she phrased inward, her body vanishing into Ashborn's Soul.
Aetherion vibrated in his palm, howling for release.
Ashborn's smile disappeared.
"Time to finish our story."
He whispered the words, and the blade ignited with shifting script.
[Genesis Weapon Flow Initiation: Transcendental Shift]
- "Adaptive Combat Chain: Initiated." -
[Weapon Form: SPEAR MODE - Lance of Collapse]
Trait: Localized Gravity Collapse + Singularity Thrusts.
Ashborn's form blurred.
One step forward, his foot cracked the ground. Not from weight, but from gravity bending toward the spearhead. Aetherion extended in a flash of obsidian-silver spiral metal.
WHUMMMM...
He dazed.
Dash 1: The spear punched the air, literally. His thrust broke through a wall of dream-script mod-materializing, and a black Singularity flared on impact. The Prime Echo flickered back, its spectral arms curling to block. Too late.
BOOM!
One of its mirrored axes shattered, pulled inward by collapsing pressure.
[3 seconds pass - Shift Triggered]
Weapon Form: BOW MODE - Astral Piercer
Trait: Homing Genesis Arrows + Reality Lag Echoes.
Ashborn skated sideways, feet gliding across folding petals.
Aetherion compacted, reshaped into a silver bow with a violet Genesis Thread for a string. He drew and fired in one motion.
Arrow 1: Split into two mid-air, tracking the Prime Echo as it twisted backward.
Arrow 2: Curved around, hit from the past angle.
Arrow 3: Pierced its shadow, causing a stutter in time.
The Echo screamed, its masked face flashing with the Childhoods it abandoned.
Ashborn flipped backward through an arc of petals.
[3 Seconds - Shift]
Weapon Form: STAFF MODE - Codex Scepter
Trait: Dual-Channel Spellcasting + Genesis Radiation Control.
Landing in mid-air. Because gravity no longer existed for him, Ashborn twirled Aetherion in staff form. His voice rang out:
"Collapse + Burn."
Left hand: Collapse Flame.
Right hand: Echo Singe.
He cast both at once. The scepter surged with energy and fired twin beams, one spiraling orange flame that ignited conceptual emotion, and the other a violet ray that singed identity.
The beams struck true.
The Echo's body warps, turning into its diary pages, burning mir-flutter, revealing confessions scrawled in bleeding glyphs:
"I never said I love her."
"I should've stopped them."
"I lied to myself and called it survival."
Ashborn leapt straight through the flames.
[3 seconds - shift]
Weapon Form: BLADE MODE - Core Resonator
Trait: Echo burst + Max HP True Damage + Tier scaling.
Aetherion now gleamed with sharp precision, a perfectly balanced longsword. His eyes narrowed.
"You talk too much about your suffering."
Five slashes in quick succession, his body moving in a spiral dance. Every slash triggered a soft pulse, like a bell tolling underwater. Those echo bursts sank into the Prime Echo's body, rupturing it with each blow.
[5% Max HP TRUE DAMAGE × 5 = 25% gone]
The Proxy bled white flame. Its arm tried to block but Ashborn moved like poetry corrupted.
[3 seconds - Shift]
Weapon Form: WHIPBLADE MODE - Sovereign Lash
Trait: Anchors space + Adaptive Lethality.
Aetherion unraveled into a long, fractal ribbon edged in jagged logic. Ashborn flicked his wrist.
Snap 1: A Wide slice that cuts through multiple Echo illusions forming behind him.
Snap 2: Thrust, the blade became a piercing point, snapping through folded reality.
Snap 3-8 unrelenting.
Each strike added +2% lethality, until the last hit carved a parabolic wound from neck to knee, almost cleaving the Prime Echo in two again.
Ashborn wrapped the whip once around its neck, yanked it forward.
"Let me tell you what your story ends like."
[Final 3-second return - Spear Mode - Lance of Collapse]
Ashborn shifted again, his form rippling. Gravity sang.
Aetherion reformed into a spear of spiraling collapse energy.
Ashborn pulled the Prime Echo straight into his thrust.
The tip embedded in its chest, and with a sound like thousands folding cities, he activated:
"Singularity Core Drive. Collapse Bloom."
A micro black hole detonated inside the Prime Echo's chest.
KRAAWWWWMMMMM!
The blast bent the field in half. Petals reversed into clocks. Clocks shattered into screaming ink. The Prime Echo's limbs scattered into loops of unfinished decisions.
It screamed once not in pain but in confession:
"I REMEMBER HER NAME NOW--"
"--I FAILED HER ANYWAY."
The Proxy finally dropped to its knees, Aetherion still embedded in its heart.
Ashborn stepped back, breathing slowly, never out of rhythm.
The field stilled.
But the clock above still ticked.
Then--
The clock cracked.
---
---
---
The aftermath was silent but not calm.
Ashborn stood over the fractured body of the Prime Dream-Echo, Aetherion still humming in Lance of Collapse form, its core vibrating from the Singularity burst that had just rewoven the air itself.
The petals, no longer floating, now hung in place. Trembling, as though waiting for permission to fall.
Lunavelle stirred inside his soul, her dream-presence curling around his spiritual aura like a sleeping celestial cat.
"Where's the reward notification?"
Ashborn murmured, glancing toward the sky which no longer held any interface messages.
No alerts.
No clearance seal.
No prompt to access deeper layers.
He glanced down again.
The Prime Echo was still kneeling. No longer moving. But disintegrating either.
"...Does that mean you're not dead?"
His eyes narrowed.
"Or maybe... maybe the fight's not over in the way I thought."
Then---
A flicker.
Not in the air. In his mind.
His vision stuttered. The petals around him dissolved into words each one a different language, some not meant for mouths. And then:
[Echo Unlocked - Final confession:
"Nameless Remorse's Last Dream"]
"She had a name. I locked it away. Because if I remembered it, I couldn't bear the world continuing without her."
"I became the protector of a dream... not to save it... But keep it buried."
"Because dreams forgotten do not mourn."
"And I..."
"I mourned too loudly."
The voice wasn't heard, it was woven into the petals themselves, each one dropping around Ashborn now like wet pages torn from a prayer.
One Petal touched his shoulder and unlocked a vision.
[Memory Dive - Proxy's Origin: The Cradle of the Dream Core]
A blinding wave pulled Ashborn's mind inward.
---
He stood now not on the battlefield, but in a field of mirrors.
Each mirror held a different "him", but not himself.
These were failed protectors. Variants. Souls who tried to guard the Dream Core and fell short.
In the Center stood a child, not Lunavelle but someone eerily similar. Slightly older. Eyes made of pure silver fractals. She looked up at him.
"Don't forget me this time."
Then shattered.
Reality snapped.
Ashborn staggered back, breathing deeply as the last Petal disintegrated.
[Reward Unlocked: Dream Core Nest Access - Tier I]
New Location Revealed: "REMEMBERED SLEEP - The Weeping Atrium"
Status: Access Opened - Descent Now Possible.
System Flag: Dream Core Awakening in Progress... Stability Unknown.
Beneath his boots, the petals shifted, opening like a breathing wound.
Beneath it?
Stairs.
No... not stairs but fragments of memory taking the shape of stairs.
A path had opened downward.
But just before Ashborn could take a step-
The Prime Echo's body spasmed once more.
Not from resurrection.
From release.
Its blank face tilted upward.
No longer screaming.
Just calm.
Its final whisper echoed with painful simplicity:
"You remind me... of her."
And then it shattered completely, nobody left.
Only a single petal remained, floating slowly to Ashborn's palm.
Burned into it was a name:
"Ailune."
Ashborn blinked.
The petal dissolved.
Inside his soul, Lunavelle stirred again.
"That's not my name..." she whispered.
"But... it feels like it almost could have been."
Ashborn didn't reply. His eyes were already locked in the spiraling descent below.
[Next Destination: The Weeping Atrium - Remembered Sleep]
A deep vault where fragments of the Dream Core's emotions, buried thoughts, and original author logic dissolved entirely. Emotions may become weapons.
And names... may hold weight.
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To be continued...