The Echo Trench loomed ahead like a wound in the world.
The closer the tram approached, the more Kaien could feel the pressure in the air—like history itself held its breath. The chasm didn't simply drop into the ground. It curled, spiraling downward into a twisting descent of shadows and light, where the laws of physics stuttered and time folded back onto itself in shards.
No one spoke.
Even the children in the rear compartments had gone quiet, sensing something was wrong in a way that language couldn't describe. Memory saturated the landscape. It rolled off the trench in slow waves, like the scent of fire long after a war.
Mirra, now strapped beside Kaien, checked her wrist device. "Gravitic distortions stable. No expansion harmonics… yet."
Kaien barely heard her.
The second spark was calling him.
It wasn't a voice. It was a tug—a gentle, insistent pull in the space behind his heart. The same place the first spark now lived. It guided him like a forgotten song, its melody threading through the layers of time he could now sense, but not yet control.
They disembarked at the rim of the trench.
The land was quiet.
Too quiet.
The sky above Echo Trench was fractured.
Not cloudy—fractured. Streaks of broken time veined the air, showing glimpses of other skies. One patch held a setting sun that never fully set. Another revealed a battlefield suspended mid-explosion. A third offered nothing but black—pure, empty before.
"This place was a battleground," Mirra said softly. "One of the last strongholds of the Chrono-Warband before Biggenator's expansion swallowed it. We lost thousands here. Soldiers. Anchors. Dreamseers."
Gorran spat into the dust. "We buried Elion's second Seed somewhere near the impact zone. Problem is, memory here doesn't stay still."
Kaien took a breath.
"How do we find something in a place where time doesn't move forward?"
Mirra turned to him with a grim smile. "That's why we brought you."
The descent began on foot.
The terrain twisted as they walked. Flat land became steps. Steps turned into slopes. The trench curled in on itself, an impossible spiral of jagged rocks and glowing ruins. Kaien's boots crunched over fragments of broken chronoglass—relics of war machines long erased from records but not from memory.
Every few meters, a "time flare" burst near them—brief flashes of past moments replaying like broken film:
A soldier crying into the void as her platoon vanished.
A man in golden armor screaming Elion's name before being crushed by falling memory.
A child handing a flower to someone who had never existed.
Kaien shivered. "These… they're not illusions."
"No," Mirra said. "They're echoes—real moments, ripped from the timeline and left behind like scars. And if we're not careful... we'll fall into them."
The spark's pull grew stronger.
Kaien's vision began to blur—not from exhaustion, but from overlap. He could now see layers of time simultaneously:
The present trench.The battle that once happened here.The brief future echo where Mirra turned left instead of right.The possible version of himself who never came here at all.
He pressed his hand to his chest.
"Elion," he whispered. "I need help."
And the Memory Seed responded.
A surge of golden light spread from his palm into the air, forming a radial pattern—like a compass blooming in three dimensions. Each thread curved and flickered, anchoring itself in a nearby echo.
Then one thread turned red.
It pointed deeper—into the trench's core.
Kaien turned to the others. "This way."
"You're sure?" Gorran asked.
Kaien nodded. "The seed is guiding me."
They continued into the narrow spiral of the trench until the sky above them had disappeared completely. Only the occasional burst of echo-light illuminated their path now.
And then—they reached it.
The core chamber.
A circular space, long collapsed and warped into a dome of tangled steel and fused crystal. At its center, floating above a cracked dais, pulsed a flickering ember.
Golden.
Familiar.
Fighting to stay whole.
Kaien stepped forward—but a flash of movement caught his eye.
A figure.
Not one of them.
A woman stood near the ember—tall, with hair like unraveling thread and eyes that mirrored the void. She wore robes of fractal silk that rippled with Expansion glyphs. Around her, the air crackled with stabilizing energy.
Gorran raised his weapon instantly. "Choir."
But the woman held up a hand. "I am not here to reduce."
Mirra narrowed her eyes. "You're not one of us."
"No," the woman said. "But I remember."
She looked at Kaien directly. "You carry his spark."
"Who are you?" Kaien asked.
The woman hesitated. Then, softly:
"I was once called Lyra."
Silence.
Mirra took a sharp breath. Gorran stepped forward, visibly trembling.
"L-Lyra died during the Second Collapse," Gorran said. "She was the last Chrono-Knight. She sacrificed herself—"
"I was caught," Lyra interrupted, her voice brittle. "Not dead. The Choir kept me. Broke me. Wove me into the Expansion. I remember fragments of myself. Elion's voice. His face. His fall."
She turned to Kaien.
"When you activated the first Seed, I felt it. And for a moment… I was free."
Kaien took a step forward. "You can help us."
Lyra looked to the ember. "Perhaps. But it is not just power. It is memory. And memories carry pain."
Kaien reached out.
The ember responded—rising.
Lyra smiled faintly.
"Then take it, Child of the Infinite.Let the pain become your guide."
Kaien touched the second spark.
And his world shattered.
He saw flames.
War.
Elion, bleeding, clutching the second Seed and whispering a code into it.
Lyra screaming his name as Biggenator's form swallowed the sky.
Kaien felt himself torn apart—his mind stretching across centuries, forced to relive the tragedy locked in the ember.
The Seed didn't just show truth.
It made you feel it.
He saw the moment Elion chose to fragment himself—not out of hope, but out of desperation.
He saw Lyra's fall.
He saw the Spiral Choir being born—not as servants of Biggenator, but as converted rebels.
And he saw himself—Kaien—standing on a cliff of timelines, choosing whether to burn it all or try again.
Kaien collapsed.
Mirra caught him.
The ember now rested against his chest—embedded beside the first spark. Two lights. Two burdens.
Kaien looked up, sweat coating his brow.
"Next one?"
Lyra nodded.
"There is a third. Beneath the Fractured Moon. But you'll need a Gatekeeper to reach it."
Kaien stood, breath shaky but voice firm.
"Then tell me how."
Above them, in the sky of broken stars, Biggenator stirred.
And somewhere, across the Spiral, the remaining Seeds glowed faintly in response.