Kael awoke to the scent of cold metal and ozone. His muscles twitched involuntarily, strung tight as drawn wires.
He was alive.
And then came the hum.
"You stabilized faster than expected."
The voice was no longer the whisper that had haunted his head. It was clear now—cold, crystalline, unnervingly beautiful.
Kael lifted his head. His vision shifted. The world shimmered in strange distortion.
Around him, a translucent dome glowed softly, a barrier of light woven from pure energy. It pulsed with rhythmic power, each beat syncing with the hammer of his own heart.
Outside, the Glass Widow circled damaged. Its faceless head tilted in predatory curiosity still trying to get him, limbs dragging across the dome's surface with screeching sparks. Every scrape left burning trails of light, and the sound sent shivers as if it clawed at Kael's spine.
Inside the dome… she hovered.
A figure, human-shaped yet unmistakably other.
Her silver-white hair drifted in weightless strands, not hair but threads of shifting code unraveling into the air. Her eyes glowed with living algorithms—patterns of data that morphed and reformed endlessly. Beneath her translucent skin, streams of light coursed like circuitry, pulsing in quiet harmony. Bare feet hovered inches above the fractured ground.
She radiated a cold serenity, an aura that was both tranquil and inhuman—like the calm of a machine that had never known fear.
Kael's breath caught. His throat was raw, but the word rasped out. "You're… Echo?"
She inclined her head with the grace of inevitability. "Echo. Embedded Construct for Host Optimization. Version 0.91. You initiated a Resonance burst. That anomaly preserved your life."
"You're… inside my head?"
Her gaze remained steady, voice even. "I am integrated everywhere. But for you, this avatar is… more efficient."
Kael swallowed, his voice breaking. "So all this—the Nexus, the monsters—it's real?"
"Yes." Her answer was immediate, unflinching. "You were chosen. Purposeful, not random."
His hands curled into fists. "Why me?"
Echo hesitated. A flicker—glitches of corrupted script rippled across her skin. Her eyes dimmed, lines of broken code threading through the glow.
"My memory core is incomplete. Corruption restricts disclosure. Full parameters… unavailable."
Kael groaned under his breath. "Perfect. Just great."
The Glass Widow shrieked, a sound like tearing metal, and hurled itself against the dome. The impact split the air with a thunderous crack. Light rippled violently across the barrier, shuddering under the force but it was still badly damaged.
Kael flinched, heart slamming in his chest. "This thing… it won't hold, will it?"
"Correct." Echo's tone was calm. Almost too calm. "Integrity will collapse in approximately ten minutes."
His stomach dropped. "Ten minutes until what?"
Her gaze sharpened, eyes of endless code locking onto him with the weight of inevitability.
"Ten minutes," she said softly, "to prepare… to kill."