The fire had long died, yet the air still burned.
Ash drifted through the streets of Lyon like gray snow, coating the ruins in silence. The world looked as if it had exhaled its last breath. Every building, every statue, every face — turned to dust beneath the pale morning light.
At the heart of it all stood Adrian.His coat hung in tatters. His eyes, once gray, now shimmered faintly with violet light — the color of the Echo's power.He didn't move for hours. He couldn't.
The city was gone.And the whispers wouldn't stop.
"You've done it," said the voice, calm and almost proud."You've erased the rot. This world will thank you in time."
Adrian's fists clenched. "I didn't do it for thanks."
"No. You did it because you were finally free to be honest."
He turned sharply, as if he could glare the voice into silence, but there was nothing — only smoke and the faint hum of spiritual energy crackling beneath his skin.
For the first time since his regression, he felt it — fear.Not of dying, not of the Council, but of himself.
That night, the Fallen Order regrouped in the outskirts of the city. Only a fraction of them had survived the assault. Makeshift tents lined the broken highway, and fires burned low beneath the collapsed overpasses.
Selene found Adrian standing at the edge of the camp, staring at the horizon.
"You shouldn't be alone," she said quietly.
"I'm never alone," he murmured.
Her eyes flickered — she knew what he meant. The Echo. The unseen force that had been growing inside him since the day of his regression.
"Lyon is gone, Adrian," she said. "Do you even realize what you did?"
He didn't answer.
She stepped closer, her voice trembling now. "Thousands of civilians were there. You promised we'd protect the innocent."
He finally looked at her, eyes distant, unreadable."I did protect them," he said. "From themselves."
Selene recoiled. "You sound just like the Council."
He smiled faintly — a cold, humorless thing."No. The Council hides behind laws and symbols. I don't pretend to be righteous."
She stared at him for a long moment, then turned away. "Then maybe the Council isn't the only thing that needs to fall."
When she left, the Echo laughed softly in Adrian's mind.
"They will never understand you.""They don't need to," Adrian replied."And yet you ache for them to try," the voice whispered. "You burn the world and still want someone to call you human."
He clenched his jaw. "What are you?"
"You already know. You just refuse to say it."
Adrian closed his eyes. For a moment, he was back there — on the night of his death, bleeding on the pavement outside that gas station, watching the hero and the villain destroy everything around him.The purple light. The white figure. The voice offering him "regression."
It hadn't been mercy. It had been selection.
Three days later, as the Order traveled north toward Paris, Adrian's power began to falter. His senses blurred. Every time he used his abilities, he could hear faint echoes — voices of the dead, whispers of ancient heroes.
At first, he thought they were memories from the Emblems he absorbed. But these were older — older than any human name.
During one sleepless night, he finally spoke to the Echo again.
"Tell me," he said softly, "what happens to those you choose?"
"They ascend," the Echo replied. "They become something beyond the chains of mortality."
"Or something less?"
"That depends on your will."
He laughed bitterly. "Then I'm already damned."
"No, Adrian. You are becoming."
By the time they reached the outskirts of Paris, the Heroic Dawn had already rebuilt part of its army. Drones circled the sky, scanning the ruins, broadcasting propaganda across every channel.
"Do not fear the Gray Sovereign," the message said. "He is not a god. He is a ghost clinging to a dream long dead."
Adrian heard it everywhere they went. He ignored it — but his soldiers didn't. Some began to doubt. Others began to fear.
That night, one of them tried to flee.Adrian found him at the edge of the camp, trying to deactivate his mark.
"Going somewhere?" Adrian asked quietly.
The man froze. "I just... I just wanted to go home. I didn't sign up for genocide."
Adrian's expression didn't change. "There's no home left."
"You're not a savior," the man spat. "You're worse than the heroes who ruined your life!"
Adrian didn't move. The air around him shimmered faintly — not from anger, but from exhaustion.
"I know," he said simply.
Then he turned away and let the man go.
When he returned to camp, Selene was waiting again.
"You let him live," she said.
"Yes."
"Why?"
He looked past her, at the horizon where the moonlight bled through the clouds."Because even monsters need witnesses."
That same night, Adrian dreamed.
He stood in a vast void of violet light, where fragments of old Emblems floated like dying stars. At the center of it stood the white figure — the one who had offered him regression. Its face was still blank, its shape human but indistinct.
"You've grown," it said. "Soon, you'll understand why you were chosen."
Adrian stepped closer. "Chosen for what?"
"To become the bridge. The end of one era, the beginning of another."
"You mean your puppet."
"Not puppet. Successor."
The light around them pulsed, and for an instant, Adrian saw what lay beneath the white surface — endless faces, voices, and memories. The Echo wasn't one being. It was all of them — every hero who had ever fallen, every spirit corrupted by the system.
"You're not helping me," he whispered. "You're using me."
"And you're using us. We are the same hunger wearing different skins."
The vision shattered.
He woke up gasping, drenched in sweat, the mark on his chest burning faintly violet. Selene rushed in. "Adrian! What's happening?"
He gripped his chest. "It's... nothing. Just the Echo."
She didn't look convinced. "You're losing yourself."
"I already lost myself years ago."
Selene's voice broke. "Then what are you fighting for now?"
He hesitated.For the first time, he didn't have an answer.
Outside, the first light of dawn crept over the ruins of Paris. The world was quiet again — too quiet.
Adrian stood at the edge of the camp, watching as the wind carried the ash of Lyon across the horizon, mixing it with the morning fog.
The Echo whispered again, almost gently this time.
"The world is built on sacrifice, Adrian. Heroes, villains, innocents — they all burn the same. But from the ashes, something new will rise."
He exhaled slowly. "Then let it rise without me."
"You can't walk away from what you've become."
He turned his gaze toward the dawn. The light reflected in his eyes — half silver, half violet."I can try."
Far away, in the heart of Paris, the Heroic Dawn Council watched the same sunrise.
At their center sat a new figure — a woman in white armor, her presence calm yet commanding.Lucienne.
"The Gray Sovereign is still alive," said one of the officers. "What are your orders?"
Lucienne's eyes hardened."Prepare the Purge Protocol," she said. "If the world is to burn again, we'll make sure he burns with it."