The world had learned a strange kind of quiet since the quakes.
Hollowspire no longer sang—it breathed. The tower's veins of crystal pulsed slow and uneven, like a creature sleeping too deeply. The air held a static hum that never truly faded.
Aric stood at the valley's edge and watched the reflection lake ripple beneath the twilight sky. The water mirrored the world perfectly—too perfectly. Every star above had its twin below, each flickering half a heartbeat ahead of its counterpart.
When Aric lifted his hand, the reflection lifted first.
He froze. His reflection smiled before he did.
The mark on his arm pulsed sharply, the black veins tightening until his fingers went numb. For weeks it had been spreading; now it felt alive, as though something beneath his skin were crawling toward the surface. He closed his eyes and took a breath, trying to center himself between the Core's dim warmth and the Hollow's cool whisper.
Neither answered.
Only the sound of the shifting water replied, and even that seemed to breathe in time with him.
---
Eira approached quietly, boots crunching over pale dust. "You shouldn't come here alone," she said.
Aric didn't look away from the lake. "Alone's the only time the voices stop fighting."
"Maybe that's because there's no one left to argue with you," she said softly. "Or maybe it's because you're listening to the wrong one."
He finally turned. The half-light made her face look older—shadow cutting along her cheekbones, a streak of white running through her hair that hadn't been there before.
"You've changed," he said.
"We all have," she answered. "Some faster than others."
She handed him a small vial filled with glowing fluid. "Drink. Stabilized resonance serum. It might stop the spasms."
He didn't take it. "And if it doesn't?"
Eira met his eyes. "Then at least you'll still be here long enough to try something else."
Aric sighed and slipped the vial into his belt pouch. He looked back to the water. The reflection was still smiling.
---
In the days that followed, Hollowspire held its uneasy peace. The refugees who had fled the quakes now built rough shelters at the base of the valley, their fires glowing both gold and black beneath the fractured sky. Hunters patrolled the perimeter, wary of Resonant beasts and the occasional flickering rift that tore open in the distance.
Eira worked in the spire's rebuilt lab, mapping energy surges that spiked without warning. Brann trained what remained of the Covenant guard, though his heart wasn't in it.
And Aric—he wandered.
He could feel them now. The echoes. Each beat of his pulse reached farther than before, touching something in the dark that pulsed back. At first, he thought it was imagination. But one night, as he walked the shattered terraces, he felt a second heartbeat—steady, certain, and close.
He followed it.
Down through the lower rings of Hollowspire, where the walls still glowed faintly with memory. Down into the collapsed tunnels where the old Heart chamber once lay. There, the heartbeat grew louder.
The chamber had changed again. The crater's edge shimmered, reflecting faint light from below. And when he stepped to its brink, he saw his reflection staring back from the darkness.
Only this reflection moved differently—slower, deliberate, calm.
"Who are you?" Aric asked quietly.
The reflection tilted its head. "Who are you?"
The air thickened. The water—or whatever substance lay below—shifted upward, forming a vague humanoid shape. It was him, perfectly. But the eyes were pure gold. The left arm, unmarked. The voice, steady.
"I am what you left behind," it said. "The part of you that finished the merging."
Aric's pulse spiked. "That's impossible."
The echo smiled faintly. "You think balance means coexistence. It doesn't. It means silence. You refused to end the noise. I will."
Then it stepped backward into the reflection and vanished, leaving only a spreading ripple that shimmered outward across the lake.
---
The next morning, Hollowspire woke to trembling earth and stories of lights moving through the night—shapes that looked like Aric, walking across the plains. Whole caravans vanished after following what they thought was his glow.
Brann stormed into the council chamber. "It's spreading. People swear they've seen you in three places at once. One healed a village. One burned a forest. One raised the dead."
Eira rubbed her temples. "They're manifestations—Echo Shards made flesh. Each carrying a fragment of his will."
Aric stood near the window, staring at the horizon. "No. Not fragments. Versions. Every choice I didn't make is making itself now."
Brann slammed his fist against the table. "Then kill them."
Aric shook his head slowly. "They're me."
---
News traveled faster than any messenger could carry. The world was filling with Arics.
Each appeared at random—one in the northern tundra, leading Resonant tribes against Hollow corruption. Another in the Ash Coasts, building monuments of glass and fire. One even walked the skies, an ethereal being of pure light that followers began to worship as the Core Ascendant.
The Faithbound splintered overnight. Kaen's armies divided between those who saw these echoes as holy incarnations and those who called them abominations. Civil war erupted across the twilight plains.
In every report, the same phrase appeared, whispered by those who witnessed the new figures:
"He carries Aric's eyes."
---
Hollowspire became the last neutral ground—a refuge for those who wanted neither divinity nor destruction. The city glowed faintly from within, half sanctuary, half prison.
Eira worked without rest, mapping every pulse of the resonance network. Her latest readings terrified her.
"They're not just moving," she told Aric one night as rain fell in sheets of black and gold outside the spire's upper chamber. "They're syncing. Every echo vibrates at a slightly different frequency, but they're drawing closer. If they ever converge—"
Aric finished for her. "The world will decide which one of us is real."
He looked down at his hand, watching the flickering light beneath his skin. It no longer pulsed in unison; each vein beat to a separate rhythm. "I can feel them," he said quietly. "Every heartbeat, every breath. They're learning faster than I am."
Eira's voice softened. "Then we find them first."
---
Two nights later, a patrol didn't return. Then another. Brann took a squad out himself, following the trail north toward the mirror lake.
What he found there wasn't an ambush—it was a message.
The shoreline was lined with hundreds of bodies—Faithbound, hunters, Resonants—all kneeling as if in prayer. Each had a single black mark on their chest shaped like a hand. In the lake's reflection above them walked an Aric made of solid gold light, eyes closed, hands raised.
When Brann called out, the figure's eyes opened, and the air vibrated like a thousand voices speaking in harmony.
> "Balance requires silence."
Brann barely escaped alive.
---
By the time he returned, Hollowspire's outer districts were burning. The echoes had begun to arrive.
Eira ran to the observation terrace, wind tearing at her coat. Across the horizon, silhouettes approached—fifteen figures, each radiating a different hue between gold and black. Behind them marched armies of altered Resonants, eyes shining with worship.
Aric joined her. "They've united."
"Why would they fight you?" she asked, voice trembling.
"They're not fighting me," Aric said. "They're fighting for the right to be me."
He looked down at his reflection in the glass tiles beneath their feet. For the first time, he didn't see himself at all—only empty light, shifting and uncertain.
---
By evening, Hollowspire prepared for siege. Brann rallied the defenders; Eira locked down the resonance generators powering the city's shield. The spire's hum grew erratic, matching Aric's pulse.
He stood on the highest terrace, cloak whipping in the wind, as thunder rolled through the divided sky. The echoes had stopped at the far ridge, forming a perfect line of fifteen figures—each with his face, each haloed by different mixtures of radiance and void.
They stood motionless, watching him. Even from miles away, he could feel them—familiar, intimate, inevitable.
Eira joined him quietly. "How do we fight them?"
He smiled faintly. "You don't fight mirrors."
"Then what?"
Aric's gaze never left the horizon. "You look until one stops reflecting."
---
Hours passed. The air thickened until breathing felt like swallowing molten dust. Then, one by one, the echoes began to move. The sky bled with their light—fifteen suns and fifteen shadows converging above Hollowspire.
Brann's voice echoed from below, shouting orders. Hunters raised their weapons. Resonance cannons charged. Eira pressed her hand to the control node that powered the shield, its hum shaking her bones.
Aric stepped to the edge of the terrace, spreading his arms as the wind howled. His voice was barely audible over the storm.
"I see you," he whispered.
From the horizon, fifteen voices answered as one:
> "Do you?"
---
The first echo appeared directly before him—a blur of gold and calm, eyes unblinking. It radiated warmth that hurt to look at. The next was its opposite—shadow wreathed, breathing cold mist. Then more—each flickering between the two extremes.
They circled him silently, perfect copies except for subtle differences—one's smile, another's scar, a third's missing eye that shone like a star.
"You failed," said the golden one. "The world cannot live in gray."
"You refused," said the dark one. "The world cannot live at all."
They spoke in tandem, alternating lines like the twin halves of a single sentence.
Aric closed his eyes. "Maybe the world doesn't need to choose."
The golden echo's tone turned sharp. "Then it will die indecisive."
"And what are you?" Aric asked. "Pieces of a god trying to finish the job?"
The dark one smiled. "Pieces of you trying to remember what you were."
---
Lightning cracked overhead. The spire shuddered. Down below, the armies began their charge—waves of Resonants clashing in the half-light, their cries lost to the storm. The battle was a painting of chaos, light devouring shadow and shadow devouring light until both were the same.
Eira screamed his name from the lower terrace. "Aric!"
He didn't turn. The echoes pressed closer, circling faster. The golden one drew a blade of pure resonance; the dark one raised a hand of black flame. The others followed suit.
Aric looked at them all and felt something deep inside fracture further—every regret, every choice, every path not taken burning alive around him.
Then he drew no weapon. He simply stepped forward.
The storm exploded.
---
Light and shadow met in a single flash that turned the sky white. For a moment, everything froze—the wind, the rain, even time. The fifteen echoes shattered like glass, their fragments raining down as sparks that melted into the soil.
When the light cleared, Aric stood alone at the spire's edge, trembling, smoke rising from his shoulders. The armies below had stopped mid-battle, staring upward.
Eira reached him seconds later, breathless, terrified. "Are they gone?"
He shook his head slowly. "No. They're inside now."
His voice sounded layered—fifteen tones speaking in unison. The veins on his arm glowed brighter than ever, pulsing to multiple rhythms at once. The air around him rippled as if reality itself struggled to hold his shape.
Eira stepped back. "Aric… what did you do?"
He looked past her, eyes reflecting the fractured sky. "I ended the war."
He paused, then added softly, almost to himself:
> "Now I have to survive it."
Above Hollowspire, the storm split apart once more, revealing a sky divided into countless mirrored fragments—each showing a different version of the world.
> And as their light bled together, the world saw its god not as one, but as many.
---
End of Chapter 17 — Echoes of the One