The aftermath of fire was never quiet.
Even beneath the collapse of the relay tower, with the earth hissing in molten agony and the skies overhead trembling with ash-colored storms, Riley could hear it—that echo. It wasn't sound. Not exactly. It was a memory trying to scream.
She lay buried in silence, her body twisted beneath broken steel and liquefied stone. Her ribs ached. Blood filled her mouth. The world smelled of burnt copper and old sorrow. For a moment, she couldn't remember who she was. Not Owen. Not Riley. Just pain.
Then a hand tore through the debris, frantic, desperate. "Riley!"
Daphne.
The voice snapped her back. With a strangled cough, she reached upward, fingers grasping blindly until they found warmth.
Light.
Life.
Daphne pulled her free, dragging her out of the wreckage with tears cutting clean lines down soot-streaked cheeks. Her gauntlet sparked and hissed where the metal met molten glass, but she didn't stop. She couldn't. Riley was breathing—but barely.
"You're alive," Daphne whispered, pressing their foreheads together.
Riley choked on a laugh. "We did it?"
Daphne nodded slowly. "We broke the tether. The relay's dead. The Hollow's not feeding them anymore."
But even as she said it, the wind shifted—and the air changed.
A pressure settled over them, ancient and angry. The ruins vibrated with a soundless howl. The Skuldrith hadn't fled. They had just... waited. And now, the hive mind knew pain.
And pain, for Velrax, was inspiration.
The Skuldrith emerged from shadow and ash in forms that bled contradiction: some towering and skeletal, others sleek and serpentine. They were thought made flesh, nightmares pulled from dying minds, teeth made from regret and eyes hollowed by grief.
Riley rose to her feet, limbs shaking. The flame inside her sputtered—but didn't die.
Not yet.
"How many?" she asked.
Daphne didn't check. "All of them."
Behind them, faint shouts echoed through the Divide. The Echo-Born had seen the tower fall. Reinforcements were coming—but too far, too late.
Riley stepped forward.
And the Skuldrith charged.
It wasn't a battle. It was a reckoning.
The first wave hit them like a flood of shadow. Riley's flames snapped into life, roaring with a fury she didn't summon—it rose from somewhere deeper, ancient and aching. Her body moved without command, flame curving around her like armor.
She ducked beneath a talon swipe, spun, and sent a stream of searing fire through the beast's chest. Another lunged. She blocked it with a wall of mirror fire, reflecting its own energy back through its skull.
Behind her, Daphne was a storm of motion. Her gauntlet flared with pulses of burning code—energy blasts laced with viral encryption, disintegrating Skuldrith with each strike. She moved like a dancer, like someone who had learned to fight only so she wouldn't break.
They moved together.
Bound not just by the Soul Link, but by history.
By choice.
By fire.
But they were still outnumbered.
For every Skuldrith they burned, five more rose. The ground twisted beneath their feet, echo-flesh forming strange traps—tendrils of memory trying to rewrite Riley into something else. She screamed and fought, her hands blistering with radiant flame.
Then one of them spoke.
"You were never supposed to survive."
The voice came from within her.
She gasped and staggered back. Images flooded her mind: Owen in the chamber, Daphne before the change, Kaelira's sorrowful gaze. Visions—no, edits. Velrax was trying to rewrite her past, making her doubt the very fire she carried.
"You're a mistake," the Skuldrith hissed.
"No," Riley growled, digging her nails into her palms, feeling blood and flame merge.
"I'm the correction."
She unleashed a nova.
Flame burst from her in every direction, golden and white-hot, a perfect sphere of searing defiance. It incinerated the nearest enemies instantly and forced the rest to fall back, howling.
But it drained her.
Daphne caught her before she collapsed.
"Don't push too far," she warned. "The Echo Gate's not ready. If you burn out here—"
"We all burn. I know."
Above them, the sky cracked.
A beam of blue light lanced down from the Divide's edge.
Brael.
He descended like vengeance, his wings of fire-glass stretched wide. Behind him came the Echo-Born—bonded pairs in synchronized flight, weapons glowing with linked flame and memory. They hit the Skuldrith like lightning, driving them back from the ruins.
"Hold the line!" Brael shouted.
Riley straightened. Her bones screamed, her blood throbbed, but the fire steadied.
"Second wave! Left flank!"
Daphne launched a guided blast, shattering a Skuldrith's skull in midair. Riley redirected an acid stream from another into a shield of mirror fire, then flanked and stabbed a burning spear through its exposed chest.
The ground heaved. The relay's remains began to glow.
Something deeper was waking.
"Back to the ridge!" Brael ordered. "Fall back!"
Retreat wasn't defeat.
It was survival.
The Echo-Born covered their exit, flames and weapons clearing a narrow path. Riley stumbled at first, but Daphne never let go. The tether between them thrummed with synchronized heartbeat, keeping them upright.
Behind them, the remnants of the Skuldrith hive pulsed—less like a building, more like a wound in time, slowly cauterizing.
They reached the overlook just as dawn broke across the Divide.
Light spilled across the Hollow like an apology.
The sky was red with ash.
And they were alive.
Camp that night was quiet.
Not from fear. From grief.
Eight Echo-Borns were lost.
Three pairs had severed—one through death, one by choice, one by madness. The cost of fire was not always paid in flames. Sometimes it was memory. Sometimes it was self.
Riley sat by the edge of the campfire, watching it flicker. The flames didn't whisper tonight. They wept.
Daphne sat beside her, eyes hollow. "You almost burned out."
Riley didn't look away. "I almost let him win."
They sat in silence for a long while.
Then Riley spoke, her voice raw. "What if Velrax isn't just feeding on memory? What if he's building something with it?"
Daphne nodded slowly. "Like a weapon."
"No. Like a world."
They looked to the horizon.
The Hollow wasn't dead.
It was changing. And so were they.