The moment the bunker collapsed, Mr. Ferborn shot skyward, propelled by some mechanical contraption. Artificial resonance strings wrapped around him like armor, singing in harmony as he carved a path through the horde, sound clashing against song in a dazzling, terrifying display.
Elias didn't have time to marvel. Seconds from death, he couldn't afford to look anywhere but the threat before him.
The first Echoform had reached him. Up close, its true form was a nightmare he wished he hadn't seen.
Humanoid, translucent skin streaked with the look of blood-soaked glass. Beneath the surface, hundreds of heart-shaped cores throbbed out of sync, flickering erratically like broken machinery. Its face was featureless—except for a long slit stretching from one ear to the other. From it came a song, eerie and fractured, that tore through Elias's skull.
He gagged, spitting blood.
And, horrifyingly, he felt something else—an undeniable, uncontrollable surge of lust, rising with alarming force.
He remembered the man's words—something about the orchestra of desire.
These were Echoforms of desire.
Elias bit his lips, fighting the call of the song, and ran.
His parents were nowhere to be seen amid the chaos. The thought made his chest tighten painfully. The stairs leading out of the bunker were only a few meters away, but each step felt stretched into eternity.
Echoforms swarmed him. Some wrapped tight around his back. Others clutched his arms as he struggled to break free. Their broken songs clawed at his mind, pulling blood from his eyes, ears, and nose. Every fiber of his being screamed to succumb—but he fought.
"Get away from me, motherfuckers!" he screamed, shoving, twisting, punching his way through the symphony of madness. Tears of blood streamed down his face.
It was useless.
Not when he wasn't awakened.
Not when he was barely capable of defending himself.
Not when he was still so weak.
Elias tried to take a step forward. He tried to push, to shove his way out again. But his hands wouldn't move. His mind wasn't responding—not from fatigue, but because its final barriers had shattered. The broken songs had overridden everything.
He fell to his knees, face blank as waves of Echoforms closed in, hugging him from all sides. Their voices rose in chaotic harmony, a maddening symphony.
"Eliiiaas…"
A seductive voice called his name. His head jerked up.
It was Megan—the school's golden girl from Elementary Symphony School. She was dressed in clothes that left her chest and thighs nearly bare. Her golden hair flicked back as she leaned toward him, sky-blue eyes glinting with a teasing hunger. Her hands slid around his neck.
"Tell me, Elias," she whispered, pressing close, lips brushing his forehead. "Don't you want to… touch me?" Her tongue traced the tip of his ear, sending shivers down his spine. "I won't stop you. I'll be obedient… all you have to do is touch."
"Touch…" Elias mumbled, trance-like, his hands lifting almost instinctively.
"Yes… touch me, Elias," her voice stacked on itself, growing darker, hungrier. "I'm all yours. Do with me what you want. You're so close…"
Get the hell away from my son!"
The command ripped through the hallucinatory song like a shockwave. Elias snapped his head up.
His hand hovered midair, trembling, a few meters from the source of the compulsion.
The Echoforms had shifted. They were no longer swarming him—they had gathered around his parents. And his mother and father… they weren't resisting. Their faces were blank, distant, as if the broken songs were already clawing through their minds.
"What are you doing? Get the hell away from them!" Elias screamed, his voice shaking with a mix of rage and helplessness.
He could see it happening. He understood it. But understanding didn't mean he was ready to accept it.
"Elias," his mum called softly, tears streaming down her face as the broken songs of the Echoforms grew louder, faster. "Live on… be happy. And I hope… that one day, you will no longer be cursed with the memory we are about to make today."
His father's voice followed, though barely audible over the cacophony. "Elias… I've never been prouder to be your dad. I wouldn't trade this moment for anything… Run, Elias. Survive. Don't let our sacrifice… be for nothing."
That was the last thing they said.
Then silence.
The Echoforms swarmed them, shrieking in what felt like delight as they closed in.
"No! No!" Elias screamed, collapsing to the ground.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
He slammed his head into the floor again and again, teeth gritted, chest heaving. Pain and fury coursed through him, raw and unfiltered.
Then, with a roar, he forced himself upright.
Bloody tears streamed down his face.
He ran.
The stairs. The exit.
Anything.
The bunker gave way behind him, and he burst into the streets—a world of madness, steel, and the unending, grinding symphony of broken songs.
He walked through the ruined streets like a corpse that hadn't realized it was dead yet, ignoring the humans-turned-Echolings who drifted toward him with twisted smiles and broken giggles, their eyes hollow and unfocused.
At the central plaza, he slowed.
Maddened figures sat or stood in circles, scraping violins with trembling hands, beating drums with no rhythm, producing a discordant noise that clawed at the ears. The music didn't even try to be beautiful. It was wrong—wrong in a way that made the fallen city feel like a graveyard.
"The Echoforms… are gone," Elias mumbled, his voice distant, his hazy eyes scanning the streets.
He didn't question it. Didn't care.
He kept walking.
No destination. No purpose.
"Mum… Dad…" His voice cracked, sobs finally spilling over as he raised his torn polo to his face, wiping away blood, tears, and grime all at once. "I promise… one way or another, I'll save you from the corruption. Even if it's the last thing I do."
Then he stopped.
A smile slowly crept onto his face.
And he laughed.
A dry, broken sound tore out of his chest.
"Wait," he muttered, clutching his head. "What exactly can I do?"
His laughter grew louder, sharper.
"I'm weak. Pathetic. Trash."
"I let you die. I let everyone die." His voice trembled, then snapped. "I am useless—USELESS!"
He threw his head back and stared into the dark, fractured sky, clapping his hands together in mocking applause.
"Are you finally happy now, you son of a bastard called fate?" he shouted, laughing like a madman. "I'm finally accepting the weakness you shoved down my throat! I bet you're scratching your ass cheeks somewhere, doing a happy little dance, huh—asshole!"
THUNDER RUMBLED!
"That's right! I'm trying to annoy you, motherfucker! Rumble all you want! Scream all you want! But guess what—there's probably nothing you can do to fuck me over more than you already have!" Elias screamed, his lungs burning, voice ragged.
For a heartbeat, the sky went silent.
Then it struck.
Red lightning tore through the clouds, slamming into the ground like a sonic blast, spreading a net of fiery destruction across Arvenelle. Half the city erupted in flames instantly.
The force of the impact threw Elias several meters into the air. He slammed his back against the frame of a wooden shop, shattering it into splinters.
He scrambled to his feet immediately. Another bolt slammed down where he had fallen, the explosion shaking the streets and filling his ears with a deafening roar.
"Wait! You can't tell me that out of billions of people that have cursed you I just had to be taken seriously!" Elias shouted, voice cracking. "Don't be such a petty bastard!"
But the lightning didn't care.
It rained down in endless, merciless torrents.
From that moment, it became a race against instant death. Elias sprinted through the lightning-scorched streets. Explosions tore into the ground around him, some leaving burns, some snapping bones—but he wasn't planning to die. Not after his parents had given everything for him.
"Fuck you, fate!" he screamed, middle finger raised toward the sky. "Is this your pathetic strength, you weak—"
A massive bolt slammed into the ground right in front of him, hurling him meters into the air.
He landed on his shoulders with a sickening crack.
"AAAAGH!"
Pain ripped through him as he screamed until his throat burned raw.
"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!"
He lay there, teeth gritted, muscles trembling, waiting for the agony to ease. Then something caught his attention.
The lightning didn't touch the area where he had fallen. Not a spark, not a flash.
Squinting through the red haze, he recognized the park. The place where kids once gathered to trade notes, play instruments, laugh.
Grunting, he forced himself upright, testing his arms.
He felt nothing.
"Just great," he muttered. "If I was barely managing to survive this place with working hands, I guess broken ones would do wonders."
With a sigh, he was about to collapse to the ground when something caught his eyes—something that shouldn't be there.
"Is that…" he said, swallowing hard. "A freaking Mirrorth!"
It hovered in the middle of the park, its invisible outline marked by glowing veins of black. Unlike other Mirrorths that usually arrived accompanied by broken songs, this one was silent.
Almost… painfully harmless.
But Elias still stepped back, limbs trembling.
Mirrorths are graded by seven colors, representing their level of devastation—the lowest red, the highest known cyan.
But there had never been any record of a black-graded Mirrorth.
Which meant one of two things: the stress of the night had finally begun to warp his vision… or the Mirrorth in front of him heralded an apocalypse.
Elias spun around, half-running toward the park's exit. Anywhere but here—he needed to get as far away as possible from the Mirrorth looming before him.
But he didn't get far before the impossible happened.
He felt himself lifted off the ground, weightless for a brief, terrifying second—then slammed across the broad shoulders of something enormous. Probably an Echoling.
"Put me down, you bastard!" Elias screamed, flailing.
All he got in return were eerie, drawn-out laughs that crawled under his skin and froze his blood.
A terrible premonition clawed at his mind the moment he realized where the Echoling was heading—straight toward the Mirrorth. The thing he wanted to avoid more than anything.
"Hey, good sir," he called, voice trembling, face pale. "I think… I think you're going the wrong way."
The Echoling didn't stop.
And that's when Elias felt it—the full, suffocating grip of a panic attack tightening around his chest.
"Get me off!" he shouted, kicking wildly, cursing the uselessness of his hands. "Get me off right now! No, don't go any closer, you insane bastard! Someone save me! Someone help!"
The Echoling stopped in front of the silent Mirrorth, tilting its head as if studying it. Then, almost casually, it lifted Elias's trembling body higher, holding him in the air while grinning down at him.
"Please…" Elias begged, tears streaming down his face.
The Echoling let out a soft, almost amused giggle, like it found him pathetic—and adorable. Then, with no warning, it hurled him like a ragdoll straight into the Mirrorth.
"FUCK YOU, BASTARD!" Elias screamed midair.
The world vanished as the Mirrorth swallowed him whole.