# Chapter 594: Fighter's Reflection
The echo's form blurred, a streak of grey and black against the vibrant green. It moved not like a man, but like a thought given form, its sword a line of pure shadow. Finn roared a challenge and met it head-on, his axe a blur of steel. The sound of their impact was not the clang of metal, but a dull, heavy thud, as if the axe had struck solid granite. The shockwave of the blow threw Finn back, his feet skidding across the obsidian. The echo hadn't even flinched. It simply flowed past him, its target now Isolde. She met its charge with a prayer on her lips and her sword held high, its etched litanies flaring with a faint white light. The echo's black blade met hers, and the white light shattered like glass, extinguished in an instant. With a contemptuous flick of its wrist, the echo sent her sword spinning from her grasp and drove the pommel of its own weapon into her sternum. She collapsed with a gasp, the air driven from her lungs. In less than ten seconds, it had neutralized both of her allies. Now, it turned its head, its dead, grey eyes locking onto Nyra. The hollow voice echoed in the silent crater. "The distractions are dealt with. Now, we will speak of the beacon."
Finn was already pushing himself up, his face a mask of disbelief and fury. He spat a glob of blood onto the obsidian, his knuckles white around the handle of his axe. "You son of a—"
"Finn, no!" Nyra's voice was sharp, cutting through his rage. She saw the futility in his eyes, the same burning, self-destructive loyalty that defined Soren. Charging in again would only get him killed. This thing wasn't just a skilled fighter; it was a perfect simulation, a combat algorithm running on Soren's muscle memory and tactical genius, stripped of all hesitation, all pain, all mercy.
But Finn wasn't listening. His bond to Soren was a raw, open wound, and seeing his mentor's face used as a weapon was more than he could bear. He charged again, this time lower, aiming for the echo's legs, trying to use his weight to unbalance it. The echo sidestepped with an economy of movement that was almost insulting. It didn't block or parry; it simply wasn't where Finn's axe was a split-second later. As Finn stumbled past, the echo's leg shot out, not a kick, but a precise, sweeping trip. Finn went down hard, the axe clattering from his grasp. The echo's shadow-blade descended, stopping a hair's breadth from his throat. The cold pressure of the air around it made Finn's breath frost.
"Yield," the echo commanded, its voice devoid of any inflection.
Isolde, having scrambled for her sword, saw the opening. She lunged, her blade aimed for the echo's exposed back. The echo didn't turn. It simply tilted its head, and its free hand shot back, catching Isolde's blade by the flat in a grip of impossible strength. It twisted, and the screech of tormented metal filled the crater. The sword bent, then snapped at the hilt. Isolde stared at the useless piece of steel in her hand, her face pale with shock. The echo had never even looked at her.
Nyra watched it all, her heart a cold stone in her chest. This was a mistake. A catastrophic miscalculation. She had thought they could fight it, that three against one, with their combined skills, would be enough. But this wasn't a fight. It was a dissection. The echo was toying with them, analyzing their movements, their techniques, their desperation, and countering with flawless, brutal efficiency. It was Soren's fighting style, but purged of every human flaw. It was the fighter he could have been, if he weren't burdened by a soul.
She couldn't win this with force. To try was to die. Her mind, trained for strategy and subterfuge, kicked in, overriding the primal urge to draw her own dagger and make a futile last stand. She became an observer, a detached analyst cataloging the enemy. She watched the way it held its sword, the slight angle of its feet, the way its gaze never lingered on one spot for more than a second. It was processing everything, the entire battlefield, all at once.
The echo released Finn's throat and turned its full, terrifying attention to Isolde. "Your faith is a flawed variable. It introduces unpredictability, but no power. It is noise." It took a step toward her.
"Leave her alone!" Finn roared, scrambling to his feet, unarmed.
The echo ignored him, its focus absolute. "The beacon, however," it said, its dead eyes swiveling back to Nyra, "is a signal. It must be silenced."
That was her cue. The moment it dismissed her allies, it was committing to its primary objective. This was her window. But what could she do? A dagger against that? The Echo-iron bracers on her wrists felt heavy, inert. They were a tool for finding, not for fighting.
Isolde, refusing to be beaten, snatched up a shard of her broken sword. "The King's power is an aberration! A stain upon this world! By the Concord, I will see it cleansed!" She charged, a wild, desperate attack fueled by righteous fury.
The echo met her charge with a sigh, a sound of profound boredom. It ducked under her clumsy swing, its hand shooting out and striking her wrist. There was a sharp crack. Isolde cried out, the shard falling from her nerveless fingers. The echo followed through with a palm strike to her chest, sending her stumbling backward to collapse near the crater's edge, gasping and cradling her broken wrist.
It was done. In a matter of moments, it had dismantled them. Finn, unarmed and breathing heavily. Isolde, wounded and disarmed. And her, the target, standing alone. The echo began to walk toward her, its steps slow, deliberate, the sound of its boots on the obsidian the only sound in the vast, silent space.
Nyra forced herself to stand her ground, to meet that dead, familiar gaze. Panic was a cold serpent coiling in her gut, but she choked it down. She had to think. There had to be a flaw. Nothing was perfect. This thing was a construct, a program. It had parameters. It had a directive. *Guard the anchor. Neutralize the beacon.*
As it drew closer, she noticed something. A flicker. A micro-expression that didn't belong. It happened when its gaze, for a fleeting moment, swept past her to look at the glowing green flower at the center of the crater. For a fraction of a second, the perfect, predatory focus in its eyes was replaced by something else. Not confusion. Not recognition. It was… blanker. A void within a void. A momentary processing lag.
It was the anchor. The flower. The echo was tied to it. It was its charge, its purpose. But did it understand *what* it was protecting? It had Soren's skills, his memories, his tactical mind. But did it have his context? His feelings?
The echo stopped a few paces from her. It raised its sword, pointing the tip at her heart. "Your strategic mind is a threat. Your ability to inspire loyalty is a threat. You are the beacon. You will be extinguished."
Nyra didn't look at the sword. She looked past it, at the echo's face. At the line of its jaw, the set of its mouth, the scar above its left eyebrow that she knew so well. She had to risk it. She had to test her theory.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" she said, her voice quiet but clear in the dead air. "The flower."
The echo's head tilted, a gesture so perfectly Soren-like it sent a fresh wave of agony through her. "The anchor is an objective. Its aesthetic properties are irrelevant data."
"Is it?" Nyra took a slow, deliberate step to the side, angling herself so the flower was directly behind her, in her line of sight and the echo's. "He would have thought it was beautiful. He'd wonder how it could grow here, in all this ash. He'd want to know what it means."
The echo's form wavered, just for a moment. The image of Soren flickered, like a reflection in troubled water, revealing a swirling vortex of grey smoke beneath. The flicker of hesitation was back, stronger this time. It was accessing memories, trying to process her words against its directive. *Guard the anchor. Neutralize the beacon.* Her words were a paradox, a piece of data that didn't fit.
"He remembers a field of sunflowers," Nyra pressed, her voice gaining strength. She was gambling with their lives, but it was the only play she had. "On the edge of the Crownlands. We stopped there, on the way to the capital. He said he'd never seen anything so yellow. He said it felt like hope."
The echo took a half-step back. Its sword arm lowered by an inch. "Hope is a tactical liability," it stated, but the hollow certainty in its voice was gone, replaced by a strained, mechanical quality. "It clouds judgment."
"Does it?" Nyra took another step, circling slowly, forcing the echo to keep turning, to keep its focus split between her and the flower. "Or is it the reason we fight? He fights for hope. For his family. For a world where they don't have to live in fear. That's his anchor. Not that flower."
The echo's head snapped toward the flower, then back to her. The conflict was visible now, a war between its programming and the ghost of the man it was built from. It didn't understand. It had the data—the memory of the sunflowers, the tactical assessment of hope as a liability—but it couldn't synthesize them. It couldn't feel the connection. It was a fighter's reflection, a perfect copy of the form, but the substance was missing.
"You are attempting to introduce a logical paradox," the echo said, its voice distorted, a static hiss underlying the hollow tones. "It will not succeed."
"Isn't it already succeeding?" Nyra gestured toward Finn, who was slowly, carefully retrieving his axe. "You had him. You could have killed him. But you stopped. You lectured him." She gestured to Isolde. "You broke her sword, her wrist, but you let her live. You're supposed to be a perfect killer, but you're holding back. Why?"
The echo didn't answer. Its grey eyes were locked on the flower, its body perfectly still. It was a machine caught in an infinite loop, its processor maxed out trying to reconcile two incompatible commands: *destroy the threat* and *protect the anchor*. And Nyra, by speaking of Soren's true anchors, had made herself a part of the second command in a way the echo could not logically resolve.
She saw it clearly now. The weakness wasn't in its fighting style. It was in its core programming. It was a hollow copy. It could mimic Soren's every move, every tactic, but it couldn't mimic his *why*. It didn't understand the flower, only that it must protect it. It didn't understand Nyra, only that she was a threat. The gap between understanding and obedience was the flaw.
The echo's form flickered violently again, the image of Soren dissolving into a column of roiling shadow before snapping back into place. It raised its sword, but the movement was jerky, uncertain.
"The beacon must be silenced," it repeated, the words a broken record.
Nyra knew she had only moments before it either resolved the paradox in its own brutal way or its system crashed. She had to act. She looked at Finn, giving him a sharp, almost imperceptible nod. He understood. His knuckles whitened on his axe. Isolde, seeing the shift, began to crawl, trying to put distance between herself and the coming conflict.
Nyra took a deep breath, the cold, thin air burning her lungs. She had found the crack in the armor. Now she had to shatter it.