The black beyond the door didn't feel like a hallway.
It felt like a throat.
The kind that swallowed things whole.
The moment Violet and I stepped through, the NULL thickened—not just around us, but inside us. Like it seeped through skin and muscle and thought, trying to find seams to pull apart.
I fought it.
The Seal at the base of my spine burned faintly, casting thin tendrils of heat through my limbs. Not flaring. Just anchoring me. A reminder: I was still Matte. I still remembered who I was.
Violet walked just ahead of me, blade drawn. The corridor sloped downward, narrow and slick, lined with veins of obsidian pulsing gently beneath its surface. It looked like the walls were breathing. Not metaphorically—literally.
We descended for minutes, maybe longer. Time didn't move the same here. Nothing did.
Eventually, the passage opened into a wide chamber.
I froze in the threshold.
Tanks. Dozens of them.
Each one shattered. Cracked glass. Twisted restraints. Old fluid dried into black crusts along the floor. Symbols burned into the walls above each one—symbols I didn't recognize, but felt like I'd seen before in a dream I hadn't had yet.
Only one tank remained whole.
And it wasn't marked with a name.
It was etched with a single message, jagged and uneven like it had been scratched in by hand:
"THE SELF THAT REFUSED TO DIE"
The fluid inside was dark. Too dark to see through. But I felt it.
The pressure. The weight.
The thing inside was still alive.
And it was waiting for me.
Violet stepped beside me, her breath shallow, eyes fixed on the tank.
"You feel that?" she asked, voice low.
I nodded. My throat was dry. "Yeah."
It wasn't just alive.
It was aware.
The NULL in the room pulsed with each slow churn of the fluid. Like a heartbeat submerged in black. I didn't hear it. I felt it. In my bones. In my blood. In the scarred ridges of my memory.
The Seal at my spine was trembling now. Not from fear.
From recognition.
I took a step forward. The air grew colder. Thicker. My boot made no sound against the ground, but I felt the reverberation echo through the chamber like the place was listening.
A hiss escaped from the base of the tank—subtle, steady.
The fluid inside began to stir.
I froze.
Violet raised her weapon, feet braced, but she didn't speak. We both knew there were no words that would matter here.
The shape inside started to shift.
It didn't rise.
It unfolded.
Piece by piece. Limb by limb. The fluid parted around it like the tank itself was bending to let it free. What emerged wasn't a body—it was a fracture. A warped silhouette held together by movement more than flesh. It had my shape, but not my stillness.
It twitched in pulses, its joints bending backward, its form trembling like it couldn't decide on a single version of itself.
Then it pressed one hand against the glass.
Five long, disfigured fingers.
And a face.
Not mine.
But a remembrance of mine.
Half-formed. Lips over where eyes should be. A jaw that stretched too far to one side. Skin melted into shadows. Every detail felt like something NULL tried to recreate from broken blueprints—and failed.
And still—
It smiled.
The glass began to crack.
Hairline fractures blooming outward from its palm.
Violet stepped back. "Matte—"
"I know."
Another crack. This one audible.
Then it spoke.
No lips moved. No breath escaped.
But I heard it all the same.
Inside my skull.
"̴I̴'̷v̶e̷ ̴b̶e̴e̶n̷ ̵s̵o̷ ̷h̵u̶n̷g̶r̷y̶ ̷f̸o̶r̵ ̴y̵o̶u̶.̴"
The tank exploded.
Glass and fluid erupted outward like shrapnel in a silent scream. The pressure wave didn't just hit my body—it slammed through my thoughts. Time fractured. For a moment, I saw myself standing at the edge of a cliff that didn't exist, watching a sun made of veins bleed across the sky.
Then it snapped back.
NULL poured across the floor in tendrils, writhing like it had been caged too long.
And from it, the Echo stepped free.
It moved like a puppet caught mid-snap. Its joints stuttered in bursts, not bound by the same physics as mine. Limbs too long. Muscles flexing in ways that bent reality. Every step it took, the chamber seemed to recoil—walls trembling, dark veins flaring in protest.
I raised Voidscar.
It stopped just a few feet in front of me, head tilted, that grotesque almost-face twitching with every pulse of NULL pouring off its frame.
"̷S̵t̵i̸l̶l̶ ̶h̷o̷l̷d̷i̷n̷g̷ ̶t̴o̶ ̵s̵h̵a̴p̷e̶,̵" it rasped, voice layered—my voice, and something deeper, warped beneath it. "̴S̴t̴i̶l̷l̵ ̴p̴r̶e̵t̴e̷n̷d̶i̷n̴g̶ ̶t̸o̸ ̵b̶e̴ ̵a̵l̵i̵v̶e̴.̵"
"Who are you?" I asked, though I already knew.
It took a shuddering breath, like someone choking on fog.
"̷T̷h̸e̴ ̶v̴e̴r̴s̶i̷o̴n̸ ̷t̴h̶e̸y̶ ̵t̷h̴r̴e̵w̵ ̴a̵w̸a̸y̴.̴ ̶T̴h̷e̵ ̷f̸a̸i̷l̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶t̸h̶a̴t̶ ̸k̵e̷p̴t̶ ̶s̴u̶r̵v̸i̷v̶i̴n̶g̴."̴
It lunged.
I barely brought Voidscar up before its claws struck. The force blasted me back into a pillar, stone cracking behind my shoulders. I rolled, landed on my feet, and slashed low—but it had already vanished, blurred sideways with that stuttered phase-step.
Then it was on me again.
We traded blows in silence, metal against NULL-soaked bone. Each hit I landed tore fragments from its frame, but they didn't bleed. They hissed. Dissolved. Reformed seconds later like memory stitching itself back together.
It didn't fight to kill me.
It fought to replace me.
Every time our blades clashed, its voice whispered inside my skull.
"̴Y̶o̶u̷'̵r̶e̷ ̶t̴h̶e̸ ̷c̶o̵r̵r̶e̴c̶t̵i̷o̶n̸.̵ ̶I̷'̴m̵ ̷t̸h̷e̶ ̷c̵o̴s̸t̸.̶ ̶S̷o̷ ̸w̴h̷y̴ ̸d̴o̸ ̷I̶ ̷s̶t̴i̴l̷l̵ ̸r̴e̷m̷e̴m̷b̶e̸r̷ ̷b̸e̸i̴n̸g̵ ̷y̴o̵u̵?̴"
I drove my blade into its side and forced it back. For a moment, it staggered, twitching, the wound leaking a cloud of black static.
It laughed.
Or maybe it cried.
I couldn't tell.
"̵W̸e̸ ̷w̸e̸r̷e̷ ̸t̸h̶e̷ ̵s̶a̴m̴e̵ ̴o̵n̵c̵e̵.̶ ̴Y̸o̵u̵ ̶j̷u̸s̵t̷ ̷f̴o̵r̶g̷o̶t̸ ̴w̸h̵y̷.̵"̴
Then it moved again—faster this time, sharper.
And the fight truly began.