The chamber couldn't hold us anymore.
Every time our blades met, another fracture spiderwebbed across the walls. The ceiling sagged, groaning under pressure that wasn't structural—but spiritual. The entire space felt like it was cracking under the weight of what we were.
The Echo came fast—his clawed hands vibrating with NULL. He didn't swing like a brawler. He tore through the air like each strike was meant to erase the space it touched. I ducked, twisted, brought Voidscar up—
Steel met limb.
Sparks and black static burst in a ring around us.
He didn't fall back. He pressed in, snarling, face flickering in and out of my own.
"You're slower than the last time," he spat, voice layered and broken. "Or maybe that Seal's weighing you down."
I shoved him off and lunged, blade arcing for his midsection.
He caught my arm mid-swing.
The strength in his grip buckled my wrist.
I grit my teeth, twisted, slammed my forehead into his face. Bone crunched. He staggered back, but only for a second. His face snapped back into place with a wet sound, smile widening like a crack in a mirror.
"I remember every scar you tried to forget," he hissed. "Every failure. Every time you begged them to end it."
"Yeah?" I growled. "I remember surviving."
I surged forward, blade raised. He met me in kind.
We collided again.
It wasn't graceful.
It was ugly.
Raw strikes, brutal knees, fists slamming into ribs, blades scraping over skin. He moved like a predator who remembered how I breathed. I moved like a man who refused to let his past define him. Every motion hurt. Every motion mattered.
He grabbed my collar and threw me across the chamber. I hit the ground hard, rolled, and barely raised my blade as he came down with both fists wrapped in NULL, swinging like hammers.
The impact lit up the floor—NULL rupturing outward in a shockwave that split the room even further. Cracks opened beneath me, voidlight spilling out from below.
He leaned down, face inches from mine.
"You're not the original," he said. "You're not even the best version. You're just the one that stuck."
I spit blood into his face.
"Good," I said. "Then maybe you'll remember what failure tastes like."
I twisted my leg, swept his balance out, and rose to my feet as he crashed backward into a shattered console. Panels erupted in sparks around him.
He was already laughing as he stood up.
"That's it," he said. "That's the rage I wanted."
His arms spread wide as NULL coiled around his spine like a serpent.
"Let's see how long you last with nothing holding you together but will."
I exhaled.
The Seal at the base of my spine glowed faintly—not opening. Just tightening. Reminding me this wasn't about victory.
It was about endurance.
And I wasn't backing down.
Not this time.
Not ever.
He came at me again, a blur of limbs and null-static, his form flickering in and out like the room couldn't decide if he belonged here or not. My blade caught the edge of his shoulder, but the blow barely slowed him. His momentum carried him into me, shoulder crashing into my chest with enough force to lift me off the ground.
I hit the floor hard.
Pain exploded in my ribs.
But I rolled with it, shoved off the ground, and swung Voidscar in a wide arc. He ducked under it, came up inside my guard, and drove his elbow into my jaw.
White-hot stars burst across my vision.
I staggered back—just in time to avoid his clawed hand ripping through the space where my throat had been a second earlier.
He didn't speak this time.
Neither did I.
We were past words. Past taunts. Past memory.
This was instinct. This was survival.
I feinted left, then went low, slashing across his thigh. Flesh tore—but again, no blood. Just the hiss of NULL pouring out like vapor from a vent. He snarled, but before he could counter, I planted my foot and slammed the hilt of Voidscar into his temple.
He dropped to a knee.
I raised my blade.
But he was faster.
He reached up, caught my wrist, and pulled.
I came forward, unbalanced.
He drove his forehead into mine.
Then again.
Then again.
Bone cracked. My vision swam.
I broke the grip with a punch to his throat. He fell back, coughing—not from lack of air, but from something deeper. A stutter in his form, a moment of flickering between shapes. Like he was glitching. Like the NULL holding him together couldn't stabilize when it was under pressure.
I saw it.
I felt it.
And he saw that I had.
"You think you've found a weakness?" he rasped, standing slowly. "That you can pick me apart if you press hard enough?"
I didn't answer.
He smiled.
His face trembled—part of it turning into mine for a split-second before melting back into the twisted version he'd become.
"There's no weakness, Matte," he whispered. "Just reflections. Just the parts of you you're too afraid to own."
Then he lunged again.
And I met him head-on.
This time, neither of us dodged.
We collided with full force, blades slamming into bodies, fists hammering against bone, knees crashing into ribs. It wasn't a duel.
It was desperation.
A struggle between two halves of a soul that never should've been split.
The chamber pulsed with each impact.
And somewhere in the middle of the chaos, I realized—
He was starting to slow.
Not from fatigue.
But from instability.
His form rippled, like NULL was struggling to hold onto the shape it had stolen. Parts of his body began to phase at different intervals—shoulder stuttering half a second behind his chest, legs dragging through the air like they weren't connected.
He was unraveling.
And he knew it.
But that only made him more dangerous.
Because when something knows it's dying…
It tries to take everything with it.
He came apart and reformed mid-swing.
His hand—no, claw now—morphed into something sharper than bone. It screamed through the air toward my face. I barely deflected it with Voidscar, but the impact split the corner of my brow wide open. Blood blurred my vision.
I didn't have time to wipe it away.
He drove his shoulder into my chest, pinned me against one of the cracked chamber walls, and pressed—not just with his body, but with NULL, a force heavier than gravity pressing down into my lungs, my bones, my mind.
"You were never meant to hold it," he hissed, breath hot with rot and memory. "You were the shell. I was the core."
I gritted my teeth, forced my head to stay up. "Then why am I still standing?"
His face twisted, lips peeling back too far in both directions. He looked like he wanted to devour the question.
Instead, he growled.
"You haven't remembered enough."
I headbutted him.
Hard.
His form stuttered—rippling like bad signal—and I broke free.
I turned, planted, and drove my foot into his stomach, launching him across the chamber. He slammed into the floor, skidding through sparks and shattered debris.
I didn't give him time to reset.
I was on him before the echoes of his fall finished ringing.
I rained down strikes—Voidscar carving through NULL-wrapped limbs, cutting pieces away faster than they could fully reform. For a moment, I had control. For a moment, I could feel him unraveling under me.
Then he screamed.
Not with his mouth—with the room.
The chamber reacted to him, shrieking with a pulse of NULL that exploded outward. I was thrown clear, crashing into one of the remaining support pylons. The impact cracked it.
My vision doubled. My breath caught. I tasted blood in my mouth.
The Echo stood.
He was twitching now. Glitching violently.
One shoulder dragged behind the rest of his body. His spine was twisting into shapes that didn't make sense.
But his eyes—those fragments of my own—still burned.
"You think this is you fighting for your future?" he said, voice rattling like broken glass. "This is you clawing to forget what you were made to become."
He stepped forward, every motion laced with suffering and fury.
"You think I'm a monster. But I remember the truth. The labs. The screams. The things they poured into your veins. I remember the day you died—and I woke up in your place."
I stood, staggering, panting.
"You're not me," I said. "You're what they left behind when I chose to be more."
He snarled, and then we crashed together again—harder than before.
The walls buckled. The floor cracked open beneath us.
And we fell again—this time, into a deeper level.
A space darker than the others.
Lit only by the pulses of NULL and the glow of my blade.
Falling.
Clashing.
Still locked in war.
Still bleeding.
Still becoming.