We landed hard.
The ground below was softer than the others—almost spongy, like it had soaked up too much blood, too much memory. It shifted beneath my boots, breathing in slow, shallow rhythms that didn't belong to either of us.
NULL was thicker down here.
It clung to everything like tar.
My boots left behind black footprints as I moved.
The Echo rose ahead of me, twisted and uneven. His right arm hung lower now, twitching, overgrown with a spiraling vein of void-flesh that pulsed like a second heart. One of his ribs jutted through his side, exposed and glowing faintly.
I was no better.
My left shoulder screamed when I tried to raise Voidscar. My ribs were cracked. My knuckles bled down to the bone. My breath came in short, sharp gulps.
But neither of us stopped.
Because this was it.
This was where it had to end.
He charged first.
I met him halfway.
Our bodies collided in a spray of black and silver, my blade sliding across his arm while his claws raked across my chest. Pain flared. I ignored it. I grabbed his throat with my free hand and drove him backward into the wall.
The impact rippled across the surface like water.
He grinned, even as I held him pinned.
"You're tired," he whispered. "I can feel it. That Seal's burning low."
I said nothing.
Just slammed my head into his.
He broke free with a snarl, twisted low, and slashed across my thigh. The blade of NULL cut deep, searing ice through my nerves. I dropped to one knee—
But I caught his leg as he advanced and ripped it out from under him.
He fell.
I rose.
My knee came down hard into his side—once, twice—driving into that twisted rib. He screamed, a sound that shook the air like breaking glass, then flared NULL from his chest, knocking me back with raw force.
I hit the ground, rolled.
He was already up.
Bleeding from the mouth now. Black fluid ran from the corners of his lips.
We circled.
Again.
Like animals.
Breathing hard. No words. Just hate and memory and the shared ache of what had been done to us.
He lunged.
This time, I let him come.
I sidestepped at the last second, twisted, and drove Voidscar across his back, dragging sparks and mist in my wake. He spun with the momentum and clawed for my face.
I ducked under.
Came up inside his reach.
Elbowed him across the jaw.
He staggered, caught himself on the wall, and turned toward me with a look I couldn't read.
Not rage.
Not even pain.
Almost… recognition.
"You were never meant to survive this long," he said quietly.
"Neither were you."
He lunged again.
And the battle continued.
Steel met shadow. Fist met bone. NULL bled into the cracks in the floor, swirling around our feet as we tore into each other again and again, both of us slowing, neither of us giving in.
Every blow carried weight.
Not just of strength.
Of history.
Of betrayal.
Of purpose.
Neither of us were fighting for power.
We were fighting for the right to be real.
And one of us had to break.
The air between us trembled—warped by momentum, tension, and the force of everything that had come before this moment.
We didn't speak anymore.
Words were useless now. Every motion was a sentence. Every blow a paragraph. And each breathless pause between clashes was a full chapter neither of us had ever wanted to write.
He rushed again—lower this time, hands dragging across the ground, tearing up pieces of the floor with his claws as he came. His body shifted mid-lunge—his spine arching unnaturally, his arm splintering into a curved, jagged blade.
I pivoted.
Too slow.
The edge of him caught my side. My vision flashed white.
I dropped to one knee, clutching my ribs—blood soaking through my shirt, hot and fast.
The Seal pulsed once at my spine. Steady. Not to give me power—but to remind me I was still here.
I pushed off the ground and met his next attack with the flat of my blade, sliding back under the weight of it. Sparks erupted between us—Voidscar screaming against his shifting edge.
His face was twisted now, part of it flickering in and out of my own again, like NULL couldn't decide which of us it wanted to keep.
"I could have been you," he said, slamming his fist into my chest.
I gasped, staggered back, nearly dropped Voidscar.
"I was you," he growled. "I remember every scream in the tank. Every time they rewrote your essence and called it a breakthrough."
"You remember it," I spat, catching his next blow on my forearm, "but I lived it."
I ducked under his next swing, stepped into his stance, and drove the hilt of Voidscar up under his jaw. His head snapped back, and I followed it with a kick to the chest that sent him reeling.
He stumbled, snarled—then snapped forward again like a shadow trying to claw back shape.
We crashed.
Fists. Elbows. Claws. Blade.
The ground beneath us cracked.
The walls bled mist.
Something overhead gave way—a chunk of ceiling slammed into the floor behind us, dust and shards spraying across the battlefield. Neither of us flinched.
My shoulder was half-numb. Blood ran down both arms. My breath came in broken, shallow gasps.
And still—I stood.
He laughed again. A broken, shaking thing. "You don't win this, Matte. You end it. That's all they ever built you for."
I pointed Voidscar at him, both hands barely steady.
"They were wrong about a lot of things."
The Echo crouched, his form shifting again, arms stretched longer now, torso twitching.
The room dimmed.
The fight wasn't over.
But it was changing.
The chamber dimmed—not from failing lights, but from something deeper. Like NULL was drawing in every source of radiance, folding it into itself until even the shadows had nowhere left to hide.
I felt it before I saw it.
The shift.
The break.
The Echo no longer moved like a reflection.
He moved like a curse.
His limbs snapped as they extended—flesh twisting over bone in ways that defied anatomy, his silhouette stretching impossibly tall for a moment before snapping back into my own proportions. Every motion now carried a slow, deliberate weight, like he was done testing and ready to finish.
I charged anyway.
Not because I thought I had the advantage.
But because I had no other choice.
I swung.
He caught the blade—barehanded—NULL searing off the edge where skin should've split.
Then he yanked me forward and drove his forehead into mine.
I stumbled. Blood gushed from the bridge of my nose. I barely kept Voidscar in my grip.
He didn't stop.
His elbow cracked into my jaw. I spun from the impact, trying to turn it into momentum, trying to buy a sliver of space—but he was already behind me.
His claw raked across my back.
I shouted and dropped to one knee.
The room warped.
Not metaphorically—literally.
The walls twisted inward, like the entire structure was folding around us. Like this fight was the singularity that everything had been dragging toward since the moment I woke in that forest.
"You're not fighting for your future," the Echo said, voice calm now, too calm. "You're fighting because you're afraid of who you were."
I rose slowly, wiping blood from my lips.
"I'm fighting because I remember."
He cocked his head.
"Remember what?"
"That I'm not just the result of what they did to me," I growled. "I'm what came after. What survived in spite of it."
He twitched.
Something about that struck a nerve.
I pressed in, struck low, then feinted high. He tried to counter, but I dropped and swept his legs from under him. He fell—and I didn't hesitate.
I drove Voidscar down.
Straight through his shoulder.
NULL erupted around the wound in a thick pulse, hissing like acid, but he didn't scream.
He looked up at me.
Smiling.
"You think I won't come back from this?" he asked. "You think one piece of steel makes you whole?"
I leaned in close, my blade still buried in his body.
"No," I said. "But it's a start."
He lashed out—faster than before—and struck my side with an uppercut packed with so much raw NULL that I felt the air leave my lungs in an instant.
I flew back, slammed into the far wall, and dropped.
My body refused to move.
Everything hurt.
But I saw him rising.
One arm ruined.
The other twitching.
Still smiling.
Still coming.
The fight was far from over.
And only one of us was walking out.