Jace jolted awake with a gasp.
His breath fogged the air. Not from cold—but from fear.
Kira was immediately at his side. "What did you see?"
He wiped sweat from his face. "Him."
She didn't ask who. She just waited.
Jace stared at the crackling remains of the campfire. "It was me. On the throne. The Echo King."
Kira went still.
Kael groaned from the corner of the room, still half-delirious but conscious enough to catch the tail end of Jace's words.
"…so you finally saw it," Kael muttered. "The truth."
Kira turned to him sharply. "What do you mean, finally?"
Kael pushed himself up with his good arm, face pale. "He's always been the variable. The System tagged him long before I found him. I just… didn't tell you everything."
"Start talking," she said, coldly.
Kael looked at Jace. "You ever wonder why your memory's fragmented? Why the System kept calling you Echo-Resonant before anything else?"
Jace said nothing.
Kael continued. "Because you're not just part of this cycle. You're the source of it. Every recursion, every collapse… it leads back to you."
The silence was suffocating.
Kira paced. "You're saying he is the Echo King?"
Kael shook his head. "No. I'm saying the Echo King is a version of him. From a future that hasn't happened yet… or maybe from a past that never ended. We don't know anymore."
He looked at Jace.
"And now you've chosen the Rewriter path."
Jace frowned. "You sound like you know what that means."
"I do," Kael said quietly. "It means you're now locked in the same paradox that destroyed the last cycle. The System fears you because you can overwrite the code. Reality isn't stable when you're around."
Kira rubbed her temples. "You said he was our hope."
"He still is," Kael said. "But hope and ruin come from the same place sometimes."
Jace stood, fists clenched.
"So what, I just… sit around and let this unfold? Hope I don't lose control?"
"No," Kael said, meeting his eyes. "You find the Echo King. You kill him. Or you risk becoming him."
The weight of it settled over him like a second skin.
Every glitch. Every flicker in his memories. Every time the System glitched at his touch…
Was it because he didn't belong?
Or because everything else didn't?
Later that morning, Kira pulled Jace aside as the city's horizon buzzed with the low thrum of static winds.
"You okay?"
He didn't answer right away. He looked at his hands, expecting them to shake, to glow, to crack with power.
But they were just hands.
"Not really," he finally said.
She nodded. "You don't have to be. Not yet."
Jace turned to her. "If I lose myself… I want you to end it. No hesitation."
"No," she said.
He blinked. "What?"
She stepped closer, looking him dead in the eye. "If you lose yourself, I'll bring you back. That's the difference between me and this damn System."
By noon, they'd reached the edge of the last known Anchor Point—a structure older than most of the digital ruins around it. The Tower of Iterance.
It rose like a jagged monument, a spire of broken timelines and looping staircases. A rift flickered at its center, open but unstable.
Kael checked his cracked terminal. "This is where the first collapse started. The throne room where the Echo King first declared control. If we're going in, this is the point of no return."
Jace stepped forward.
"Then let's find out what's waiting for us."
Inside, time bent.
Literally.
Hallways looped on themselves. Doorways opened to places they had already passed. Gravity reversed without warning, and echoes of their footsteps came before they walked.
Kira activated her stabilizer drone, anchoring their perception in local time-space.
Kael moved ahead slowly, muttering. "We need to find the Heart Node. It should anchor the main throne room and let us sync with the memory sector."
Jace, meanwhile, felt something else.
A pull.
Not forward. Not toward the throne.
But inward.
They came across mirrors—not reflective glass, but floating shards of memory.
In one, Jace saw himself younger, standing with someone who looked like his mother. She was smiling. Then flickering. Then gone.
In another, he saw Kael. Standing at a terminal. Typing.
Rewriting code.
But something was off.
Kael wasn't fixing anything.
He was locking it.
Looping the recursion again.
Jace touched the mirror—and suddenly—
Pain.Screaming.A tower falling.A girl crying.The System resetting."Not again—NOT AGAIN—"
He ripped his hand away.
Kira grabbed him. "Don't touch them again."
Jace caught his breath. "He was there. Before. Kael—he's done this before."
Kael looked back, face unreadable. "We all have."
They finally reached the throne room.
Or what was left of it.
A shattered dais. A fragmented core.
And in the middle—an echo.
It looked like Jace. But it didn't feel like him.
It pulsed with decayed light, its face broken down the middle, half-code, half-bone.
It opened its eyes.
"You're early," it said. "Good."
Kira aimed her weapon. "What are you?"
The echo-Jace tilted its head. "The result. The one who saw everything burn and chose to restart it all. Again. And again. Until nothing could change."
Kael stepped forward. "You created the recursion."
"I was the recursion."
The echo looked at Jace.
"And now, you've come to end me. But you don't understand… I didn't cause the loop. I preserved it. To protect what mattered."
Jace didn't speak.
He stepped forward, drawing the blade.
The echo raised its hand. And behind it, the air shimmered.
A thousand more echoes flickered into existence.
Each one with his face.
Each one failed.
Each one smiling.
And then they charged.