The air of Nehkara was alive with whispers, not from mouths but from the land itself. Beneath the iron skies, where crimson clouds swirled like bleeding wounds, Atahsaia Vire stood motionless, fingers coated in the blood of the three Earthborns he had buried beneath the ash-soaked ground. He had not spoken since the last breath left their bodies. Words were wasted currency here. Only actions had weight.
The Resonance Scar on his palm—the wound that bled when he tried to grasp the Echoverse—was still there. Still inert. Still mocking.
But something had shifted.
Not in the sky, nor in the dirt, but in him.
Hours had passed since the killings. The fire had long since burned out. Atahsaia's hands trembled slightly, not from fear or regret, but from calculation. His mind was a machine, sifting through memories of Earth and the chaos of Nehkara, testing connections, processing probabilities.
He was an outlier—still a Null. But not without purpose.
He stared into the dying embers of the fire and spoke aloud for the first time since his arrival.
"I need to understand the rules before I break them."
The Dominion of Hollowblood Reach lay a week's walk north. There, the Echoverse was active. There, Echoforms were wielded. Rumors spoke of a village on the edge of that Dominion—Tirell—where outcasts traded blood, meat, and knowledge for survival.
He would begin there.
Before departing, he gathered the Earthborns' salvaged belongings—broken comms, melted synth-canteens, and a shattered Reentry Sigil. But what mattered most was Rhiannon's journal. A cracked leather-bound log of her days in Nehkara. She had been here two months longer than the others. She had written about Echoforms. About Dominions. About something she called "Fracture Seeds."
"An anomaly. An error in the Weave. A chance for Nulls to resonate... or be consumed."
The world was not static. It was waiting.
The journey to Tirell began beneath a moonless night, guided only by the phosphorescent fungi blooming from shattered ruins. Nehkara's wilderness was alive—not with wildlife, but with broken logic.
He passed trees with metal bark and pulse-veins. He crossed rivers that flowed upward, their waters singing memories in broken languages. The land itself was an echo.
On the fourth day, sleep eluded him. He dreamt in third-person, watching himself through the eyes of other versions of him—one noble and shining, one monstrous and chitin-clad, one who died screaming beneath a collapsing sky.
When he awoke, he whispered, "The Weave is loosening."
Tirell was a mistake that refused to die.
Huts formed from the hulls of old warships, stitched with bone and void-cloth. A single monolithic stone stood at its center, etched with runes that pulsed faintly with time-forgotten logic.
The people here were neither human nor monster, but Remnants—those who had Echoed too many times and survived in fragmented pieces. Their eyes shimmered with dissonance. Their voices harmonized with past and future.
"We don't trade coin here," one said. "We trade truths."
Atahsaia offered Rhiannon's journal. A young Remnant—skin a canvas of living ink—read it with trembling fingers.
"You seek a Fracture Seed?"
He nodded.
"Then you must bleed the truth first."
The Rite of Reflection.
Beneath the blackstone monolith, they cut him—not with blades, but with questions. Ten of them. Each answer carved from memory. Each response demanded not words, but remembrance. They forced him to relive Earth. His sister's laughter. The sound of rain. The way Rhiannon had said his name before the betrayal.
Each answer resonated against the stone, and the stone recorded.
Only then did it open—splitting like a fractured mirror. Inside lay the Seed: a floating crystal pulsing with raw, unstable potential. The shard of an unformed Echoform. A tether to a version of himself that had never been.
A self that could now be.
The Remnants called it Resonant Inversion—when the Echoverse recognizes a self that contradicts all known selves and thus becomes a paradox strong enough to forge a path forward.
He reached out.
And touched it.
Pain. Identity collapse. Neural shatter. Reformation.
Memories flooded him—not his, but plausible. A version of him that had never been born. A version raised in Nehkara from birth. A war-orphan turned Void Strategist. A butcher of monsters. A savior to none.
His Resonance Index surged from 0 to 14%.
The Null was no longer Null.
But that power came with a price. He remembered less of Earth now. His sister's face blurred. The taste of mango vanished.
Echoburn had begun.
But so had his rise.
He left Tirell a week later.
He didn't speak of the Seed. Didn't speak of the dreams. But he felt them. Felt the Weave bending near him. The Echoverse now knew him. Tracked him. Measured him.
And he felt them.
Others. Like him. Earthborns who had survived. Who had aligned with Dominions. Who had become Wielders.
And some who had become Hollows.
A war table flickered in red light. A map of the region. A woman cloaked in whispersteel leaned forward.
"We have a new Variable," she said. "Unmarked. Unknown lineage. First resonance occurred near Tirell."
"Name?"
"Atahsaia Vire."
The Sable Warlord's gaze hardened.
"Track him. Before the Collective Mind does."
To be continued…