System Log: Memory Trace Detected.
Location: Scar City [Fracture Zone Gamma].
Stability Rating: Critically Low. Proceed with Caution.
---
The moment Ren's boots touched the Fracture's edge, the air changed.
Not colder—emptier. Like something had sucked the meaning out of the wind.
Scar City sprawled before him like a mortuary, its buildings collapsed into melted silhouettes, roads ruptured like scars from a forgotten war. Steel towers drooped like they were mourning. The sky bled gray over everything, casting the city in a bruise-colored light. He could feel the place breathing, slowly and wrong.
[Trace Memory Detected. Synapse Link Engaged.]
The ground jolted. Then split.
Ren stumbled forward as the world snapped inside out. Time warped, colors reversed, and sound lagged half a second behind reality. Then—
He was falling.
---
The Trace Vision
A child—him, maybe eight or nine—stood in a laboratory flooded with crimson light. Rows of glass pods hissed and pulsed, filled with twitching shapes. Scientists watched behind mirrored windows. Machines whispered secrets in a language of beeps and blood.
A woman's voice echoed—sharp, clinical:
"Subject Zero's neural resistance remains unusually high. Begin soulburn initiation."
Pain bloomed across young Ren's body like wildfire. Symbols seared into his chest—spirals, triangles, anchors. He screamed, but no sound came. Just the metallic taste of power shoved into a mind too young to hold it.
[Warning: Memory Bleed Imminent. Core Overload Predicted.]
A flood of other voices. Faces he didn't know—but should—staring through static.
"You were always the glitch in the system," one whispered.
"You'll never be free," another laughed.
"You were the key. You are the lock."
A black sun rose above Scar City, casting a spiral-shaped shadow across the world. And in the center of it:
"The Godless Flame needs an anchor."
---
Ren slammed back into his body.
The scream tore from his throat before he could stop it. His hands were shaking, the scar on his chest glowing faintly beneath his shirt. Blood trickled from his nose.
The Trace. It hadn't just shown him something—it had rewritten something inside him.
> [New Title Acquired: Echo Knight – Tier 0]
[Skill Unlocked: Fracture Sight – Allows momentary glimpses into corrupted memory threads embedded in locations.]
[Fragment Protocol Initialized.]
[Quest Received: Find the Source of the Godless Flame]
He doubled over, coughing hard. The air burned in his lungs. The Fracture hadn't just shown him the past—it had pulled a piece of him back there and ripped it loose.
"Nice scream," a voice said behind him.
Ren spun, stumbling back on instinct.
She stood on the edge of the fissure like it was a balcony, arms folded, one leg wrapped in vine-grown circuitry, the other bearing a shardbone prosthetic that pulsed faintly with red light. Her eyes were silver—too silver.
She looked maybe sixteen. Or a hundred. It was hard to tell in this place.
She grinned, teeth too sharp.
"You twitch like a first-timer. Lemme guess—just Echoed?"
Ren tried to reply. His mouth was dust.
She laughed.
"Don't worry. The first bleed always sucks." She tossed him a capsule. "Memory stabilizer. Chew it. Unless you want your past to keep puking itself into your present."
Ren caught it. The capsule buzzed faintly in his hand.
"What are you?" he managed to say.
The girl tilted her head. "Same as you, probably. A leftover."
She turned and walked, motioning him to follow. As she moved, the ruins shifted around her—like the city knew her bones.
They passed through what looked like a mall drowned in fungus, mannequins fused into the walls like fossilized shoppers. A crawling sense of wrongness followed Ren with every step. Memories didn't just linger here—they hunted.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"The Hollow Node," she said. "It's one of the few places the Flame doesn't burn through. For now."
"And why help me?"
She looked over her shoulder, and for a moment her silver eyes dimmed.
"Because you're the only other person I've seen wake up from a Trace without screaming until their mind broke. That means you're useful."
Before he could reply, the world flickered.
Glitch-lines ran through the sky. The clouds pulsed red.
> [System Warning: Memory Bleed Unstable. Anchor Compromised.]
[Countdown to Sunfall: 9 hours, 12 minutes, 46 seconds]
Ren swore under his breath.
"What the hell is Sunfall?"
The girl didn't answer. She just walked faster.