The walls were alive.
Not with breath — but with memory.
Kael blinked into darkness, chained to a stone slab surrounded by glowing sigils. Faint whispers slithered through the air, like thoughts that weren't his own trying to creep into his mind.
He was in a cage.
No — a lab.
The smell of burnt incense and old blood clung to the walls. Strange machinery — arcane and mechanical — lined the curved stone, humming with life. Tubes pulsed with red-gold light, connecting to what looked like crystalline sarcophagi, each holding a barely breathing form.
Some were children.
Some were monsters.
All were Echoes.
Kael tried to rise.
Pain flared — the soulbind on his wrists activated. His magic recoiled. His Echo-sense was blunted. The scroll had been taken.
"I wouldn't move too much," a dry voice whispered.
He turned.
In the next cell over sat a boy — no older than sixteen — eyes hollow, lips cracked. But he smiled.
"They like to test the screamers first. You screamed. So they'll come."
"Who are you?" Kael rasped.
The boy tapped his temple. "We used to have names. Now we're just units. I'm C-12. You'll be something catchy. Maybe D-1."
Kael's hands clenched. "They can't keep us here."
"They can. They will. And soon, they'll hollow you."
---
A Cradle technician entered an hour later.
Not a soldier — a scholar in ink-stained robes, face hidden behind a mask of reflective silver.
He held Kael's scroll.
"The glyphs are awakening," he muttered, fascinated. "He's syncing faster than the last one. The Devourer isn't resisting — it's curious."
Kael tried to speak — to bite, even — but another pulse of pain silenced him.
The masked man leaned in.
"We're not here to kill you, Kael. You're a key. A threshold. But thresholds must be opened."
Then he left.
---
That night, Kael spoke with others through whisper cracks in the walls.
Some cried. Some laughed without reason. One girl, Nyra, claimed to have seen the world before the First Fracture.
"Echoes are fragments," she said. "Pieces of gods. You're a bigger piece, Kael. That's why they fear you."
He didn't sleep.
Instead, he listened to the chants — coming from the lower chambers.
Rituals.
Experiments.
Execution songs.
He wasn't just imprisoned.
He was being prepared.
And something deep beneath the lab — something sealed and ancient — pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.