Chapter 8: Echoes from Before
The message lingered like smoke on Mia's interface, though the screen had long since gone dark.
She stared at the space where it had been, her heart thudding with a weight she couldn't define. Not fear. Not even shock.
Something deeper.
Recognition.
The silence between her and Adrian stretched until the Spirit Garden itself seemed to pulse with unease. The petals had dimmed slightly. The air grew still.
She turned slowly.
"That message... it didn't come from the Council. It didn't even come from within the current System. The code signature was archaic. The kind used before the Vault of Forgotten Bonds was locked down."
Adrian's brows furrowed. "That Vault's been sealed since before my father was born. Council members aren't even allowed direct access."
"I think someone never left it," Mia whispered.
She walked toward one of the tall glyph-trees, pressing her palm to its bark. A ripple passed through her screen—not data, but memory.
Her mind jolted.
She saw Broken Wing again, but not in its usual half-formed, shrouded state.
This time, it stood tall.
Not a beast.
Not a familiar.
But a figure.
A Seraph.
A woman cloaked in tattered robes of light and shadow, her left wing whole, her right a shattered mess of fractured feathers and gold-thread scars.
She looked down at Mia, eyes filled with both sorrow and hope.
> "They didn't kill me. They erased me. Piece by piece. System by system."
Mia trembled.
Adrian stepped closer, uncertain. "What do you see?"
"She was one of the Seven. One of the original Echo Hosts."
Adrian's eyes widened. "That's a myth."
"She's not a myth," Mia whispered. "She's me."
The vision blurred—flashes of the Seraph chained beneath a system pillar, code etched into her skin, her Spirit core torn apart and scattered. Not destroyed. Hidden.
Each fragment encoded into a broken Spirit.
One of those fragments... was Broken Wing.
> "You aren't hosting me, Mia," the Seraph said. "You are me. Reborn. To finish what we started."
The memory snapped.
Mia staggered, gasping. Adrian caught her arm again, steadying her.
"What happened?"
"I saw her. All of her. And I felt..." She looked up at him. "I think I'm not just the host. I think I'm the lock."
His expression hardened. "And the System is the prison."
Suddenly, alarms blared through the Garden.
A deep, metallic voice boomed over the air.
> "Unauthorized access. Echo-level trait chain breach.
Garden of Echoes locked. Memory field containment failed.
Subject: Mia Lancaster. Status: Class Z anomaly.
Extraction protocol in motion."
The trees shuddered.
The ground beneath them rippled like disturbed water.
"They're coming," Adrian said.
"Let them," Mia replied.
She raised her hand. Her screen reactivated on its own. No password. No gesture.
It answered to her now.
> [Spirit Command Interface: Overridden]
Emotion Level: 74% Synced
Ability Chain Reaction Detected
Trait Unlocked: "Echo Pulse Bloom"
Passive Enhancement: Memory Bloom II – Awakens dormant Spirit residue for temporary combat support
Status: Soul Recognition Achieved
From the soil beneath her, flowers began to rise.
Hundreds.
They shimmered in violet and silver, twisting toward her like old friends returning from exile.
Adrian stepped back, stunned.
Mia's Spirit shimmered behind her—its wing still fractured, but glowing.
More complete.
The Garden of Echoes was not locking her in.
It was waking up... with her.
And the System outside?
Was already too late.
---
The petals sang.
Not with music.
Not with notes.
But with memory.
As Mia stood in the center of the Garden, arms half-raised, the soil around her cracked open in glowing rings. Each bloom that rose wasn't just a flower—it was a piece of something lost. A fragment of a forgotten bond. A splinter of a Spirit that had once loved, fought, failed.
And now... returned.
Adrian moved to her side, his weapon interface flaring to life.
"Three inbound," he said, watching the sky fracture overhead. "System-grade Extractors. Spirit-linked, reinforced. These aren't guards. These are erasers."
Mia didn't flinch. "Let them try."
The barrier around the Garden shattered with a mechanical shriek.
And the Extractors descended.
They weren't human—not fully. Towering humanoid figures carved in system alloy, half-ghost, half-machine. Their armor glowed with lines of active code. Their eyes were blank white. Their arms ended in weapons that shifted shape—sword to spear to cannon.
All three landed at once, sending shockwaves through the garden paths.
> TARGET: MIA LANCASTER
STATUS: SYSTEM TRAITOR
CLASS: ECHO HOST
OBJECTIVE: EXTRACT SPIRIT CORE
PERMISSION: USE OF FORCE AUTHORIZED
"Charming," Mia muttered.
The nearest Extractor moved first—fast. Its blade extended mid-sprint, aimed straight for her chest.
Adrian intercepted with a clash of metal, Kael's energy flaring around his limbs as his gauntlet absorbed the impact. The force shoved him back, heels digging trenches in the stone.
The second Extractor flanked from the left.
Mia stood her ground.
She didn't need to fight like them.
She wasn't forged in steel.
She was forged in memory.
She reached inward—into the flowers.
> Passive Activated: Memory Bloom II
Emotional Recall: [Elira's Laughter]
Buff Triggered: Spirit Haze Field – Lowers enemy targeting precision by 32% for 10 seconds
Bloom Count: 7 active echoes
The air warped around her.
The Extractor's aim faltered.
The third one adjusted, its arm morphing into a cannon that began to charge.
Mia raised her hand.
> Emotion Trigger: Protection
Spirit Trait Surge Detected
Ability Activated: "Echo Pulse Bloom"
Range: 15 meters
Effect: Triggers dormant Spirit fragments to pulse with disruptor feedback
The ground detonated with violet bursts.
Each flower exploded into light, not fire. Not destruction. But confusion. Waves of emotion that struck the Extractors like data overloads—grief, joy, hope, sorrow.
The kind of data the System had spent decades filtering out.
They staggered.
Adrian dashed forward, seizing the opportunity. His gauntlet expanded, slamming into the nearest Extractor's head. The machine reeled, lines of code flickering madly across its armor.
The second one lunged for Mia—but stopped short.
It looked into her eyes.
And hesitated.
Because for one flickering second... it remembered.
The person it had once been.
Not a machine.
Not a tool.
But a Spirit Host.
Like her.
Mia whispered, "You don't have to obey."
The Extractor twitched.
Paused.
And turned its blade... toward the third.
"Impossible," Adrian breathed.
Mia's interface flared again.
> Sync Level: 21.6%
Fragmented Seraph – Stabilization Threshold Approaching
Ability Modifier: Influence Field – Empathic override expanding
[Echo Flame] Status: Ascending Host Trait Activated
The Extractors fell back.
One fled.
One was downed.
And one knelt.
Not in defeat.
In surrender.
Mia lowered her hand.
The flowers around her slowly dimmed, but did not vanish. The garden remained.
A battlefield now.
But also a sanctuary.
Adrian approached her, eyes wide.
"You just broke the programming of a System-class enforcer."
"I didn't break it," she said softly. "I reminded it."
He stared at her for a long moment. Then, simply said, "You're not just rewriting the System."
She turned toward him.
"I'm waking it up."
---
The kneeling Extractor remained still.
Its armor no longer hummed. Its weapons retracted. The light behind its eyes dimmed to a dull white, like the last flicker of a candle trying to remember it was once a star.
Adrian watched with tense silence, but did not interfere.
Mia approached slowly.
As she stepped forward, the Garden shifted around her. The trees leaned subtly. The blooms dimmed their glow, as if bowing—not in submission, but in reverence.
> [Passive Field Stabilized]
Memory Bloom: 12 active nodes
System Infiltration Level: Unquantifiable
Emotion State: Controlled Harmony
Internal Spirit Sync: 23.1%
Her screen shimmered.
Then collapsed.
In its place appeared a single glyph.
Not typed. Not digitized.
Etched. Handwritten.
It burned gold.
Then, in a voice softer than her own heartbeat, the Spirit spoke—not as a whisper, but as a memory returned:
> "I was not always Broken Wing. That was the name they gave me when they locked me away."
Mia's body went rigid.
Adrian stepped forward, concern rising. "What is it?"
But Mia didn't answer.
The words weren't meant for him.
They were for her.
> "My true name... was Elyra. Seraph of the Seventh Flame. Keeper of the Forgotten Bonds. Warden of the Garden of Echoes."
The glyph on her screen spun, then shattered into light.
Her interface reconstructed around it.
> Spirit Name: Elyra, Fragmented Seraph
Rank: C+ (Awakening In Progress)
Trait: Sovereign Heartlink
New Passive: "Lament Echo" – When surrounded by Spirit remains, emotion-based abilities receive a 50% boost
Unlock: Spirit Signature Memory Access (1 of 7)
Tears slid down Mia's cheeks.
Not from pain.
From knowing.
Knowing who she had been.
Who she was.
And who she had the potential to become again.
> "You are more than my host," the voice of Elyra said within her. "You are the piece they tried to erase. The flame they could not extinguish. My core, scattered across time... has remembered you."
A flower bloomed beside her.
Not like the others.
This one was pale silver with threads of violet across its petals. It pulsed with a rhythm matching her heartbeat.
Mia knelt beside it.
The petals opened.
And inside was a fragment.
A feather.
Whole. Pristine.
Unbroken.
She reached out, fingers trembling.
When she touched it, the feather dissolved into light and merged into her palm.
Her mark burned.
Not in pain.
In awakening.
> [Spirit Core Fragment Reclaimed]
Partial Restoration: 14.9%
Memory Link: "Vault of Forgotten Bonds" updated
New Access Location: Echo Gate (Level 2) – Coordinates embedded
Adrian knelt beside her, stunned. "You just reactivated a Seraph Core. Those haven't been seen in... centuries."
She looked up at him, still breathless.
"I think that was only the first."
"And the rest?"
Mia stood slowly, the light in her chest steady and warm.
"We find them," she said. "All seven."
A breeze moved through the Garden again—real, not coded.
It rustled the trees, kissed the stones, and carried with it a faint voice. A child's. A warrior's. A Spirit's.
> "Echo Flame... rise."
Behind her, the kneeling Extractor stood.
Its eyes no longer blank.
Its voice cracked and broken.
"I remember... her."
And with that, the Garden of Echoes went still.
But its roots had awakened.
And the war beneath the System had truly begun.