*Chapter 16: Echoes Beneath the Stone*
*Year: 3480 BC*
The storm had passed, but the air still buzzed with residual energy. The temple lay in silence—its walls scorched, its ancient secrets scattered like ash on the wind. Pluto stood at its center, gaze fixed on the cracked shard embedded in his palm.
The celestial fragment pulsed slowly, syncing with his heartbeat. It didn't hurt. He couldn't feel pain anymore. Only sensation—raw, unfiltered, and amplified through the emotional receptors gifted by ?????.
"Status," he commanded.
*[System Syncing...]*
*[New Ability Acquired: Dimensional Anchoring — Able to exist across intersecting planes without degradation]*
*[Shard Integration: 7% — Warning: Celestial data unstable]*
Ilias approached from behind, arms folded, armor lightly dusted with ash. "You shouldn't have touched it so freely."
Pluto didn't respond immediately. He looked to the horizon, where mountains of obsidian jutted from the earth like broken teeth.
"There's a vault beneath these lands," he said at last. "Older than even the Celestials. That shard—it called to it."
Uruk rumbled, eyes glowing with a low, primal heat. He could feel it too.
They descended into the earth, following fissures that led deeper into forgotten stone. The path was narrow, the air cold and damp, thick with whispers of a time before gods dared shape man.
Torches weren't needed. Pluto's eyes adjusted instantly—his body already adapting to the pressure, the cold, the unknown. Time slowed, and with every step, he felt closer to something buried not just beneath earth, but beneath history itself.
Then they reached it.
A door.
Not made of stone or metal, but of fossilized energy, humming with layered languages and ancient codes.
Pluto reached out.
It opened for him.
And what lay beyond was not treasure, but something far more dangerous—something alive.
****
The chamber beyond the door was massive—larger than any structure they had seen on Earth. Smooth obsidian walls curved into impossible angles, as though space bent itself to the will of something far older than time. Glyphs hovered midair, constantly shifting, their meaning elusive yet familiar to Pluto's ever-evolving mind.
At the center hovered a sphere.
It pulsed like a dying star—fractured, humming, and tethered to the chamber by ethereal chains of light. Around it, the remains of Deviants lay scattered, petrified in stone as if frozen mid-scream.
Uruk growled deeply, his claws digging into the stone floor.
"This is no vault," Ilias muttered. "It's a prison."
Pluto stepped forward, the celestial shard in his palm glowing in response. The sphere pulsed harder now, reacting to his presence.
*[Warning: Unstable Entity Detected]*
*[Designation: Pre-Celestial Core — Identity Unknown]*
*[System Analysis: Hostile Intelligence Dormant | Containment Failure: Imminent]*
Then a voice whispered—not aloud, but inside Pluto's mind.
*"Adaptation… you were not born of this world, yet you fit it too well. Who shaped you?"*
Pluto's eyes narrowed. "No one owns me."
The sphere cracked.
From within spilled shadows—slithering tendrils of sentient void. The remnants of an entity that had long ago been sealed by Celestials, now awakened by a being that was never meant to find it.
The tendrils shot forward.
Uruk lunged.
Pluto raised his hand—and his body adapted instantly to the shadow toxin, converting it into raw power.
Ilias drew his weapon, slicing through the air with blazing precision.
And in that moment, the chamber erupted into war—three against an ancient mind hellbent on rebirth.
But adaptation was not just survival—it was dominance.
And Pluto was no longer just adapting.
He was evolving.
****
The shadows struck like living spears, intelligent and fast—probing, striking, withdrawing with eerie coordination. But Pluto was faster.
His body shimmered with reactive energy as his cells rewrote themselves mid-combat. One tendril pierced his side—but instead of tearing flesh, it was absorbed. His skin darkened along the wound, adapting to the toxin's structure and neutralizing it instantly.
*[Adaptation Achieved: Null-Shadow Resistance]*
*[Trait Acquired: Void Immunity (Tier I)]*
Uruk moved like a storm. His tail crushed tendrils, fire searing the stone black. Ilias darted between pillars, striking with supernatural speed, never missing. He wasn't adapting—he was responding. Calculated. Efficient.
Above them, the sphere split fully open.
A form descended.
It was not a being. It was an echo. A consciousness held together by raw spite, ancient pain, and forgotten power. Semi-corporeal and laced with celestial armor cracked and warped by time, it hovered like a fallen god.
"You were not meant to awaken me," it snarled. "Your presence is unnatural. Wrong."
"I've been told that before," Pluto said flatly, flexing his fingers. "They all fell, eventually."
The entity lunged—half-wraith, half-machine. Reality warped as it moved, distorting gravity and logic alike.
But Pluto's system flashed.
*[New Threat Analyzed: Dimensional Displacement Detected]*
*[Response: Anchor Mode Initiated]*
The system grounded him—locking him in the physical world while the entity twisted reality around him.
He didn't move with the world.
He made the world move with him.
Pluto struck once—his fist glowing with adaptation energy—and the echo fractured. Not fully destroyed, but weakened. Confused.
"You're… not bound by the same rules…"
"Exactly," Pluto said coldly.
He stepped forward, dragging the full weight of change with him.
This wasn't just evolution anymore.
It was erasure.
*****
The ancient echo recoiled, its semi-form flickering like a shattered reflection. Its voice became static, stretched across multiple dimensions. But it wasn't done.
It screamed—not in fear, but in fury—and the chamber cracked with pressure. Sigils in the air burned away, and something began pulling the room inward, as if the entire vault had become a collapsing singularity.
"Dimensional breach forming," Ilias shouted, bracing against the distortion. Uruk roared and dug his claws into the stone, but the pull was growing stronger.
*[System Alert: Spatial Compression Detected]*
*[Stability Threshold: 38%]*
Pluto stood firm, his body adapting again, bones reinforcing, organs sealing. But even he felt the force threatening to tear this place apart.
Then… he stepped forward.
And the world paused.
The system synced fully with the shard.
*[Shard Integration: 100%]*
*[Ability Unlocked: Quantum Stabilizer]*
*[Effect: Immune to localized spatial collapse]*
Power radiated outward from him, forming an invisible sphere of order within the entropy. The vault's collapse froze in place.
The echo screamed and surged forward, last-ditch desperation in every move. It rushed him like a storm of fractured time.
Pluto didn't flinch.
He opened his hand—silver eyes glowing brighter than ever—and said one word:
"Vanish."
The echo imploded, shredded by its own broken nature.
Silence fell.
Pluto turned away from the fading light, the vault now still, the ancient prison hollow and powerless.
He looked at Ilias and Uruk. "We keep going."
The past wasn't done revealing itself.
****
The path beyond the vault was newly exposed, as though the destruction of the echo had unlocked a forgotten artery in the earth. The stone walls pulsed faintly, not with light, but memory—echoes of ancient footsteps, forgotten wars, and voices that once shaped the first myths of man.
Uruk sniffed the air, uneasy. Ilias followed silently, his hand near his blade, ever wary.
Pluto walked ahead, undisturbed. He no longer felt the pressure of the unknown; his body and mind were evolving faster than the world could respond. Every surface, every trace of ancient power, whispered to him now.
Then the whispers became words.
A long hallway opened into a circular chamber. Carvings spiraled across its floor like a clock — each ring depicting a different era. The Deviants, the Celestials… and at the very center, a figure with silver eyes and outstretched arms. Him.
"I've never stepped here before," Pluto said quietly, "and yet... this place remembers me."
*[System Update: Chrono-Memory Field Detected]*
*[Origin: Unknown | Probability of Temporal Echo: 87%]*
"What is this place?" Ilias asked, circling the chamber warily.
"A prophecy," Pluto answered. "Or… a record written before I arrived."
The image of him in the carvings pulsed once, and a single glyph glowed beneath his feet. The stone floor shifted—and from it rose a pedestal with a sealed orb floating at its core.
The orb was crystalline, its surface refracting dozens of ancient worlds at once. Inside it: movement. Life. Consciousness. Trapped.
A whisper emerged: *"Release… me…"*
Pluto's fingers hovered over it.
He didn't touch it.
Not yet.
Some locks were better left closed—until the world was ready to burn.
****
The orb pulsed with restrained intensity, each vibration humming with layered voices. They didn't speak in any one tongue—yet Pluto understood them all. Time and adaptation had made him fluent in things beyond language.
*[System Notification: Unstable Entity Detected — Dormant Mind(s) Detected Within]*
*[Do you wish to analyze further?]*
Pluto's hand hovered, then withdrew.
"Not yet," he muttered. "Too many unknowns."
Ilias circled the orb. "Whatever's in there… it's ancient. And angry."
Uruk snarled, the beast's fur bristling, flames licking along its spine.
Suddenly, the chamber walls shifted.
No cracking stone. No grinding gears. Just a flicker.
The room was no longer underground.
They stood on a flat stone disc floating in what looked like space—stars above, below, and around them. A void of deep purple and slow-burning nebulae.
Pluto's system glitched for a moment.
*[Reality Layer Shifted: Localized Spatial Displacement]*
*[Status: You are outside Earth's linear time field]*
Then came the sound.
Like a bell rung through the bones of the universe.
From the edge of the platform, a tall figure emerged. Draped in metallic robes that flowed like plasma, its face masked in mirrored obsidian, reflecting all three of them—but showing no features.
"You walk where mortals were forbidden," the figure spoke.
Pluto tilted his head. "Then I suppose I'm not one."
The masked being regarded him. "You were not written in this version of the tale. Yet you adapt… so well."
It looked to the orb. "That is a lock. One I placed before your kind had names."
"Why?" Pluto asked.
"Because what it contains cannot adapt. It consumes instead. Even the Celestials feared it."
Uruk growled low. Ilias's blade was already half-drawn.
"What do you want?" Pluto asked.
"I want to see if you'll break the seal… and how much of you remains when you do."
****
The masked figure stepped closer, but its movements didn't disturb space. It was as though reality itself shifted to accommodate its presence—a ripple rather than a step.
"I am called Vathros," it said. "A Warden of Broken Possibilities. The seal you face was made to contain a failed god—a concept abandoned by its own creators."
Pluto's silver gaze never wavered. "And yet you left it here."
"It had to be forgotten," Vathros replied. "And now… you remember."
The orb pulsed again, this time responding to Pluto's presence more violently. Cracks formed—hairline fractures bleeding radiant black mist into the air.
*[System Alert: Seal Integrity Falling — 89% → 72%]*
*[Causality Thread Disturbance: High]*
"I didn't come to unleash anything," Pluto said, though his voice carried less certainty than he intended.
"You are the catalyst," Vathros replied calmly. "Even when you do nothing, the fabric responds to you."
Uruk stepped forward, fangs bared. "Then speak clearly, warden. What happens if it awakens?"
Vathros turned his mask toward the beast. "The world will remember things it was never meant to carry. Truths too large for time. And you... will either be consumed or evolve beyond all known limits."
Pluto approached the orb again. The cracks had deepened, but not from force. From presence.
*He* was the pressure.
"I won't open it," Pluto said firmly. "Not yet."
A pause.
Vathros tilted his head. "Good. But know this—every step you take now draws it closer to awakening. You are not the only one adapting."
With a wave of his hand, the platform dissolved.
Reality snapped back into stone, earth, and silence.
The orb floated quietly. Its light dimmed. But it wasn't sleeping.
It was listening.
****
The chamber returned to stillness, as if none of it had happened. The floating orb remained in place—unopened, yet forever changed by Pluto's nearness. Uruk and Ilias exchanged glances but said nothing.
Pluto turned away.
Whatever Vathros was… it wasn't done with him.
They ascended from the deep halls in silence, the cracked celestial shard in Pluto's palm now humming in rhythm with the sealed orb below. His system was quiet, analyzing in the background.
Outside, the sky was dark with ash and cloud. Lightning curled silently in the distance over the fractured ruins of the old world.
As they reached the surface, a familiar pulse stirred within Pluto's blood. It wasn't pain. It wasn't warning.
It was awakening.
*[System Update: Gene Signature Unlocked — "Primordial Link"]*
*[Effect: Your blood now carries evolutionary acceleration]*
*[Vital Resonance: High | Mutagenic Effect — Passive Distribution Capable]*
He didn't fully understand it yet, but his blood was no longer just a marker of immortality. It was beginning to influence the world around him—just by existing.
"You're changing again," Ilias noted, voice low.
"I always am," Pluto said, eyes fixed on the storming horizon.
Uruk sniffed the air. "Deviants. Clusters. About ten miles north."
Pluto nodded. "We'll wipe them out. Then move east. There's a city rising near the river. I want to see who they're building statues for."
He stepped forward. Dust curled at his feet.
Behind him, stone closed over the entrance to the vault, as if sealing history back in place. But the echo… the orb… and the thing sealed within it…
They all waited.
For the moment Pluto was ready.