The broken Echo towered over them—metal limbs fused with bone, its face a shattered mirror of a thousand lives. Sparks of red Lume twisted like veins through its body. It moved with jerks, like it had forgotten how to exist.
Grim stared it down, blades still sheathed. His fingers tingled.
"It's not just corrupted tech," Sparks whispered in his head. "It's old. From before the Blank Court cleaned history. It remembers something. Someone."
The Echo tilted its head.
Then it spoke.
Not with sound, but in a chorus of glitching voices that scraped across the inside of Grim's skull.
"Child of Avara and Irix. Hidden flame. Forgotten weapon. You live."
Grim's breath caught.
Kerren raised her arms, her gloves humming with kinetic runes. "Did… that thing just speak?"
Lys backed up, lips moving through incantations. "It knows him. It knows him."
"I don't like this," Sparks muttered. "I didn't sign up for ancient prophecy mode."
The Echo took a step forward—then staggered, like fighting itself.
Grim's pulse thundered. There was a pressure behind his eyes. A memory he didn't own trying to claw out.
"Grim," Sparks warned, "your Lume signature is spiking. Something's—wait—no, someone encoded you with a lock. A failsafe. But the Echo just... broke it."
Pain lanced through Grim's chest. His knees buckled.
He wasn't in the ruins anymore.
⚫ Flash
A cold lab.
Strangers in Blank masks arguing.
A boy—hooked to machines. Screaming. Sparks of violet fire leaking from his eyes.
"Too much emotion," one says.
"He'll fracture," another warns.
"Let him fracture," a third whispers. "That's the point."
Back in the ruins, Grim gasped, eyes snapping open—lit with a deep amethyst glow.
Kerren shouted, "He's flaring—!"
The Echo roared and charged.
Time slowed.
Grim didn't move. He just felt—not with anger, but with clarity. Every pulse of the Echo. Every flick of heat in the Lume. Every ounce of sorrow trapped inside that broken shell.
"I know what you are now," he said.
"You're like me."
The Echo froze mid-charge—twitching, flickering—like it was trying to listen.
"You were built to forget," Grim whispered. "But I won't."
He lifted his hand.
And the Echo... stopped.
Not because it wanted to.
Because Grim made it.
"Dude," Sparks said, stunned. "You just—hard override? How?! That's core-level tech—there's no protocol for—wait. Wait wait wait—what else did they put in you?"
The Echo knelt.
Kerren and Lys stared, stunned.
Lys finally managed, "Okay. What the hell are you?"
Grim didn't answer.
Because he didn't know yet.
But the voice still echoed in his head.
"Child of Avara and Irix... Hidden flame..."