Trek blinked. "Say that again?"
Malik didn't. Couldn't. The words hung in the air like smoke, half-real, already fading.
"I think I used to be someone else," he repeated, quieter this time.
Naomi watched him, her eyes narrowing. Not judging. Calculating. She always listened like she was assembling pieces no one else could see.
"You talking past life stuff?" she asked. "Or like… memory loss?"
Malik hesitated. "It's more like I'm waking up into something that never really left."
Trek frowned. "That's either deep… or psych ward territory."
Naomi elbowed him. "He's serious."
"I am serious," Malik snapped, and for a second, the wind around them dipped. Not dramatically—just a momentary hush, like the world inhaled.
Naomi felt it. She straightened subtly. Trek blinked again, confused.
"I don't know what's happening," Malik said. "But something's changing. In me. Around me. And it started three nights ago."
He told them about the dream.
Not the full thing—not the fire, not the crown—but the gate. The whisper. The name.
Obsidian.
The way the word made the air tremble.
Naomi didn't interrupt. She never did. When he finished, she stared at the ground for a long while.
Finally: "You said Obsidian answered you."
Malik nodded.
"And that it's… a summon?"
"I think so."
"That's… that's not supposed to be possible."
Trek, arms crossed, looked between them. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," Naomi said slowly, "you don't just get a summon, Trek. You train. You attune. You channel Echo for years under a guild program before you even get access to a Binding Field."
"And I didn't do any of that," Malik said.
Silence.
Trek finally exhaled. "Man. So you're either possessed… or dangerous."
Malik looked up.
"I'm both."
They didn't speak for a long moment.
Then Trek, bless his unfiltered soul, clapped his hands once. "So what now? You start glowing? Floating? Growing horns?"
"I don't know," Malik said. "But I need to find out."
"You're not doing this alone," Naomi added. It wasn't a question. It was a declaration.
Malik looked at her.
"Last time we split up," she said, "you ended up with a dislocated shoulder, and I had to drag you through three alleyways while Trek passed out from blood loss."
"I wasn't passed out," Trek muttered. "I was… vision-locked."
Naomi rolled her eyes. "You were unconscious. With your mouth open."
"I was dreaming tactics."
They bantered like that. It was their rhythm. And for a minute, Malik let himself believe that maybe things would stay normal.
They didn't.
It started small.
That afternoon, the sky dimmed without warning. Not cloud cover. Dimming—as if someone had dialed the sun down by 30%.
Then the pigeons stopped flying.
A block from campus, Naomi froze mid-sentence and pointed upward.
"Are they… floating?"
The birds weren't flapping. Just hovering. Motionless. Silent.
Trek stared. "Yo… what is that?"
A low hum rolled through the ground, like a bassline from beneath the city.
Malik felt it behind his eyes.
Then—
A snap.
Air warped.
The birds dropped all at once.
Dead.
People screamed. Cars swerved. Alarms wailed.
Naomi grabbed Malik's arm. "What was that?!"
But Malik wasn't listening.
He was feeling.
There—beneath the street. Something opened. Just for a second. A breath in the soul of the world.
And something looked out.
They ended up back at Malik's house.
His parents weren't home—work, maybe. Or errands. Either way, he was grateful. He didn't want to explain why three teenagers were panicked, pale, and shaking on his living room floor.
Malik paced.
Trek sat hunched over a bag of ice. "So… mini apocalypse. That's a thing now?"
Naomi shook her head. "That wasn't natural. It wasn't even Echo-disrupted. That was…"
"Targeted," Malik said. "Whatever it was… it reached."
Naomi looked at him sharply. "You think it was after you?"
"I think it recognized me."
He pulled out his notebook—the one he barely used for school—and flipped to a clean page. Then he began drawing.
Not shapes. Not doodles.
Sigils.
One after another, his pen moved without pause. Perfect curves. Spirals. Marks with weight.
Naomi leaned over his shoulder.
"Malik," she whispered. "Where did you learn that?"
He didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
But he remembered.
That night, the dreams came harder.
This time he stood at the edge of a stone pit.
Inside, thousands of arms reached upward. Not clawing. Offering. Hands holding weapons, relics, torn banners. All aimed toward him.
At the center of the pit, a throne made of chained bones hovered in midair.
And seated on it—
Himself.
Older. Pale. Eyes glowing like twin lanterns.
The seated Malik raised a single finger and pointed upward.
Malik turned.
And saw the sky crack.
A hole in the world.
From it poured a shape that defied description—gears made of stars, skin woven from forgotten names, a mouth that blinked instead of opening.
It looked at him.
And whispered:
You remember too early.
He woke screaming.
Sweat soaked his bed. The window had shattered. Every light in the house flickered like it was caught between realities.
His phone buzzed.
Naomi: You felt that too?
He responded with one word.
Yes.
School the next day was a blur.
People talked about the bird incident like it was a fluke. A glitch. Some said radiation. Others blamed solar flares.
But Malik felt it.
The world was listening now.
Watching.
Waiting.
And then, between fourth and fifth period, it happened again.
But this time… it spoke.
Malik was in the hallway when he felt the shift.
Everything slowed.
The air grew thick. Colors muted.
The walls breathed.
A locker burst open. Papers floated like leaves underwater.
And from around the corner, a thing stepped into view.
It wore a student's face. Half-right. Almost human. But the eyes were wrong—too flat, too wide. Its smile stretched too far.
Everyone else froze.
Literally.
Malik was the only one moving.
The thing cocked its head. "You cracked early."
"What are you?" Malik whispered.
The thing didn't blink. "An echo."
"Of what?"
The thing leaned forward. "Of what's to come."
It reached toward him.
Malik stepped back.
The stone in his pocket—what remained of it—flared.
A ring of fire pulsed around him.
And Obsidian roared.
The hallway exploded in smoke and flame.
When the ash cleared, the thing was gone.
But so was part of the ceiling.
Naomi found him ten minutes later, singed and shaking.
"You summoned it again, didn't you?" she whispered.
He nodded.
She stared at him. "We need help."
"No," Malik said.
"Malik—"
"No Guild. No government. No sponsors. I'm not putting myself in their hands."
"Then what do we do?"
He looked out the broken window. The skyline shimmered.
"Simple," he said. "We find out who I used to be."