[From Nofan's Perspective]
The world exploded inside me, then shrank into a single pulse — not a heartbeat, but a memory moving like slow magma.
I felt breaths that weren't mine slide between my ribs, as if another pair of lungs was trying to inhale my name.
The sky above split apart, and the dark vortex swallowed the soldiers' screams, spitting them back as words that belonged to no human tongue.
I could no longer tell the distance between my voice and its voice.
The Source was speaking through me, as if my pain was its origin — not a scar, but a birthplace.
I whispered inwardly: I never asked for this. I never chose to be a vessel for something testing its existence through my body.
I tried to speak, but my voice came out fractured — like glass shattering on the ears of the world.
> "I… am not one of you."
The reply came as a tone that couldn't be shaped by any human throat.
> "Finally… you've said it."
Then the sound faded, but its vibration remained — trembling like a tightly drawn string.
I looked around.
Faces shifted in my awareness — their eyes held fear, curiosity, and disgust, that ancient trinity humanity always shows toward what it cannot understand.
Kyle lay on the ground, his face pale, his pulse replaying memories that weren't his.
I touched my heart — it didn't feel pity or guilt, only a strange curiosity that promised either ruin… or salvation.
I tried to recall what I had been searching for before the pulse.
For what? Waves? A name? There was something pulling me toward a distant being — as if an ancient memory was walking ahead of me, inviting me to follow.
Then I saw Syran — not with my eyes, but in my mind first.
A man who places the weight of a story upon the chest of the world; unafraid of collapse, but nourished by it.
His eyes trembled differently now — curiosity turning into quiet reverence.
I understood he would try to use this, to convince me, to bind me with words.
But I no longer heard the world the same way.
Inside my chest, something whispered:
> "Go… to the ruins that speak your name."
I didn't know if that was a real homeland or just a delusion feeding on me — but within that call was a promise:
a promise to discover why this echo was born within me, and why my eyes refused to fade.
---
[From Syran's Perspective]
The air had lost the weight of air.
The fire burned like pale lightning, and it felt as though everyone in the camp had been extracted from a later fragment of time.
I stood before the tent, staring at Nofan, while every member of my team gazed at the strange man in whose eyes something wordless was written: fate.
Marin stepped back first, as if the very air around him was venom, yet she couldn't deny the hunger she saw in his eyes.
I said quietly but firmly, "There's no time for despair — and none for pure fear. We'll need him for knowledge, whether he becomes an ally… or an enemy."
I went to the small cave where we kept the frozen shards of past pulses — energy samples trapped in crystal.
"We'll measure the frequency of this wave and compare it to what's inside him.
If the resonance matches, he's a key.
If it doesn't… then he's a new error in the world's design."
Faris, the massive one, covered his mouth.
"If he's one of the anomalies, why doesn't he attack us? Why not crush us as he did the rest of that zone?"
"Because he's not consciously destructive yet," I answered.
"This is a state of half-awareness — a threshold.
Something inside him is trying to learn how to speak through the world.
That gives us two paths: teach him to kill, or teach him to understand.
Both are dangerous."
I decided to run a limited test.
I asked Kyle to touch the containment window using a glove marked with stabilizing sigils.
He hesitated — but hunger for knowledge outweighed fear.
"Don't falter," I told him. "If you can extract information without letting it consume you, we'll have found a way to read him without awakening the Source itself."
Marin ordered the barriers to be aligned around the tent.
"One more surge," she warned, "and we're gone."
I realized the danger wasn't just Nofan himself, but what he represented: a fundamental rewrite of how existence works.
We needed to see where this road led — before it led us all to extinction.
---
[From Nofan's Perspective]
The scent of hot iron woke me — the smell of machines.
Kyle stood near my face, eyes blackened, as if his soul was still caught in whatever he had touched.
"Don't be afraid," he whispered. "I need to read you."
His words didn't comfort me — they made the curiosity in him sound hungrier.
From the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the shadows — Marin watching;
Faris clutching his split spear, ready to strike if the darkness tried to flee.
They were all on edge, yet I felt… nothing.
No fear.
There was no room left inside me for fear — only remnants of something older, deeper than instinct.
Kyle placed his hand on my skin again, this time fitting a ring around my wrist — a simple metal band with a flickering spark engraved on ceramic.
An ancient device, they said, stabilizes frequencies.
I didn't know where they found such relics, but I knew it wouldn't silence what lived within me.
At best, it would slow it down.
Kyle inhaled sharply, swallowing whatever vision appeared to him.
"I see… your map," he stammered.
"Lines — like a tide beneath the sea. There's a rift, or a gate, or something ancient that's been sealed.
It doesn't want to escape… it wants to know if anyone remembers it."
"My map?" I asked.
"You're like an imprint left by a world that vanished," he said, almost unconsciously.
"There are markings on your skin — cracks resembling what the old texts called the Echo Lattice. A network of resonance."
I didn't have an answer.
A sting burned behind my eyes — as if a distant gaze had just recognized me.
Dark filaments twitched under my skin, then faded.
The shackles were no longer just iron — they had become symbols, carved into something greater than blood or flesh.
---
[From Syran's Perspective]
Kyle's reading changed everything.
"A map?" I repeated. "An Echo Lattice?"
I sat down, holding my hand over the fire, thinking.
"If that's true — if there's a resonance map inside Nofan — then the Source isn't looking for a body.
It's looking for a location.
A key that unlocks a temporal seal in this world.
There are ancient ruins once called the Echo Tombs, or Structures of Reflection.
One of them might still stand — beneath the twilight hills, two days' walk from here.
If that network lies within him, he's the key.
If not… we'll know soon enough."
Marin brushed ashes from her hand.
"Two days?" she said sharply. "That means risking everyone."
"I know," I replied.
"But staying here until slow death finds us — that's the greater failure.
Sometimes the only way to live… is to move toward what terrifies you."
The decision was already written in my eyes before my mouth gave it voice:
We'd leave at dawn.
We'd take Nofan, bound in reinforced chains.
Faris would clear the path;
Elena would silence the air around us;
Kyle would trace any hidden echoes between stone and bone.
We'd bring the equipment — and the shard crate we've carried since the beginning.
Before leaving the tent, I looked at Nofan again.
He didn't speak, but he wasn't just a man lying in ashes anymore.
He was a sign — either salvation, or the end.
I whispered to him alone:
> "Prepare yourself. Not to die… but to ask."
Then I turned to the team, my voice calm but final:
> "Each step we take, we lay down our fate with it.
Either we find an answer… or we create a question that devours us."
---
End of Chapter VIII
---