The "Echo Chamber" was no longer a place of peace. It had become a cage of concentration.
Zayn stood in the center of the white sand, the black blindfold tied tight across his face. His skin was pale, the once-vibrant amber veins now dim flickers beneath his surface. Beside him, Liora stood perfectly still, her staff resting against her shoulder.
"They're here," she whispered.
Zayn didn't hear them with his ears. He felt them through the Echo-Location. Three distinct hums—high-pitched, mechanical, and cold. They weren't human.
[NOTIFICATION: HIGH-SECT WRAITH-PROBES DETECTED]
[OBJECTIVE: ELIMINATE WITHOUT SIGHT]
"Don't reach for the Rage, Zayn," Liora's voice drifted through the dark. "If you burn, you're a beacon. Be the stone. Be the shadow."
The first probe hissed. It was a "Eye of the Heavens"—a floating silver sphere equipped with a localized gravity-beam. It fired.
Zayn didn't see the beam, but he felt the air compress. He tilted his head a fraction of an inch to the left. The beam scorched the air where his ear had been, striking the sand behind him with a glass-shattering ping.
"Left flank," Zayn muttered.
He didn't launch a massive shockwave. Instead, he snapped his fingers. [Technique: Point-Resonance - Needle Strike].
A tiny, razor-sharp vibration shot through the air. It hit the probe's stabilizer. The silver sphere didn't explode; it simply folded in on itself, crushed by its own internal frequency.
The other two probes accelerated. They began to circle Zayn, creating a "Sonic Whir" designed to scramble his senses.
"Too much noise," Zayn growled. He dropped into a low crouch, placing a single palm on the cool white sand.
He didn't look for the probes. He looked for the Echo they cast on the cave walls. He felt the vibration of their engines bouncing off the bioluminescent mushrooms. He tracked the ripples in the air like a spider tracking a fly on a web.
[SKILL EVOLUTION: ECHO-LOCATION STAGE 2 - SPATIAL MAP]
In his mind, the dark cave turned into a wireframe world of blue pulses. He saw the probes. He saw Liora's heartbeat. He saw the exit.
"Got you."
Zayn jumped. He didn't use the volcanic thrust of Volume 1. He moved with a silent, kinetic grace. He caught the second probe in mid-air, his hand vibrating at a frequency that turned the spirit-metal to dust instantly. Before the third could fire, he kicked off the wall, his heel connecting with the probe's lens.
CRACK.
Silence returned to the Echo Chamber.
Zayn landed softly on the sand, pulling off the blindfold. His eyes were still dim, but there was a new, sharp intelligence in them.
"They found us," Zayn said, looking at the scrap metal. "If the probes are here, the 'Seekers' aren't far behind."
Liora nodded, her blindfolded face turned toward the cave entrance. "Then the healing time is over. If you want to keep your planet alive, Zayn, you have to learn to fight in the world of the blind."