Chapter 14 — The Fracture
The fracture is widening, one of the guards stationed on top of the wall shouted....
The Presence continued to emerge from the sky far to slowly.
"Is very slow" No it is not , is moving faster , due to its size so we see it slowly, elsa said.
The fractures above the horizon widened with every passing moment, revealing more of the impossible silhouette beyond them and It was getting bigger.
"No maybe It had always been that large". Echo simply hadn't been able to perceive it.
The more of it emerged, the more the sky seemed to disappear behind it.
Its presence alone swallowed majority of the horizon.
And one thing was clear about its attention... Echo.
Echo's breathing became heavier when he noticed something deeper, foreign and ancient staring at him.
He can feel the weight of a mountain on him and his eyes remained locked on the impossible shape.
Then he understood something about everything around him.
Time itself has slowed down for him , because he felt as if ....
The Crawlers weren't looking at him and the warriors themselves were stiff in motion.
But..
The Presence was, Only him.
He noticed something and he focused internally. His core is behaving differently and every time his core reacted and pulsed.
the presence above came closer and the fractures widened.
Dread!!!! Echo's eyes widened.
"...It's me."
Elsa turned sharply. "What?"
Echo looked at her, "It's coming because of me."
Elsa's expression hardened, "Don't assume...."
"Look!" Echo pointed toward the sky.
The Presence shifted and Its attention followed him. And the Crawlers responded immediately.
They moved whenever Echo moved. Elsa's eyes narrowed, she finally understood.
"...You're acting as an anchor." Elsa said amist the chaos .
Echo swallowed and he said ... "An anchor".
Elsa nodded,"Something connecting the Presence to this world"
His mind started to race. If he was the reason it could approach...
Then there was only one solution.
Echo looked down at his chest and looked at where his core supposed to be .
It pulsed faintly beneath it, once, twice.
A faint unfamiliar light moved through its fractured structure.
He remembered hector, the pressure and how he collapse.
The moment his core had cracked.
And then he remembered what had happened when he suppressed it.
He had survived though but barely.
But this time...He wasn't trying to survive but he was trying to break the connection.
Echo looked at Elsa and said " I need you to kill me."
Elsa stared at him in horror "What?"
Echos said again "Kill me."
"No." Elsa shooked her head.
"See the Presence is using my core to enter as a key."Echo looked at elsa.
"Don't you know that." He asked.
"I do." Elsa nodded.
Echo pointed toward the sky, and the Presence moved again following his finger as if like a command.
The entire wall started to tremble.
"The closer it gets, the more my core reacts." His voice became quieter.
"If I die..." Elsa interrupted him. "Then i will lose you."
Echo looked at her. "Maybe." Then a pause. "But what if I don't... then what happens"
He looked toward the warriors surrounding them.
"...everyone dies."
Elsa's expression changed. "Echo."
"I need you to break my core." Echo said.
"No." Elsa refuted .
"Elsa." Echo tried to convince her..
"No!" Her voice finally broke through the battlefield.
"You have no idea what you're asking." Elsa shouted.
Echo smiled weakly. "Neither do you."
Another tremor struck.
BOOM!
The wall shook violently and the Presence moved closer, the crawlers started shrieking.
Echo took all his attention to his core. Putting all his effort and pressure to his core.
His core pulsed violently and he dropped to one knee.
Echo clenched his teeth.
"Now." He shouted looking at elsa. Elsa hesitated.
Echo looked at her again , "Please."
Silence, then Elsa raised her sword. Her hands were steady but her eyes weren't.
"If this fails..." Echo breathed slowly. "Then don't let me become whatever comes next."
Elsa's grip tightened then the blade began to glow.
Echo closed his eyes and he focused inward, past his flesh, past his resonance and past the pain.
Until he touched the deepest part of his core.
There, then he felt it. The connection, it was thread , thin almost invisible stretching from his core....through the fractured space and towards the presence.
Echo understood one thing.
He couldn't destroy the Presence nor could he overpower it. But he could destroy the thing it was using to reach them...Himself.
He pulled onto it and his core started screaming.
CRACK!
Echo screamed in pain, a fracture appeared across his core and the Presence suddenly stopped on its track.
For the first time....It reacted.
HUMM!!!
A violent pressure exploded across the battlefield.
The Crawlers froze, the warriors on the wall all staggered, the fractures above twisted violently and for the first time the presence felt pain.
Echo felt it too ...but the connection was breaking.
"Again..." Echo whispered. Elsa's eyes widened.
"Echo, stop!"
"Again!" He shouted.
He forced more power into the fracture.
CRACK!
Another section of his core split and the presence recoiled back quickly.
The sky began collapsing inward, the Crawlers screamed and scattered.
The impossible silhouette pulled backward and Echo felt something tear inside him that made his vision blurry.
His body has become numb.....But he smiled.
"It worked..."
The Presence was retreating and the fractures began closing. The pressure on the battlefield disappeared.
The Crawlers fled from the wall back to where they cane from.
For one final moment... Echo looked toward the sky and still felt that shillhoute watching him.
Then later its enormous form disappeared completely beyond the closing fracture.
The last thing Echo felt was that ancient gaze.Not in anger nor in hatred but something else in a form of recognition.
Then darkness swallowed him . His body fell forward. Elsa caught him before he struck the stone.
"Echo!"No response came from him.His core had gone silent.
Elsa pressed two fingers against his neck to checked his pulse.
A pulse was still there although .....weak but still there. "He's alive."
The warriors around them slowly lowered their weapons. Nobody spoke not celebrated.
They had just watched a new recruit willingly fracture his own core to stop something none of them could understand.
Elsa looked toward the sky. The fractures were gone, but she knew one thing. Whatever had been beyond them...had noticed Echo.
And now....Echo had noticed it too.