The entire platform shuddered as a deep tremor rose from the abyss below. Dust drifted from the ceiling cables. The hum of the mory Engine intensified, a low-frequency vibration that seed to crawl into their bones.
Project Echo stepped into the chamber—slowly, deliberately.
Its body twisted unnaturally to fit through the circular doorway, limbs elongating, shoulders cracking as they rearranged. Its skin shimred like a shifting screen of stolen mories. When it inhaled, the air itself dimd, as if light shrank from its breath.
Damon raised his knife, though he knew it was useless. “Stay behind .”
The First mory didn’t move. It simply watched Lira, expression fragnted—half sorrow, half anticipation.
“Lira,” it said gently, “the Engine responds to you. It always has.”
Lira trembled, gripping the cables beside her for balance. “I don’t know what that ans!”
“You don’t have to know,” the projection replied. “You only have to decide.”
The floor pulsed beneath their feet—thoom... thoom... thoom—as if the Engine’s heartbeat was syncing with hers.
Project Echo let out a wet, distorted groan.
Then it mimicked Lira’s voice perfectly.
“Let... ... in...”
The girl squeezed her eyes shut. “Stop copying !”
The creature snapped its head, listening—tasting her fear.
Shadow lunged, barking furiously.
Echo’s arm whipped out, impossibly long, slamming the floor where Shadow had stood a heartbeat earlier. The impact sent cracks spiderwebbing across the platform.
“Shadow!” Lira cried.
The wolf dodged, snarling.
Damon grabbed her arm. “We need to move—now!”
But the projection raised a hand.
“No. She must choose here. The Engine won’t wait.”
The cables around them tensed, tightening like nerves ready to fire. Pods lining the chamber lit up, one by one, spilling mories into the air—voices, fragnts, screams.
A child’s laughter.
A soldier’s final breath.
A mother whispering goodbye.
A city burning.
The mories spiraled like ghosts around Lira, encircling her head.
Damon tried to pull her back, but a pulse threw him away, knocking him to one knee.
“Lira!” he shouted.
She heard him—barely.
The First mory stepped closer, face flickering.
“You can bind the Engine to yourself,” it said softly. “Rewrite what Echo broke. Restore what this place stole.”
Project Echo shrieked—an ear-splitting, tallic roar.
It wasn’t a sound.
It was a command.
Give. . Identity.
It lunged.
Lira scread.
At the exact sa mont, the Engine beneath them surged to life—the abyss erupting in a pillar of pale blue light that shot upward through the grated floor, engulfing Lira.
Her body lifted from the ground.
Weightless.
Eyes wide.
The mories swirling around her spiraled into the beam, pulled inward like tal filings to a magnet.
Damon staggered to his feet. “LIRA!”
Ember howled, trying to leap into the light.
Shadow dragged her back.
The First mory smiled—glitching with every flicker. “The Engine has chosen.”
The platform shook violently.
Project Echo lunged at the beam.
A shockwave blasted outward, sending it crashing into the chamber wall.
The light around Lira intensified until her outline blurred—no longer just a girl, but a silhouette made of fractured mories, ancient and new.
Her voice echoed through the chamber, layered, reshaped.
“Damon... I see everything...”
The Engine roared.
And sothing—deep below—awoke completely.
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