998: Story 998: The Engine of Echoes 998: Story 998: The Engine of Echoes The scream of steel and shadow echoed behind them as Draven, Mira, and Elias burst into the next train car.
The walls here were mirrors—warped, endless, and whispering.
Every reflection moved just a beat too slow, replaying every mont of fear the trio had ever experienced.
Mira’s breath hitched.
She saw herself again—kneeling beside her first failed reanimation, the one that begged her to die.
Elias stared into a mirror where his own hollow-eyed corpse slung drinks to the damned.
Draven’s reflection bled from his eyes as he saw a young girl, her face pale, mouthing words he couldn’t hear.
His daughter.
“Don’t look,” he growled, smashing a mirror with the butt of his blade.
It cracked—but bled instead of shattered.
“The Engine’s close,” Elias murmured, hands shaking.
“This car’s where ti folds in on itself.”
The train rumbled louder, vibrating like a massive, dying heart.
Ahead, the door to the engine room lood, sealed in bone and rust.
It was etched with sigils Mira recognized—ancient markings of necro-binding, fused with ti-stopping magic.
Whoever—or whatever—controlled this train had locked the engine away for a reason.
“The Ghoul Trainmaster doesn’t just drive this thing,” Mira said, tracing the sigils with her fingers.
“He’s feeding the train with lost souls.
This whole machine runs on tornt.”
Draven lifted his blade.
“Then we shut it down.”
But as they prepared to force the door, the mirrors shattered in unison.
From the shards spilled hundreds of fragnted echoes—zombie-like figures twisted with unfinished mories.
They were partial souls, victims of the Hollow Line, caught between life and death.
Grotesque, whispering, and fast.
The fight was chaos.
Draven spun with fluid violence, slicing down echoes that scread like children.
Mira pulled a vial from her coat and shattered it—spilling starlight across the floor, disintegrating a swarm in seconds.
Elias fumbled with a flintlock pistol made of bone and brass, firing erratically.
One shot missed.
The next hit ho, and an echo dissolved into black mist.
They reached the door.
Together, Mira and Elias chanted the release incantation from the cursed book.
It scread.
The door bled.
Then, with a hiss of pressure and a sigh of steam, it opened.
The Engine Room was a cathedral of horror.
Chains of sinew wrapped around a massive, glowing heart—pumping not blood, but stolen ti.
Souls circled above in a vortex, trapped in endless pain.
And at the center, fused to the machine itself, was the Ghoul Trainmaster’s true form—no longer man, but sothing ancient and tallic, forged in necromancy and agony.
“I am the rhythm of ruin,” it croaked.
“And you are off-beat.”
The engine flared with white-hot energy.
Mira clutched the journal.
Draven raised his blade.
Elias lit a cigar with shaking fingers.
“You ready?” Draven asked.
“Always,” Mira said.
And they charged.
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