Eclipsed Horizon — Chapter 42: "The Fracture Within"
(POV: Cael Drayen — Inside the Echo Protocol Simulation)
Darkness wasn't absence—it was memory undone.
When the Echo Protocol began, Cael didn't feel pain, only displacement. The sensation of being peeled apart layer by layer until thought itself became refracted light. His body dissolved into static. His consciousness floated inside a hollow space that felt both infinite and claustrophobic.
Then—sound.
A heartbeat.
But not his.
He opened his eyes.
The world around him was fractured Zephyr—streets suspended midair, towers turned inside-out, holograms flickering like broken glass. The city looped in impossible geometry, every structure repeating itself in reverse.
And at the center, standing on a mirrored platform, was himself.
But this Echo wasn't silent anymore.
It smiled.
> "So you finally came back."
Cael steadied himself, instinctively reaching for his Pulseband. Its glow was weak, sputtering. "You're not real."
> "Neither are you," the Echo replied. "At least, not the version that walked away."
The words struck harder than any physical blow. The reflection moved closer—same eyes, same voice—but colder. Its resonance shimmered with perfect balance, while his flickered in disarray.
Cael clenched his fists. "You're the fragment that didn't merge. The piece that stayed in the Breach."
> "No," the Echo said softly. "I'm the piece that remembers."
Images rippled through the glass-like air—Lyra's face, blurred; the Council chamber collapsing; the silver rings on their Pulsebands burning like twin suns. He tried to reach for them, but each time he did, the memories distorted, splitting into dozens of false versions.
The Echo tilted its head. "You keep pretending those memories were erased by the Breach. But you chose to forget."
"Liar."
> "You left her. You abandoned her before Zephyr fell."
Cael's breath caught. The word before echoed through the chamber like a fault line cracking open.
"Before Zephyr fell?" he whispered.
The Echo smirked. "You've been chasing ghosts, Cael. I am the part of you that lived through the fall."
The world shuddered. The sky fractured into streaks of blue static.
Cael dropped to one knee as pain surged through his body—not physical pain, but resonance inversion. His Pulseband flared, one ring turning white, the other black.
> "You can't repair the world," the Echo whispered, kneeling beside him. "Not while denying the one who broke it."
Then the Echo reached out—fingers brushing his chest, phasing through him. Cael screamed as his consciousness split again, half merging, half resisting.
Outside the simulation, faint voices filtered through the static.
> Lyra (muffled): "Seraphine, his vitals are dropping—he's rejecting the merge!"
Seraphine: "No. He's fighting the wrong half. He must accept it."
Back inside, Cael's Echo pressed its forehead against his. "You can't fight me. I am the choice you never made."
The world convulsed—light and shadow colliding.
Cael roared, summoning his fragmented resonance, forcing it into coherence. "Then I'll make it now."
The mirrored city imploded, swallowing both of them in a storm of blinding light.