The winds over the Divide screamed like they remembered every soul who had ever crossed them.
Riley stood at the edge of the sheer expanse, boots planted in crumbling gray dust, cloak whipping around her like a trailing flame. Before her stretched the Hollow—a vast canyon carved not by erosion, but by memory. The land itself had fractured here, caught in the feedback loop of the Echo Cycle, collapsing into itself again and again until only a gaping wound remained.
They had reached the midpoint of their journey.
The place Kaelira had once called "the fulcrum of fire."
Daphne stepped beside her, gauntlet-laced fingers curling instinctively around Riley's. The pulse of their soulbond buzzed low between them, a warm tether in a world gone cold.
"It's worse than I thought," Daphne murmured.
"It's not just torn," Riley replied. "It's... echoing."
And it was. If she closed her eyes, Riley could hear them—footsteps that had never been taken, screams that belonged to no living voice. Across the Hollow, shadows flickered. Not Skuldrith, but remnants of old timelines. Ghosts.
Not all of them were friendly.
Brael dropped from the sky behind them, his glider pack folding silently into his backplate. He moved like a shadow given structure.
"I scouted the southern ridge," he said. "Found the relay node, just like the map showed."
"Is it active?" Daphne asked.
"Not yet. But it will be. Whatever's feeding power to the Skuldrith's new hive—it starts here."
Riley turned. "Then we cut it off."
Brael looked at her for a long moment. "Are you sure you're ready to lead this?"
"No," Riley said. "But that never stopped me before."
The camp at Hollow's Edge was little more than scrap metal, makeshift shields, and flickering ember-torches. The Echo-Born had gathered here—dozens of bonded pairs, some injured, some hardened, all silent as they waited. Waiting not for orders, but for meaning. For a direction that wasn't just a reaction.
Riley walked among them that night. Not with speeches, but with presence. She watched them train, rest, and repair one another's gear. Each pair carried the weight of memories that didn't fully belong to them. Each had seen futures that ended in flame.
But not this time.
Not if she had anything to say about it.
The plan came together in pieces.
Daphne mapped the relay's flux field using only a broken antenna and two wrist scanners. Riley and Brael ran sparring drills that pushed her to limits she didn't know existed—testing not just her strength, but her restraint. Mirror fire was more than a counterattack. It was a choice. Reflection.
"It's not about what you burn," Brael said as she held the flame in her palm, shaking. "It's what you spare."
By the fourth day, the team was ready.
They would cross the Hollow at night, gliders and pulse tethers guiding them across the silence. Once across, a three-pronged infiltration would take place—one to disable the relay, one to dismantle the hive's energy banks, and one to trigger the collapse sequence from within.
Riley and Daphne would take the center.
Night fell like ash.
The leap across the Hollow was silent. Riley's stomach dropped as the canyon swallowed them, her glider's pulse engine humming barely louder than her breath. Daphne was at her side the whole time, their link tighter than ever.
Then they landed.
The other side was worse.
Not because of what was there—but because of what had never been.
It was a dead echo. A place where time had tried to exist and failed. Buildings half-formed. Skies blank. The air tasted like rust and memory.
At the heart of it: the relay tower.
It rose like a blade of obsidian and bone, shimmering with tethered flame. Riley could feel it before she saw it. The echo-surge beat inside her skull.
Daphne reached for her gauntlet. "You ready?"
Riley looked at the tower, then at her. "I'm scared."
"Good," Daphne said. "Means you're still human."
Then they ran.
Inside the tower, the air warped. Reality bent sideways. Echoes whispered across walls, trying to rewrite them. Riley saw herself—Owen—standing in the chamber, before the change. Heard the voices of past soldiers. Even saw a flicker of Brael, screaming in a timeline that never survived.
But she kept moving.
At the core, the relay pulsed. Skuldrith tendrils coiled around its base, feeding on memory.
Riley unleashed her flame.
Not to destroy—but to cleanse.
Her fire wrapped the tower like silk. The Skuldrith shrieked. The echoes twisted. For a moment, the entire Hollow pulsed white.
Daphne, meanwhile, hacked the relay interface, fingers dancing like lightning. The pulse gauntlet synced with Riley's flame—reversing the tether. Feeding back into the hive.
The tower began to collapse.
But the echoes didn't flee.
They charged.
And suddenly, the battle was real.
Skuldrith poured from the fractures. Not thousands. Millions. Not formed beasts, but flickers—the ideas of monsters, clawing into existence from corrupted thought.
Riley fought beside Daphne.
Flame and code.
Memory and invention.
They held the line until the last trigger set off.
The tower exploded in a ring of golden fire.
When Riley awoke, she was buried under ash.
The Hollow glowed—not with corruption, but rebirth.
The Echo Cycle had been stopped.
But the cost was only just beginning to reveal itself.
They hadn't stopped Velrax.
They had only made him angry.
And the fire within Riley wasn't done remembering.
Not yet.