The air reeked of smoke and iron. The scent of the dying.
Riley crouched low behind a scorched column of fractured stone, her chest heaving, flame licking beneath her skin in anxious pulses. Her gauntlet sizzled where enemy blood had splashed its surface—thick and black and foul-smelling, not quite liquid, not quite real. The sky overhead no longer looked like a sky at all. It rippled with memory, torn open at its seams, echo fragments leaking from invisible wounds. The Echo Gate was near.
"They're coming around the flank!" Daphne's voice snapped through the pulse-link.
Riley was already moving.
She didn't think. There was no time to think. There was only instinct now—burning, honed, merciless.
She vaulted over shattered metal and landed in a crouch near the east ridge. Four Echo-Spliced Skuldrith were charging the perimeter. These were not like the others—they shimmered with stolen faces. One bore Owen's old grin. Another wore Brael's eyes.
Her fire stuttered for a moment. Just one. Then she screamed.
The flames surged. Not just from her hands—from every inch of her. Her soulbond pulsed through the ground like a second heartbeat, synchronized with Daphne's, guiding her strike.
She swept left—mirror fire coiling around the enemy. Not obliterating them. Dismantling them. Peeling apart the false memories that held them together.
The Skuldrith dissolved into shrieking embers.
Behind her, Daphne cried out.
Riley spun. A tendril of black ether had pierced her partner's shoulder. She crossed the distance in three strides, cleaving through it with a blade of condensed flame.
Daphne dropped to her knees.
"I'm okay," she gasped. "I'm okay—just dislocated. Help me reset it."
Riley nodded, her hands trembling as she braced Daphne's arm and jerked it back into place. The pop echoed louder than the thunder.
"They're targeting the bond," Daphne muttered, sweat pouring down her brow. "They know. They're trying to fracture it."
Riley's voice cracked. "Let them try."
Hours passed. Or maybe only minutes. Time buckled here.
They reached the ridge overlooking the Echo Gate as the last line of Skuldrith broke through the southern defenses. From above, Riley could see the sprawling chaos—the scorched field of Echo-Born, fallen and rising again, reliving deaths from alternate timelines. The enemy fed on it. Turned memory into ammunition.
At the heart of it, the Gate shimmered.
A vertical rift, ten meters tall, etched with burning symbols—old flame runes, braided in divine script. Pulsing. Beckoning.
And just in front of it...
A single figure waited.
Not Skuldrith. Not human.
Velrax.
The Ash King.
He wore a cloak of burning bones. His body was made of shadow-glass, fractured across his chest where Brael had once struck true. His eyes were bottomless pits, drawing light inward.
Riley froze.
"It's him," she whispered. "Daphne... it's really him."
Daphne didn't speak.
But she stepped forward.
They advanced, one slow step at a time, each footfall crunching over broken dreams and fading memories.
Around them, the Echo-Born pushed the final Skuldrith battalions into retreat. But it didn't matter. Not yet. Not until he fell.
Velrax watched.
"You carry her fire well, little Echo," he said, his voice like crushed embers.
"I carry her name," Riley answered. "And my own."
He laughed. The sound cracked the sky.
He moved with impossible speed.
Riley parried. Barely.
The impact flung her back into a column. Her ribs cracked. She tasted blood. But she was up again before she hit the ground. Her flames surged, mirror-fire dancing with reactive memory.
Daphne hurled a pulse beacon that fractured space around his feet. He stumbled. Riley struck.
The fire sank deep into his side.
He screamed.
The world buckled.
They fought for minutes. Or hours. Or days.
Each blow was a story. Each wound a rewrite.
Velrax peeled open echoes Riley hadn't known were hers—timelines where she died in the serum chamber. Where Daphne never changed. Where Brael never found them.
She almost broke.
Until she remembered something Brael had said, long ago.
"It's not about what you burn. It's what you spare."
And she spared herself.
She called the fire inward.
Called every timeline. Every possibility.
Daphne linked with her.
Their bond exploded.
Golden flame swallowed the Gate.
Velrax howled.
The fire tore him into echoes.
Then memory.
Then nothing.
Silence followed.
Not absence. Stillness.
The Gate pulsed. Not open. But... healed.
Riley collapsed beside Daphne. The ground was warm beneath them. The battlefield was ash. And in the sky above, no rift remained.
The Echo Gate was sealed.
For now.
They buried the fallen beneath stones inscribed with memory runes. Each flame flickered with a name.
Riley stood over Brael's pyre.
"You were the last light between what was and what might be."
Daphne took her hand.
"Now what?" she asked.
Riley looked toward the East. Toward the bright side of the world.