The scavenger block had once been a residential courtyard before the first Collapse stripped it of ornament and intention. Balconies had been severed to reduce vertical sightlines. Windows sealed. Decorative stone ground flat to eliminate unnecessary form. What remained was structure without pride—utility without memory.
Caelum moved through it with practiced efficiency.
Scavengers had not existed before the Violet Freeze. There had been trades once—engineers, machinists, teachers, transport operators. Supply chains spanned continents. Manufacturing hubs operated during Yellow surges. Agriculture flourished in Green. Shipping adapted to Blue inversion. Industry condensed under Red compression.
Then Violet failed to end.
In the first weeks, governments assured the public the delay was temporary. Astronomical anomaly. Phase lag. Suppression protocols were expanded. Mind-Blankers distributed. Emotional regulation mandated.
By the third month, the strain became visible.
Fractures multiplied faster than containment units could disperse them. Panic over shortages birthed Collective manifestations that leveled entire districts. Echo events spread through residential towers where grief replayed without release. Without Red to crush instability, without Yellow to scatter structure, without Green to destabilize organic cohesion, Violet accumulated everything.
Population estimates halved within two years.
Perhaps more.
Records became unreliable.
What remained reorganized around discipline. Industry collapsed into reuse. Creation became extraction. The scavengers learned to move quietly along the bones of the old world, harvesting what could be reclaimed from structures too unstable to inhabit.
"You're drifting," Kieran said.
Caelum realized he had paused mid-pry, alloy bracket half-loosened from warped support beam.
"I'm not."
Kieran dropped from a low ledge, landing softly. He moved with a contained restlessness, as if constant motion prevented thought from settling too deeply.
Across the courtyard, Toren and Mara stood near a stack of salvaged beams. Their voices were low, controlled.
"You tightened it differently than I would have," Mara said.
"It held," Toren replied.
"For a while."
A pause.
"I adjusted it this morning."
"I saw."
Nothing louder than that. No accusation sharpened into open conflict. But Toren's jaw tightened. His shoulders squared subtly. The correction had been small. Observed by others. Not dramatic.
That was enough.
Under endless Violet, small moments repeated.
Caelum felt the density shift before he saw anything.
The air at the courtyard's center aligned, not erratically but smoothly. The first shape to appear was antler—white, branching, impossibly symmetrical. The rest assembled beneath it with slow, deliberate precision. Ceramic plates fused along hairline fractures. Limbs unfolded. A narrow skull tilted slightly as if testing the balance of its own weight.
The Porcelain Stag stood where the empty air had been.
It did not snarl. It did not charge.
It watched.
Its glaze reflected the courtyard—but altered. In its surface, Toren saw himself from a moment ago, hands resting on the beam while Mara's fingers adjusted the tension bracket beside his own. A small correction. Others watching.
The memory replayed with microscopic emphasis: her hand moving where his had been. The faint shift in stance. The fact that she had not asked.
Kieran's hand closed around Caelum's sleeve. "Echo," he murmured.
Echo Fractures fed on repetition, not spectacle.
The Stag stepped forward.
Its hooves struck stone with a brittle chime, sending a thin crack racing outward across the courtyard floor. The crack did not deepen; it marked.
Toren did not move.
In the creature's glaze, the scene replayed again—not just this morning, but yesterday during patrol inspection. The supervisor's neutral tone. "Recalibrate bracket tension." Mara adjusting it. Toren standing beside her, silent.
No laughter.
No humiliation spoken aloud.
Only the quiet awareness of being corrected.
The Stag lowered its head slightly.
Anyone who looked into its surface saw their most precise misstep rendered immaculate.
Mara looked away immediately, eyes fixed on the ground.
Toren did not.
The courtyard shifted subtly in his perception. The others seemed farther away. The beam beneath his hand felt heavier than it had been. The memory replayed again, slower. Her hand overlapping his.
"You misaligned it," the echo-voice said—not from the supervisor, but from himself.
The Stag's cracks brightened faintly.
"Don't engage," Kieran breathed.
Caelum lowered his gaze, counting primes beneath the hum of his Mind-Blankers.
The Stag took another step.
Distance between it and Toren did not decrease in a straight line. It seemed to arrive in increments, space folding with each measured movement.
Toren blinked.
The blink was enough.
The Stag surged.
It did not gallop; it fragmented the intervening air. Porcelain limbs blurred. Hooves struck stone with explosive precision. The impact shattered a stack of salvaged piping behind Toren, sending shards clattering across the courtyard.
He stumbled backward, hands catching against cold alloy.
The Stag pivoted fluidly, ceramic joints bending with unnatural grace. Its hide reflected not only the original correction but variations of it—Mara tightening the bracket again, patrol observing, Toren stepping aside.
Each replay sharpened.
Each replay stabilized the creature further.
Kieran grabbed a length of beam and swung.
The beam splintered on contact.
The Stag did not flinch.
Echo Fractures were not flesh.
They were structured belief.
Toren tried to circle away, but the courtyard seemed narrower now. The exit gate farther than it should have been.
The Stag moved in measured arcs, herding rather than chasing. Its hollow eyes did not blink. Its surface continued to reflect, refine, repeat.
"Look at it," Kieran said urgently. "Don't look down."
For a heartbeat, Toren held its gaze.
The replay shifted.
Now the reflection showed him standing firm as Mara adjusted the bracket, his expression neutral, unshaken.
The Stag hesitated.
Its cracks dimmed.
Then Toren's eyes flickered—only slightly—toward the ground.
The hesitation vanished.
The charge resumed.
It struck him in the shoulder, antlers scraping across fabric and flesh, driving him into a stack of collapsed lattice. Metal screamed. Dust rose in tight spirals.
The Stag reared again.
This time, when its glaze shifted, the reflection was not of a beam or a bracket.
It was a kitchen.
A table.
An old man beneath matte cloth.
Wings unfolding in refracted light.
The Stag's narrow head tilted.
Its hollow ceramic eyes turned toward Caelum.
Recognition sharpened in its surface—not of humiliation, but of structure.
And then it began to move toward him.