The stars dimmed.
Across the dark veil of the cosmos, where gravity bent and time whispered, a presence stirred. The Sixth Echo—known only as Vael'thyr—opened its many eyes.
Unlike Nyra, who tempted with illusion and memory, Vael'thyr was pure entropy. It did not speak. It did not promise. It unmade.
On the World-Forge of Enkai, monks of the Celestial Wheel felt the change first—bells tolled without wind, metal wept rust, and sacred scripts crumbled into ash mid-prayer.
High Monk Serai fell to his knees. "It rises… the Devourer of Logic."
And far across the stars, in a quiet medical chamber aboard the Celestial Wound, Jin Long's breath steadied.
He awoke, vision blurred, Yue Lan beside him.
"You nearly burned out," she said quietly. "The Core shielded you, but your mind was almost... overwritten."
Jin Long sat up slowly, grimacing. "Nyra wanted me to choose comfort. Vael'theyr… won't offer a choice."
Meiko stepped into the room, her face pale. "We just intercepted a wave. The Sixth Echo's influence already reached three star sectors. Entire fleets… gone. Not destroyed. Erased. Like they never existed."
Jin Long clenched his fists. "We don't have time to recover."
"Then don't," a voice said.
Elder Ji emerged from the shadows. Thought dead for decades, he had vanished during the Echo Wars of the previous age.
"You've awakened the Core. That means they will all come now—one by one, until you fall. But Vael'thyr is different. You don't fight it. You anchor reality against it."
He handed Jin Long a sphere of mirrored crystal. "This is a Reality Seed. One of five. They keep the laws of this universe in place. Without them, the Echoes rewrite everything."
"Where are the others?" Yue Lan asked.
Ji's face darkened. "Scattered. One in the Abyssal Sanctum. One within the Hollow Planet. The third? Hidden in time. The last… no one knows."
Jin Long stood, despite the pain. "Then we start with this one. If Vael'thyr is entropy, we'll become order. And we'll remind it that existence won't yield so easily."
—
Later, the Celestial Wound descended toward the first target: the Abyssal Sanctum, buried beneath oceans that boiled beneath a dying sun.
As the ship cut through radiation storms, Jin Long looked out over the horizon, the Genesis Core burning faintly beneath his skin.
He could feel it now—each Echo, each force against him. They were watching.
But so was something else. Something deeper. Something older than the Echoes themselves.
And it had just woken up.