The silence that followed was a broken kind.
It didn't rest.
It watched.
Nahr remained still, his Galieya angled down, its fang-point resting in the dust.
He'd just dismantled two mimic constructs — but the trench hadn't acknowledged peace.
His frame trembled from overload.
He hadn't reached his limit.
But he could see it from where he stood.
He dropped to one knee beside the disassembled mimic.
A glint flickered inside its fractured chest — a still-active shard embedded deep in its frame-core.
Corrupted.
Flickering.
Feeding signal loops back into the trench.
And that was when he understood.
These weren't isolated mimics.
They were spawned reflections — not from random trial logic, but from him.
From the [False Echo Residue] still welded to his designation line.
He had brought this pattern with him.
He had fed it with every step.
He reached out, placing his hand near the exposed shard.
And crushed it.
The shard pulsed once — like a scream without sound — and released a final echo.
Far ahead, deep in the trench spine, something answered.
A long, rippling clack.
Like armor folding inside out.
The ground trembled again.
But this time, it didn't break.
It opened.
Slabs of trench plating retracted, folding like flower petals in reverse, revealing a chamber beneath.
And rising from it — hunched, asymmetrical — came a Core.
Too large.
Its body incomplete, armored with scavenged plating and half-integrated weapons.
Two Galieyas had been fused into its arms, one snapped at the middle and jammed into a blade-mount socket.
The other spun, drill-like.
It had no head.
Just a segmented ring where data used to be received.
This was not a mimic.
This was a Reaction Core — a forged response to invasive presence.
And Nahr was that presence.
The Reaction Core rose higher.
Signal lines flared along its limbs.
A directive activated:
[Purge Host Construct.]
[Origin Contamination: Local Echo – Unstable.]
[Priority: Eliminate.]
Nahr exhaled again.
He didn't have time to retreat.
No space to run.
He lifted the Galieya and stepped forward.
The Reaction Core charged.
Its first movement was a spinning back-arm slash — a drill-toothed Galieya aimed low.
Nahr leapt sideways, nearly losing his footing on the fractured plate, and pivoted into a forward stab — striking center-mass.
Sparks flew.
The coreplate resisted.
The mimic spun again.
This time, Nahr ducked under the rotating shaft and drove his lance into the mimic's right shoulder-socket.
It caught.
Locked.
He pulled to wrench the limb free — but the Reaction Core adapted.
Its shoulder plate collapsed inward, trapping Nahr's weapon mid-withdraw.
Now they were locked together.
Its other limb slammed into Nahr's side, sending him skidding across the trench floor.
Data sputtered across his field of vision.
Impact damage.
No breach.
But his left arm felt lagged — slowed at the joint.
The Reaction Core began closing the gap.
Fast.
Too fast.
Nahr gritted through the strain and rolled aside.
He didn't reach for his Galieya.
He reached for the severed weapon shaft from the mimic he'd downed earlier.
A half-pole, jagged end.
He pulled it free, spun it low, and hurled it like a javelin.
It hit the Reaction Core in the neck joint — no real damage, but it staggered.
That was enough.
Nahr closed the distance.
One hand grabbed the shaft of his real Galieya.
The other braced against the Reaction Core's side.
With a full-body pivot, he twisted the lance free — pulled it upward — and drove it into the exposed coil cluster beneath its coreplate.
Metal screamed.
A high-frequency burst pulsed through the trench.
The Reaction Core collapsed.
Not all at once.
Its limbs stayed upright, locked in false tension.
Its lower half remained anchored.
But its upper structure flickered.
Then fell.
[Target disabled.]
[Reaction Core: Shutdown.]
[Signal Purge: Commencing.]
[False Echo Residue: Partially stabilized.]
Nahr stumbled back, nearly falling.
His systems were still operational.
But fatigue — the kind that no battery charge could erase — was setting in.
He stared down at the disabled frame.
And for the first time, felt something close to relief.
But then his signal flickered.
One prompt remained:
[Warning: New designation forming within proximity field.]
[Trial logic adapting.]
[You are no longer being tested.]
[You are being remembered.]
The ash around him began to lift.
And in the distance, more Core-shaped shadows stood motionless.
Not charging.
Not flinching.
Just watching.
He retrieved the Galieya and locked it to his back.
His coreplate hummed — strained, but holding.
He took one step forward.
Then another.
The trench was still open ahead.
And now it was listening.
Not to who he pretended to be…
…but to what he had become.