Kael walked east for what felt like hours, but time stretched in the ash like light through fog untrustworthy, disjointed, and often wrong.
The dunes changed as he moved. The air grew thinner. The light dimmed not into evening, but into something more gray. Less like the coming of night and more like the world forgetting to render color. Beneath his feet, the sand turned pale and brittle, sometimes giving way to veined glass crusts that cracked underfoot with noises like whispering teeth.
The land here was called the Shatterflat, though Kael only knew that from a fragment of memory he hadn't earned. It had belonged to someone else a scavenger or maybe a deserter who'd died in this region, alone and forgotten. The memory had been buried in the last thing Kael killed. Now it nestled behind his own thoughts like a mouse in the wall.
He hated that.
The knowing without owning.
He felt every borrowed step.
His chest still burned.
Not from heat, but from structure. Whatever the Vault had done to him, it hadn't settled. His core if it could still be called that thrummed like a power line overloaded with mixed voltage. Occasionally, colors danced across the edge of his vision. Not hallucinations overlays. Echoes of things not yet here.
He'd first noticed it an hour ago: the dunes around him would occasionally stutter, then flash with fragments of other places—ruins that didn't exist, towers made of silver sand, stone statues half-buried in voidlight. They came and went in seconds. Like frames from a corrupted recording.
His new ability—Anchoring Echo.
It didn't show him the past. It dragged the ghosts of unrealized futures toward him.
Not visions.
Options.
He had no idea how to control it.
But it was growing stronger.
A spike of static tore through his right eye. Kael staggered. For half a second, the sky fractured split across nine mirrored shards, each reflecting a different version of the sun.
Then it was gone.
He gasped.
His pulse had slowed. His breath had shortened.
Too far. Too fast.
He crouched at the base of a long, exposed ridge, hand pressed against stone for balance.
That's when he heard it.
Footsteps. Measured. Heavy.
Not whispering like the Ash-Touched. Not crawling like the memory-born. Just… precise.
And they weren't alone.
There was the distant shimmer of Dominion code in the air now. Faint, but deliberate.
Kael ducked lower.
Someone was coming. Someone bound.
The figure crested the ridge with the confidence of someone used to being obeyed.
He wore a long cloak reinforced with diamondscale armor, each shoulder etched with golden Dominion glyphs. His face was uncovered tanned, weather-worn, marked with a vertical scar through one eye. At his hip, a short blade buzzed faintly with static energy, and his hands crackled with the unmistakable hum of a live core.
Behind him, two smaller figures flanked him less armored, lighter gear, Dominion subordinates. Their movements were tight. Trained. Not scouts.
Hunters.
Kael remained still.
The lead figure paused, then turned his head slightly toward the very rock Kael crouched behind.
"You can hide your breathing," the man said, voice calm, almost bored. "But not your echo."
Kael didn't respond.
"Come out. Slowly. Hands where I can see them."
Kael rose. He made no effort to look submissive.
The man's eyes narrowed.
"Unbound." He said the word like a slur.
Kael didn't move.
The man tilted his head. "You're lucky it's me who found you, not a Scorchwatcher. They'd have flash-burned you from orbit."
Kael let the silence hang.
"Name?"
Kael said nothing.
The man clicked his tongue. "Fine. You can keep your silence. It'll give you time to think about what to say when we drag you into a Dominion socket and let it tear your memories apart."
He stepped forward.
Kael's vision shimmered again Anchoring Echo flaring.
But this time, something changed.
Time slowed.
The wind stalled mid-whistle. Dust froze mid-air.
And the man in front of him split.
For a second, Kael saw three of him. Three versions of the same figure, layered and flickering.
One stabbed him.
One reached out.
One turned and walked away.
Kael gasped.
Time snapped back.
The man was still walking toward him. Calm. Controlled.
Kael lunged.
Kael lunged low, his feet cutting shallow trenches in the brittle Shatterflat crust. The bone shard flicked into his palm before thought could catch up—a motion stolen from a long-dead warrior he never met. The blade met air.
The Dominion hunter wasn't where he'd been.
Steel shrieked.
Kael twisted sideways just in time to deflect a horizontal arc static hummed as the hunter's blade scraped past his shoulder, searing a trail across the air. Kael rolled backward, came up fast and found the man already in front of him again.
Too fast.
Core-boosted reflexes. Dominion-grade.
Kael ducked the second strike, planted low, and slammed his elbow into the man's ribs. Armor flared a kinetic field rippled, absorbing the hit.
Kael's bones ached from the rebound.
The hunter smiled. "You fight like someone who's only recently acquired the memory of fighting."
Kael gritted his teeth.
Behind the man, the two subordinates began circling, forming a loose triangle. One unhooked a crystal rod from her belt; it flickered with containment script.
"Stand down," she barked. "Submit to classification and compression."
Kael said nothing.
He took two steps back, heart pounding not from fear, but from something deeper.
Something old.
The Vault inside him pulsed again. The world twisted.
Then everything froze.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
The sky cracked.
The horizon turned sideways.
Kael blinked and the world shifted. The ridge behind him vanished. The Dominion agents blurred, stretched, and rewound by a full heartbeat.
Kael stepped left and when time caught up, the blade meant for his throat missed.
He plunged his dagger upward into the subordinate's shoulder, cutting through soft cloth and weak script armor.
She screamed and dropped.
Kael turned the lead hunter had vanished.
No, not vanished repositioned.
Kael ducked just as the man's foot swept over his head. He rolled again, gained distance.
ANCHORING ECHO: Phase Breach Triggered
System Response: Incompatible
Dominion AI: Observing
Kael felt his pulse shift with the message. It was no longer just a fight. It was a collision—between a system trying to reassert order and a core that refused to exist by its rules.
The remaining subordinate charged with a cry electrified blade swinging down.
Kael didn't dodge.
He split.
For a moment, his own image ghosted sideways.
The blade passed through a shimmer.
Kael reappeared half a meter to the right and drove the hilt of his shard-blade into the back of the man's neck. The body crumpled.
Only the hunter remained.
He didn't look surprised. Just… curious.
"Third generation?" he asked. "Or are you just glitched enough to simulate one?"
Kael said nothing.
The hunter's blade buzzed again this time longer.
"No matter. You're proof enough the Spiral's active again."
He raised his weapon.
But Kael didn't see it.
He saw something else.
The man's face shimmered like a mask over a mask.
For a moment, Kael saw not a hunter but a child.
Strapped to a chair. Screaming.
A name, long buried, surfaced.
117-B.
Kael didn't hesitate.
He moved.
The strike came from below bone edge against steel. The Dominion hunter parried, then pivoted for a clean gut-stab.
Kael leaned forward into it.
The blade tore across his side, but he grabbed the hunter's wrist and twisted.
The man shouted.
Kael drove his forehead into the bridge of his nose. Then again. And again.
Blood sprayed.
The blade dropped.
Kael kicked the man in the chest, sending him sprawling across the brittle sand. The earth cracked beneath him.
Kael stood over him, chest heaving.
The hunter blinked blood from one eye.
"Unbound freak," he whispered.
Kael said nothing.
He reached down and pulled something from the man's belt a small metal sigil. Dominion-stamped. Still warm.
The hunter growled. "You think you're something new. But you're not. You're just another echo."
Kael looked down at the man at his hand twitching over his sidearm.
Then he stepped on the man's throat.
Slowly.
The twitching stopped.
The air went still.
Kael turned and walked away, blood trailing down his side, the sigil still clutched in his hand. Behind him, the corpses of two trained Dominion Ascenders and their commander began to dissolve not into rot, but into corruption residue.
And the sky, above the Shatterflat, cracked open for just a second revealing not light.
But something watching.