"Power remembers its origin. I only had to listen long enough to hear it."
The silence after death is never empty.
It hums — faint, steady, endless. The aftersound of pain. The resonance of what once screamed and now refuses to fade.
Weeks had passed since the slaughter of the Elarin, though time in this fractured reality bled together like colors drowned in ink. Their light had long died, but the echoes of their existence lingered in the air — in the soil, in the wind, in me.
When I reached for the vibration beneath my skin, I could still feel them there. Thousands of frequencies, all screaming at once.
But they were no longer voices. They were memories.
Through the resonance, I saw flashes — blinding fragments of alien faith.
A temple carved from pure light, pulsing with worship.
The scent of burning crystal.
A child of radiance crying at the birth of a dying sun.
The Elarin had believed they were protectors of life — vessels of purity chosen by something they called the Luminous Core. Their corruption wasn't born from darkness… it was born from despair.
They had lost their god.
And still they prayed to the silence.
I almost laughed. Even now, I didn't know what faith was supposed to feel like. But as I absorbed their frequencies, I began to understand something else: belief was resonance too. It was sound given meaning.
Meaning could be twisted.
When I whispered the [Voíd-tongue glyphs], their gods' final prayers answered — not with light, but with echoes of black thunder.
[Vreth'ul… sai'nor… var'teth.]
The air vibrated, and for a moment, I saw more than this realm.
I saw worlds.
Hundreds of them, floating like shattered glass suspended in the Void. Each a reflection of the next, yet all cracked differently — pieces of something once whole.
And beyond them, in a storm of colorless fire, I saw her.
A shape of radiance.
A melody wrapped in flesh.
A presence that hummed on a frequency not born of the Void, yet familiar enough to make my pulse slow.
Then the vision broke.
The ground beneath me convulsed.
From the corpse of the Elarin temple rose a figure of colossal proportion — humanoid but faceless, its body made from stone and agony. A Guardian Construct. The energy in its veins pulsed like molten light, its steps cracking the air with every movement.
I had awoken something ancient.
"Entity of corruption," its voice thundered, made of thousands. "You trespass on sacred ground."
I felt the vibration of its words before I heard them. Its entire existence was sound — bound frequency, purpose given mass.
Beautiful.
"Sacred?" I murmured, tilting my head. "This world is already dead. You're guarding ash."
The construct swung its hand, a tidal wave of energy howling toward me.
The blast shattered the ground, vaporizing stone. The vibration crawled through my bones. My aura flickered once — then I stepped through it.
Resonance.
I reached into the sound, into the meaning of its power, and twisted.
The energy recoiled. The construct froze as the pulse of its own attack turned against it, tearing through its shoulder.
Cracks spread down its arm. Light leaked out like blood.
"Impossible…"
"No," I whispered, stepping closer. "Evolution."
The construct roared, voice like collapsing worlds. It struck again, but this time the sound distorted midair. The rhythm of its power bent under mine, the way weak voices bend beneath a choir.
It tried to speak another command — a word of divine resonance meant to unmake my existence.
But I was already inside the frequency.
"Your song is too simple," I said softly.
I reached out — my hand sinking into the vibrating light at its chest.
Inside that radiance, I found the core.
It pulsed like a heart — steady, divine, terrified.
"Let me show you," I whispered, "how silence sings."
I clenched my hand.
The resonance collapsed.
The construct shattered. Its pieces floated upward like glass caught in slow time, and for a heartbeat, I saw the memory it had guarded — an ancient image buried within its energy.
A man of black flame.
A woman of impossible light.
A world consumed by both.
Then the image dissolved, scattering like dust.
When the last shard fell, the battlefield was quiet again.
I stood over the remnants of the construct, and the resonance of its death flowed into me.
But something was different this time.
The vibration wasn't chaotic. It was ordered — pure harmony aligned with my void energy. It fit.
My body reacted before I understood it. My jaw ached. My blood burned cold.
I exhaled, and darkness curled from my breath like smoke.
Then I felt it — a shift in my face. A pressure in my mouth.
The sound of bone reshaping.
When I opened my mouth, twin streaks of silver light glinted in the void — fangs, metallic and sharp, their hue between starlight and death.
Platinum.
They hummed faintly, resonating with the pulse of the world.
"Adaptation," I murmured. "Perfection is never still."
I ran my tongue over the edges. They vibrated with energy — conduits for sound, built to tear through any resonance.
The Void within me purred in satisfaction.
When I raised my hand, the air tore open.
A thin rift formed — unstable, shimmering like oil under lightning.
I didn't force it. I let it breathe. The resonance of my being tuned itself with the wound in space until both frequencies matched.
The rift steadied.
Through it, I saw another Fractured World — this one brighter, yet scarred. The skies there pulsed with veins of gold and ash. It was alive… but only barely.
I felt her again.
The same faint pulse.
Familiar, delicate, patient.
The same harmony I'd felt after the massacre.
"You still call to me," I said under my breath.
The words surprised me. They sounded softer than I intended.
I stepped toward the rift. My reflection flickered across it — black eyes, shadowed skin, and a faint silver gleam where my fangs caught the light.
For a moment, I looked almost human.
Almost.
"Let's see," I whispered, "how far the echoes reach."
The rift swallowed me.
The Void bent. The Fractured Realm screamed as the fabric of its existence tore wider to let me pass.
Behind me, the ground split apart — light bleeding into black, black devouring light, until both vanished into silence.
As I crossed through, a thousand voices whispered in resonance.
[Vorr'kai… ra'thun… ael'sera.]
Translation not needed — I felt it.
A greeting.
A warning.
A prophecy.
I emerged into the next world as the sky turned red and gold, clouds folding inward as if kneeling.
The first step shook the horizon.
And far, far away — across realms — a woman of radiance froze, her heart trembling to the exact rhythm of my arrival.
The echo had found its answer.
End of Chapter 8 — The Echo Between Worlds