The rooftop cracked under Kaelen's boots, fracturing like a pane of frozen glass under a hammer.
He leapt instinctively, pushing upward just as the surface caved in. Dust exploded into the air. A storm of brick and wood collapsed behind him in a roar.
Six Echo bearing officers landed on the opposite roof in synchronized formation.
Their armor glowed with the cold blue of active Echoes
precision, speed, cutting resonance, defensive hardlight
a full patrol combat unit.
Kaelen had seen them kill gangs in seconds.
Tonight, he was their target.
"Don't let him jump again!" one shouted.
"Cut off his path!"
"Ignore damage to buildings he's a priority anomaly!"
Kaelen scrambled across the slanted rooftop, boots slipping on broken tiles. His legs burned. His breath rasped. His mind spun with a hundred vibrations heartbeats, metal ringing, the air shifting around their movements.
Overwhelming.
Anchor your focus.
Separate noise from threat.
"How? How do I?"
Do not think.
Observe.
Another ring on the gauntlet spun, and the world snapped into clarity.
The patrol squad moved like six angles of a geometric shape one pattern, one rhythm. Each Echo signature pulsed at a consistent frequency. Kaelen could see it in his mind:
214 Hz speed Echo
152 Hz edge Echo
180 Hz shield Echo
260 Hz pressure Echo
190 Hz pulse Echo
112 Hz the officer he'd fought earlier
They were perfect.
Predictable.
And deadly.
The first officer vaulted across the alley with an Echo leap, her body blurring like a streak of silver.
Dodge left, down one step, exhale.
Kaelen obeyed.
Her blade sliced the air where his throat had been.
The rooftop shuddered. Debris rained around him.
Another officer swung a pulse strike compressed sound condensed into a hammer of air.
Duck.
He dropped.
The strike blasted over him, tearing shingles free like paper.
They didn't slow.
"You can't escape!"
"Relic resonance confirmed!"
"Men cannot use artifacts he's violating the Mother's Law!"
Kaelen wanted to scream back that he hadn't done anything
He hadn't asked for this
He hadn't wanted this
But he couldn't breathe, let alone speak.
Right. Now.
He swerved
Just barely avoiding a slicing arc of high frequency steel.
His body felt like a puppet made of instinct and fear.
"How long can I keep this up?" he gasped.
At your current stamina: 14 seconds.
"Not… helping!"
Correction: factual.
The gauntlet's blunt responses didn't calm him.
But they did keep him alive.
A glowing spear of condensed resonance slammed into the rooftop ahead, exploding into a cone of shrapnel.
Kaelen shielded his face, staggered backward
Straight into the outstretched arm of the earlier officer.
She grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against a chimney so hard stars burst behind his eyes.
Her face hovered inches from his.
"You shouldn't exist," she said quietly.
Her Echo hummed.
The air rippled.
A blade appeared at her wrist, vibrating with lethal intent.
"And I'm ending that mistake now."
Kaelen choked on air. "Please just listen I don't even know"
"You touched a relic no man should ever touch."
"It chose me!"
The words tore out of him before he could stop them.
"It...It chose me, I didn't"
For a heartbeat, something flickered in her eyes.
Uncertainty?
Fear?
Recognition of something impossible?
Then
"Lies."
She raised the blade.
Kaelen braced for the end.
Engage Null Pulse.
"What?"
Brace.
A ring of the gauntlet snapped inward, compressing something invisible
Then snapped outward.
Kaelen didn't hear the sound.
He felt it.
A concussion of silence
A void
A vacuum of resonance
burst from his arm, shattering the officer's Echo blade like fragile glass.
She staggered back, eyes wide in panic.
"What...what did you?!"
Run.
Kaelen sprinted, vaulting off the collapsing chimney. Echo forces slammed into the roof behind him as the patrol resumed pursuit.
He leapt across the alley toward the next building
And fell short.
His fingers scrambled for purchase against a rusted gutter. It tore loose, but he held onto the edge with his other hand, dangling two stories above the street.
The patrol squad rushed to the rooftop edge.
"End it!"
"He's right there!"
"Drop him into the street and finish it!"
The officers aimed their Echoes downward.
Kaelen kicked against the wall, trying to swing himself upward
But his strength was failing.
Sweat burned in his eyes.
His hand slipped.
The gauntlet whispered
Hold.
Incoming anomaly.
"What?"
A shadow blurred beneath him.
Something moved across the street faster than any Echo bearer he'd seen.
A girl?
No a woman cape fluttering in a streak of blue white, an Echo pulsing on her forearm in a form he'd never seen.
She looked up.
Even in the darkness, her eyes shimmered like polished silver.
He had never seen eyes like that.
She lifted her hand
And resonance bloomed around her like a blooming star.
A wall of sky-blue energy erupted behind her, angled upward.
A shield Echo…? No too refined. Too stable. Too controlled.
She slammed her palm upward.
A pulse of force surged toward him not violent, but precise.
Perfectly calculated.
Kaelen felt it lift him like a rising current.
It carried him upward, right onto the rooftop.
He tumbled across the tiles, coughing, limbs shaking violently.
The officers froze.
Their expressions shifted instantly.
From kill focus…
To fear.
"It's her"
"A Shieldwatch operative—?"
"No, not one of the patrol divisions"
"Ranked Echo-bearer…!"
The woman stepped onto Kaelen's rooftop with effortless grace.
She didn't even look at him.
Her eyes stayed locked on the squad.
Her presence alone shifted the air.
Cold.
Controlled.
Terrifying.
"Stand down," she said quietly.
The patrol unit flinched as if struck.
One officer stammered, "W-We have orders there's a male anomaly"
"You are interfering with an Echo Reserve operation," the woman replied.
Kaelen blinked. "Operation…?"
She glanced at him once, just enough for him to notice something strange
She was looking at his arm.
At the gauntlet.
And she didn't look shocked.
She looked… expectant.
The officer leading the squad stepped forward.
"Who are you to override patrol jurisdiction?"
The woman's gaze sharpened.
"Raina Valewin," she said.
Every officer stiffened.
Kaelen had heard that name whispered before among women, late at night in tones of reverence.
Echo ranked.
Elite.
Anomaly hunter.
A wielder of the Aural Shield, a legendary Echo that could reshape battlefield resonance.
Some said she could block a warlord's strike with one hand.
Others said she could see Echo patterns the way the Goddess once had.
All Kaelen knew was that the patrol unit suddenly looked like children.
Raina raised her hand.
"Leave."
"But"
"That is not a request."
The officers didn't argue.
They scattered like dust under a stormwind, leaping to lower roofs and disappearing into the night fast, disciplined, terrified.
Raina waited until their signatures faded.
Only then did she turn to Kaelen.
Her silver eyes were cold, intelligent, and far too observant.
"You should be dead," she said softly.
"No man should survive contact with a relic like that."
Kaelen sucked in a shaky breath. "I didn't choose it. I swear"
"I know."
He blinked. "…You know?"
She stepped closer.
He felt her Echo vibrate through the air clean, steady, unwavering.
Not a single flicker of instability.
"I saw the Null distortion from three districts away," she said quietly.
"And I came because that shouldn't be possible."
Her gaze slid to the gauntlet.
"That relic… is the one the Echo Mother feared most.
The only one she tried to destroy completely.
The only one that threatened her rule."
Kaelen's heartbeat stuttered.
Raina exhaled slowly.
"And you, a man, awakened it."
Her eyes lifted to meet his.
There was no disgust.
No hatred.
No fear.
Only calculation.
And something else he couldn't name.
"I need the truth," she said.
"What did it whisper to you?"
Kaelen hesitated.
Then because lying to someone like her felt pointless he whispered:
"That the Mother feared something she never understood."
Raina's hand tightened at her side.
"And that something…" she murmured, "involves you, doesn't it?"
Kaelen swallowed.
"I don't know."
"You will."
Raina's Echo flared not violently, not threatening but like a steady ember igniting.
"Because you're coming with me," she said.
"Before the wrong people get to you first."
He stared at her.
"You want to help me?"
"No," she said flatly.
"I want to understand you."
She reached out her hand.
"Come. Or the next squad won't hesitate."
The gauntlet pulsed.
Recommendation: accept.
Trust parameter: 61%.
Resonance potential: high.
Kaelen took her hand
Just as a scream ripped across the district.
A sound not human.
A resonance not mortal.
Raina's eyes widened.
"That's"
The sky above them cracked like glass.
Echo light bled through the fracture.
Something ancient was waking.
Something the Mother had left behind.
Kaelen felt the gauntlet tighten painfully around his arm.
Host alert.
Divine fragment detected.
Run.
Kaelen and Raina turned as a silhouette descended from the fractured sky
A woman shaped echo of shimmering violet.
Whispering:
"Anomaly identified."
"Eliminate."