My False Skin
In a world where the Echo pulls people into another realm under the full moon, survival is not rare but it is never guaranteed.
Every month, thousands are taken. Most do not return.
When Kieran survives his first summoning, he comes back changed in ways no one can see.
The Echo dropped his class onto an island swallowed by mist, hunted by swarming ape-like creatures and hemmed in by a violent waterfall that marked their only escape. Eighteen of his classmates died before they reached it. The twelve who returned were classified as Bonded, altered by the realm and given aspects that reflect something instinctive within them.
Jace came back stronger, carrying the blunt certainty of a baboon bonded to his spine. Rachel returned quieter and sharper, her cobra presence altering the way rooms behaved without anyone quite understanding why. Others found balance, speed, strength, endurance.
Kieran received something less obvious.
Grip.
Surface adhesion.
The ability to cling.
At first, it feels underwhelming, almost laughable.
Back at school, the world adjusts around visible power. Jace draws attention effortlessly. Rachel moves through corridors without obstruction. Kieran walks beside them and remains what he has always been,overlooked.
When a group of girls mock him in front of his friends, the humiliation doesn’t break him. It clarifies something. Survival in the Echo required adaptation. The real world requires something else.
And his aspect is not just about clinging to walls.
It can reshape him.
Alone in his room, Kieran discovers the deeper function of False Skin. It responds not only to instinct but to conviction. With enough focus, he can refine bone structure, alter posture, change the cadence of his voice. The transformation costs him. Strain behind the eyes, a creeping fatigue, but it holds as long as he believes in it.
So he creates a second version of himself.
Sheeran.
A transfer student with sharper lines and steadier presence. No known abilities. No history.
When Sheeran walks through the school gates, the reaction is immediate. The same girls who laughed now compete for his attention. Teachers engage. Boys compete with him. The social hierarchy bends in small, revealing ways.
Rachel is the only one who doesn’t respond predictably. She senses familiarity beneath the surface, though she cannot explain it. She had defended Kieran when he didn’t defend himself. She liked the original version something he never saw.
Meanwhile, the full moon approaches again.
When the Bonded return to the Echo, they are no longer desperate survivors scrambling for escape. Their objective now is to clear and fortify the zone around their waterfall exit. But the island has changed. The ape creatures have multiplied, learned, begun constructing crude structures in the mist.
And when their bonded animals manifest beside them, Jace’s powerful baboon, Rachel’s silent cobra. Kieran is disappointed to find a small gliding lizard at his shoulder.
He doesn’t yet understand how dangerous something patient and unseen can be.
As the Echo grows more complex and rumours circulate about higher tiers of Bonded who struggle to return to the real world at all, Kieran stands at a crossroads.
In one world, he is invisible.
In another, he is necessary.
And in both, he is learning that identity is not fixed, it is chosen, reinforced, and sometimes rewritten entirely.
The question is not whether he can survive.
It is which version of himself will.
