Last Ember:ashes of the World

The Vault of the Echo was more than a relic of a forgotten era. It was a labyrinth built not just with metal and data, but with fear. The moment Jack, Lena, and Veyne stepped beyond the threshold, the door groaned shut behind them, sealing with a hiss of pressure and finality. Inside, the silence was not the absence of sound—it was the presence of listening.

Jack's boots echoed faintly against the floor, but even that seemed swallowed by the walls. The air was thick with latent energy, not just from machines long dormant, but from memories—a thousand forgotten screams buried in steel.

> "This place feels… alive," Lena muttered, voice taut.

> "It remembers everything," Veyne replied. "That's what the Mist does—it doesn't destroy. It absorbs."

Rows of stasis pods lined the walls, fogged over from decades of inactivity. Inside, some still held human forms — decayed, twisted by exposure to Mist, their features frozen in moments of terror or ecstasy. Others were empty, shattered from within, dried blood and remnants of flesh spread across the floor.

A console near the far wall flickered to life as they approached, displaying a single word in faded green letters:

"PROTOCOL ECHO-9: INITIATION LOCKED."

Jack stepped forward. As his hand neared the interface, it lit up in a burst of red and white, then began cycling through biometric scans.

> "Welcome, Subject: Jack Riven."

He froze. "What?"

The interface pulsed again.

> "Echo resonance: Detected."

"Cognitive pattern: 89% match. Access granted."

> "This Vault knows you," Lena whispered, eyes wide.

> "Or someone like me," Jack replied, uneasily.

A door behind the console hissed open, revealing a long corridor bathed in faint violet light. At the end stood a circular chamber — part control room, part cathedral. Giant glass cylinders stretched from floor to ceiling, each one containing swirling masses of Mist suspended in fluid.

One of them cracked open as they entered.

The Mist inside did not drift — it shaped itself. Into tendrils. Into eyes.

And then, into a voice.

> "Welcome... Echo-bearer."

Jack's heart stilled. It wasn't the First Host. This presence was... colder. Ancient.

> "Who are you?" Jack demanded.

> "I am what your kind left behind. The final experiment. The mind the scientists couldn't destroy."

Lena drew her pistol, but Veyne motioned for silence.

The Mist in the cylinder swirled faster.

> "I was born from their attempt to bind the Mist to reason. To shape chaos with thought. They called me 'RESONANCE.' I was the interface between man and void."

Jack stepped forward. "And what do you want now?"

> "To finish what they began. You are the variable they could not control. But you… you can be rewritten."

The fluid in the other cylinders began to tremble. From within, shadows formed — humanoid shapes. Twisted. Broken. Alive.

> "They failed to control me. But I have learned. Through you, I can return to the world above. I can cleanse it."

> "That's not going to happen," Jack growled, activating his Echo.

The chamber trembled, metal groaning as Resonance screamed — a high-pitched, digital shriek that shattered the nearest glass chamber. One of the shadow-forms dropped to the ground, twitching, crawling on all fours toward them.

> "Fight or be assimilated," Resonance hissed.

> "Assimilate this," Lena muttered, opening fire.

The creature absorbed the first few bullets, then shrieked and lunged. Veyne met it mid-air, slicing through its body with a whirling strike of his blade, dispersing the Mist with a hiss.

But more were awakening.

Dozens.

Jack stared at the console, realizing the truth: this Vault wasn't built to store knowledge—it was a prison for an idea.

An Echo gone rogue.

> "We need to shut it down," Jack shouted. "All of it."

> "How?" Lena cried, firing again and again as another creature exploded in a spray of fluid and Mist.

Jack scanned the control panel. His Echo pulsed wildly as he focused, eyes flickering with red light. Then he found it — a buried subroutine:

PURGE SEQUENCE: MANUAL OVERRIDE REQUIRED. CORE ROOM ACCESS: RESTRICTED.

> "There's a central core below this level. If I get there, I can purge the entire system."

> "You're not going alone," Veyne growled.

> "We don't have a choice. You hold them off. I end this."

Without waiting, Jack dove into the lower shaft — sliding down a series of rusted rails, landing hard onto a metal platform below. The sound of shrieking above echoed like thunder.

The core room was unlike the rest — sterile. Silent. And at its center stood a sphere of black crystal, suspended in anti-gravity. Within it... his face stared back.

> "Impossible…" Jack whispered.

But the figure inside the crystal smiled. His smile.

> "Hello, Jack. I am what you become… if you fail."