The Echo of Tomorrow

Chapter 16: The Abyss of Echoes

The corridor stretched endlessly before them, the walls lined with pulsating veins of obsidian light. A thick, unnatural fog clung to the floor, swirling around Lyra's ankles as she and Selene pressed forward. Behind them, the distant echoes of tortured whispers skittered through the darkness.

"We shouldn't be here," Selene murmured, gripping the hilt of her dagger. "This place wasn't meant for the living."

Lyra swallowed hard, keeping her focus on the flickering blue light ahead—the only beacon in the suffocating gloom. "We don't have a choice. The Catalyst is somewhere within this abyss, and if we don't reach it before the TCA does—"

She never got to finish her sentence.

The darkness moved.

A shrill, bone-chilling wail tore through the silence as shadows erupted from the walls, twisting into grotesque, elongated figures. Wraiths. Not quite alive, but certainly not dead. Their hollow, gaping mouths stretched impossibly wide, void of features except for the ever-consuming hunger radiating from them.

Lyra barely had time to react before one lunged. Selene yanked her backward just in time, slashing her dagger through the air. A jagged arc of blue energy burst from the blade, searing through the creature. It shrieked and dissolved into the mist, but more took its place, crawling from the walls, their spectral limbs reaching hungrily.

"Run!" Selene barked, shoving Lyra forward.

They sprinted down the corridor, the wraiths gliding after them, their distorted forms whispering unspeakable horrors. The blue beacon flickered, revealing an enormous doorway at the corridor's end. Lyra reached it first and slammed her hand against the control panel. The doors shuddered, then creaked open just enough for them to squeeze through before slamming shut behind them.

Panting, Lyra collapsed against the door. "What… the hell… were those?"

Selene wiped sweat from her brow. "Echo Wraiths. Manifestations of fractured souls lost to the Nexus. If they touch you, they don't just kill you. They erase you."

Lyra shivered. "Perfect. Just when I thought things couldn't get worse."

Selene scanned the chamber they had entered. It was vast, an ancient vault filled with towering spires of glass, each containing a flickering silhouette—prisoners frozen in time. Some faces were twisted in horror, others in silent despair.

"This place…" Lyra whispered, stepping forward. "It's a tomb."

Selene nodded grimly. "The TCA didn't just erase timelines. They erased people. Condemned them to this prison between realities."

Lyra's gaze flickered across the rows of trapped souls until she stopped, her breath catching in her throat. One of the figures… she recognized it.

Her father.

She staggered forward, pressing her palm against the glass. His face was frozen mid-shout, eyes filled with defiance and pain. Memories she had long buried crashed over her—his warnings about the TCA, his insistence that history was being rewritten, that the Nexus was more than what it seemed. She had dismissed them as paranoid delusions. But he had been right all along.

Selene placed a hand on Lyra's shoulder. "I'm sorry."

Lyra clenched her jaw. "I'm not leaving him here."

"Lyra, we don't even know if—"

"I don't care!" She turned, eyes blazing with determination. "The Catalyst, the TCA, the Nexus—none of it matters if we leave these people here. We free them, or we fail."

Selene hesitated before nodding. "Then we need to find the core of this chamber. If we disrupt the field containing them, we might be able to bring them back. But it won't be quiet. The TCA will know."

"Let them come." Lyra turned back to the towering spires. "It's time we stopped running."

As if responding to her resolve, the chamber trembled, the shadows around them thickening. The battle for reality itself was only just beginning.