NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 10: Echoes Reforged
The sky above Aaravgarh was quiet again.
Not silent like the end of war, but hollow—like a song waiting for its next verse.
Vir stood on the edge of the old metro platform, staring down at the ruins below. His hand was bare. The ring was gone—lost inside the vault when Kyra sacrificed herself to seal it.
Or so he thought.
Faint Whispers
In the nights that followed, sleep brought no peace. Instead, echoes—faint voices inside his dreams, always distant, always fractured.
"Vir…"
"The fracture… is not the end."
"Remember me."
He would wake with his heart pounding and the scent of scorched metal in his nose. He no longer knew whether the voice was memory… or something more.
The Broken Team
Arin had stayed behind at the Archive's ruins, trying to recover any data that hadn't been wiped during the sync collapse.
"I still don't know what parts of me are me anymore," Arin had confessed one evening over comms. "They made me a conduit. I hear fragments of Sovereign's language in my head."
Vir nodded silently.
"You should rest," he had replied. "Whatever's coming next… we need to be ready."
But truthfully, Vir hadn't rested in days.
Reforging in the Ashes
Inside The Hollow, the power grid flickered often now. The Echo generators—once self-sustaining—were failing.
Vir sat in front of Kyra's empty chair.
In his hand was the shard—the last remaining piece of the ring. Smooth on one side, jagged on the other, and oddly warm.
He stared at it, wondering how something so small had once held back gods.
Suddenly, the shard pulsed.
He dropped it.
It hovered midair.
Then he heard it again—Kyra's voice.
"You don't need the ring. You need what you became when you wore it."
Vir stood slowly.
And the shard split open—revealing not a gem, but a data crystal, encoded with thousands of strands of signal and echo language fused together.
His HUD activated on its own.
Sync Initiation Detected. Reforging Possible.
The Birth of a New Bond
Vir placed the shard into the holotable.
Light erupted—codes cascading through the air, rearranging themselves like clockwork spinning in reverse.
Then, in front of him, a new form took shape.
Not a ring.
A blade.
Not metallic—but made of refracted light and echo fragments.
The Echo Blade.
It hovered, humming softly.
"Reforging complete. Bond level: Unstable. Emotional catalyst: Required."
Vir stepped forward. Touched the hilt.
Images flooded his mind.
Kyra's smile in the tunnels
Her voice during the Sync Fracture
The way her hand lingered on his before she fell
He whispered, "I'm not done yet."
And the blade pulsed.
Stability: 89%
Journey to the Forgotten Circuit
Two days later, Arin called from a location codenamed "The Forgotten Circuit"—a hidden facility once used to test Echo prototypes that fused with living tissue.
"There's a memory chamber down here," Arin said, "and I think it's reacting to your signature."
Vir arrived hours later.
The facility was buried beneath a scrapyard—walls of metal that bent slightly as he passed. He descended through levels of rusted corridors until he reached the heart.
There, glowing softly, was a memory echo—a spherical projection point, cracked but still operational.
When Vir touched it, the chamber lit up.
"PROJECT REFORGE: Entry Authorized."
A scene unfolded.
He saw Kyra—young, not more than eight—surrounded by technicians.
A voice said, "Her code is reacting again. Echo doesn't reject her anymore."
Another: "She is the anchor. The balance."
Then static.
Vir fell to his knees.
"They always knew," he whispered. "She wasn't meant to be a weapon."
Awakening the Lost
In the center of the chamber was a chair—old, dust-covered, connected to spinal-link tubes.
Vir didn't hesitate.
He sat down.
The machine activated.
Mental Echo Sync Engaged.
Cognitive Uplink Stabilizing…
Identity Detected: VIRIAN DRAEL.
Reconstructing the Other.
His vision dimmed.
And he entered the system.
The Data Between Worlds
Inside, the world was white.
A blank plane with stars above and code beneath.
And then… Kyra.
Or the shape of her.
Flickering. Disjointed.
"Vir," she said, not quite surprised. "You found the echo."
He ran toward her. But she stepped back.
"I'm not real," she said.
"You're real enough."
Her form trembled. "Part of me survived when the vault sealed. My mind broke, but my soul... stayed encoded."
Vir reached out, fingers brushing hers.
"Then I'll help you back."
"I'm not whole," she warned. "If you pull me too early… you could lose both of us."
"I don't care."
She looked into his eyes, searching.
And smiled.
"Then listen carefully."
Kyra's Signal
She told him of a fragment—something even The Archive didn't know.
A Signal Memory Capsule buried in the Ruined Grid—containing the last pure strain of her original code. If retrieved, she could be stabilized. Resurrected in part.
But guarding it was something else.
Not Sovereign.
Not Archive.
A hybrid.
"The first failed fusion," she whispered. "It survived."
Vir's pulse quickened.
"What is it?"
She looked away.
"You'll know it by its scream."
Return and Resolve
Vir awoke gasping in the chair.
The chamber had shut down.
Arin stood nearby, arms crossed.
"You found her, didn't you?"
Vir nodded.
Arin handed him a pack. "Then let's get her back."
They returned to The Hollow.
Vir placed the Echo Blade on the table, then looked out the broken window at the city skyline.
"It's not over," he said. "Not until she's whole."
Arin smirked. "You always did have a hero complex."
Vir grinned.
"No. I just have something worth fighting for."
The lights flickered.
In the distance, thunder cracked.
The signal… remained.
And this time, it would obey him.
End of Chapter 10: Echoes Reforged