CHAPTER 7: THE ECHO IN THE ARCHIVE

The silence in the chamber was a heavy, suffocating blanket.

It was broken only by the soft, wet drip of black ichor from Michael’s fingertips.

DRIP.

DRIP.

The remaining Tunnel Skitterers, dozens of them, were frozen in place, their multiple red eyes wide with a primal, instinctual terror.

He could feel it washing over him in waves.

He wasn’t prey anymore.

He was something far, far worse.

He looked down at his hands, which were perfectly steady.

He felt no fear.

The searing pain from his smoldering arm was a distant memory.

He just felt... hungry.

A new notification glowed on his HUD, its purple text a stark, beautiful poison against the dim light of the cave.

[You have unleashed a forbidden power of the Void Reaper lineage.]

[NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: SOUL DEVOUR (LV. 1)]

Description: Forcibly extract the soul-echo and residual mana from a recently deceased entity...

WARNING: REPEATED USE MAY LEAD TO SOUL CORRUPTION.

...

[D-RANK VOID-TAINTED CORE ACQUIRED.]

[A new, malefic energy signature has been detected.]

[New Status Effect Applied: Soul Corruption (0.1%)]

"Forbidden, huh?" Michael thought, a grim, humorless twist on his lips.

"So this is the edgy, forbidden skill tree."

Usually costs extra DLC.

"Soul Corruption... sounds like a debuff I should probably worry about later."

"Right now, it just sounds like a solution."

He glanced at the mangled, imploded corpse of the Skitterer Queen.

The Alchemist wanted ten F-Rank cores.

But the Queen... the Queen was a D-Rank.

A miniboss.

He could feel its echo buzzing with a dying, frantic energy, a whisper of real power.

He knelt beside the pulpy mess, ignoring the overwhelming stench.

He raised his hand, focusing on the new skill, on the gnawing hunger deep within his soul.

"Devour," he whispered, and the word felt disturbingly right on his tongue.

The air itself seemed to shudder.

From the palm of his hand, a swirling vortex of purple-black energy erupted, no bigger than his fist.

It wasn’t the raw, explosive tendrils from before.

This was controlled.

Focused.

Hungry.

It latched onto the Queen’s corpse, and the monster’s remains began to convulse violently.

A faint, ethereal light, the color of a bruised twilight, was pulled from the body.

It screamed.

It was a silent, psychic shriek that scraped against the inside of Michael’s skull like a rusty nail.

He winced, his teeth clenched against the feedback.

He saw flashes of the Queen’s short, brutal existence.

Hatching in the suffocating dark.

The taste of her siblings’ flesh as she killed them to claim dominance.

The primal, overwhelming instinct to protect her nest.

The white-hot rage.

The absolute terror.

Great, he thought, a wave of nausea rolling through him. It comes with unskippable cutscenes of the monster’s tragic backstory.

He wasn’t just taking its power.

He was consuming its memory, its very essence.

The light spiraled into the vortex in his palm, and he felt a rush of energy that was both intoxicating and sickeningly cold, like swallowing powdered glass and ice.

A small, dark object condensed in his hand, cool and smooth to the touch.

It was a monster core, but unlike the dull gray F-Rank orbs, this one was a deep, swirling obsidian, with a single, faint purple light pulsing at its center.

[D-RANK VOID-TAINTED CORE ACQUIRED.]

[VOID ENERGY FULLY RESTORED.]

[HP FULLY RESTORED.]

The searing pain in his arm vanished completely. The burnt skin knitted back together, leaving behind a pale, silvery scar that seemed to shimmer with a faint, dark light.

He stood up, feeling a power he had never known.

He was whole again.

He was more than whole.

Just as he clenched his fist around the new core, his entire vision was consumed by a blinding flash of golden light.

PING!

[WARNING: BLOODLINE SEAL INTEGRITY HAS FALLEN BELOW A CRITICAL THRESHOLD.]

[WARNING: FRAGMENTED DATA PACKET ’ELARA’S SACRIFICE’ HAS CAUSED A CASCADE FAILURE IN THE LEGACY ARCHIVE’S PRIMARY LOCK.]

[SUB-ROUTINE ACTIVATED: FORCED SYNCHRONIZATION WITH ARCHIVAL ECHO.]

The cave, the terrified Skitterers, the pulsing Gate...it all dissolved into nothing.

He was floating in a vast, empty blackness, surrounded by silent, drifting stars.

It was beautiful.

And it was so, so lonely.

In front of him, a figure made of soft, golden light began to coalesce.

It was a woman.

She was tall, and she wore tactical gear that seemed to be woven from solidified shadows, just like his own Void Reaper class description.

He couldn’t see her face clearly. It was a beautiful, painful blur of light and memory.

But he knew her.

He knew her with every fiber of his being, a recognition that bypassed his eyes and went straight to his soul.

"Mom?" he whispered, and the single word was an aching, fifteen-year-old wound, cracking his voice and his composure.

The light figure turned.

The voice that answered was not real. It was an echo, a recording imprinted on his very soul. It was warm, sad, and impossibly strong.

"Michael."

The sound of his name in her voice almost brought him to his knees.

"You were not meant to find this place. Not like this."

"What happened to you?" he asked, his voice trembling, the sarcastic mask he wore for the world completely forgotten. "The vision... I saw you. You sealed the Gate. You sealed yourself."

The light figure drifted closer.

"The Ever-Gate was a mistake. A wound that could not be healed. It was bleeding a poison into our world... a corruption far worse than any monster."

"The Void?" he asked, the Warden’s words echoing in his memory.

A shimmer of what might have been a sad nod.

"It is an endless hunger. A sentient emptiness. The Arcana lineage, our family, we were not its masters. We were its wardens. We were meant to keep it balanced, to keep it chained."

She raised a hand of pure, golden light, and he could almost feel its warmth across the impossible distance.

"But some saw it as a weapon. They tried to harness it. They broke the chains. When the Ever-Gate collapsed, I had a choice. Let the Void consume everything... or become the lock on its door."

Tears streamed down Michael’s face, hot and real in this unreal space.

"Dad... does he know?"

"He knows I am gone," the echo of his mother said, her voice tinged with a deep, aching love. "He knows I made a sacrifice. He does not know what I became to do it. He does not know about the Void. I made him promise to protect you from it. To let you live a normal life."

She gestured to his chest, to the place where his soul resided.

"The Seal I placed on you was not a cage, my son. It was a shield. It was meant to hide you from the Void’s hunger, and from those who would use you as they tried to use me."

A new, urgent notification flashed at the edge of his vision.

[GATE COLLAPSE IMMINENT: 00:01:15]

The starry space around them began to flicker violently, the image of his mother distorting like a bad signal.

"I’m going to find you," Michael said, his voice thick with a new, fierce determination. "I’m going to break the Seal and I’m going to get you back."

Her light-blurred face seemed to fill with a sudden, sharp alarm.

"No, Michael! You don’t understand! The Seal is me! It is the last of my conscious will! To break it is to..."

The connection shattered.

CRACK!

He was back in the damp, stinking cave.

The Tunnel Skitterers were gone, having finally fled into the darkness.

The shimmering, oil-slick Gate was flickering violently, spasming like a dying heart.

He scrambled to his feet, his mind reeling from the revelation.

The Seal is me.

To break it... is to destroy her.

He shoved the thought down, a block of ice forming in his chest. He couldn’t process that. Not now.

He had to get out.

He sprinted towards the wavering portal, his feet splashing in the foul water.

He burst through the Gate just as it imploded behind him with a silent, violent pop, the air rushing in to fill the vacuum.

VWOOMP!

He was back in the cavernous, dark space of Warehouse 7.

He leaned against a concrete pillar, panting, his head a chaotic storm of grief and power and impossible choices.

He was covered in monster gore.

His hoodie was a tattered ruin.

His pockets were filled with illegally harvested, Void-Tainted monster cores.

And he was not alone.

CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.

The sound of multiple safeties being disengaged echoed in the vast, empty warehouse.

Bright, blinding flashlights pinned him against the pillar.

He could see the silhouettes of at least a dozen figures in tactical DGC armor, their energy rifles all aimed directly at his chest.

"Freeze, Hunter!" a voice boomed, sharp and cold as polished steel. "On your knees! Hands where I can see them!"

Michael just stared, his mind blank with shock.

A woman with a severe haircut and a DGC captain’s insignia on her armor stepped forward, her sidearm drawn.

She looked him up and down, her eyes lingering on the silvery, shimmering scar on his arm.

Her expression was a mask of professional authority, unreadable and cold.

She raised her comms to her lips, but her eyes never left his.

"This is Captain Valerius," she said, her voice dangerously low. "We have an Unregistered Awakened at the scene of an E-Rank Gate collapse. Subject is a male, late teens."

She paused, taking another step closer, her gaze hardening with a dawning recognition.

"And run a priority search on the Hunter registry.

The name is Marcus... I think we just found his kid."