The forest burned black and silver.
Aeren lay crumpled against a broken tree trunk, ribs cracked, breath short. His own Null Verse had been turned against him—caught and reflected perfectly by the Echo Knight. The Codex inside him pulsed erratically, destabilized by its own song.
Lyssa knelt beside him, eyes wide. "He mirrored your composition… that's not possible. Not even high-tier Fatesingers can do that."
Aeren coughed blood and managed a smirk. "Well, looks like someone can."
The Echo Knight stepped calmly through the ash and roots, sword raised, every motion precise and unnatural. He didn't just move—he resonated, every step echoing like the memory of a god's heartbeat.
"You compose with instinct," the Knight said flatly. "Untrained. Flawed."
His mirrored blade shimmered. "But the flaw is not in the song. It's in the singer."
Aeren forced himself to stand, blade in hand, his body trembling.
> "Codex," he whispered. "Give me something. Anything."
> Analyzing… Fragmenting Echo Pattern… Constructing Anti-Mirror Verse.
New Composition Available: Fracture Pulse – Variant I.
The Dissonant Blade shifted, glowing with unstable black-red light.
He stepped forward.
This time, when the Echo Knight slashed, Aeren didn't block it—he interrupted it.
A burst of warped sound exploded from his blade, distorting the air between them. The mirrored strike stuttered, its trajectory fractured mid-flow. For the first time, the Knight paused.
"Adaptive dissonance…" he said, voice almost impressed.
"Yeah," Aeren spat. "Improv, remember?"
They clashed.
Metal against mirrored sound, rhythm against chaos. Aeren's new verse wasn't a song—it was a stutter, a jagged melody that slipped between patterns, destabilizing the Echo Knight's perfect counters.
He struck the Knight's shoulder—metal cracked.
The Echo Knight retaliated with a harmonic surge, flipping his blade to echo Aeren's Fracture Pulse back again—but this time Aeren was ready.
He unwrote it mid-air with a wave of Codex energy.
"Your trick only works once," he snarled.
The battle raged through the clearing, and with every strike, Aeren learned. The Codex wasn't just adapting—it was remembering. Building.
The Knight began to slow. His resonance faltered.
Until—
Aeren feinted high, then drove his blade into the Knight's side. A direct hit.
The Codex surged, attempting to consume the Knight's mirrored Fatesong.
But instead of screaming, the Echo Knight leaned in and whispered:
"You've impressed me, Codex-Bearer. But this body… is just the first verse."
Suddenly, his form collapsed into shards of silver light, vanishing in a pulse of echoed laughter.
Lyssa rushed to Aeren's side.
"He… retreated?"
"No," Aeren said, staring into the dark sky. "He tested me."
And somewhere, in a citadel of glass and gold, the real Echo Knight opened his eyes for the first time in centuries.