The first bolt struck five kilometers north of their position.
It didn't flash or crackle—it unfolded, like a concept being expressed. Colorless lightning shattered a sandstone ridge, reducing it to glassy shards. The wind carried the hum of distorted frequencies, like a hundred voices whispering backward.
Kael clenched the cube in his hand—the Legacy Core. It vibrated like a heartbeat trying to sync with his own.
"They're coming fast," Lira muttered. Her goggles flicked through scan modes. "Two squadrons. Echo Purist design. Fastwalkers, light armor, psionic suppression fields. They're not here to talk."
Drex grunted. "Then we don't wait."
He jammed his gauntlets into the soil. The ground trembled, then cracked—earthen spikes shot skyward in a wall of defense. "Buy time. Just need three minutes."
Kael's pulse accelerated.
I'm not ready for this. I barely understand what I'm carrying.
But the seed inside him pulsed again—not in panic.
In invitation.
---
They took position along a broken causeway. Lira set up her scope rig, tiny drones detaching from her belt like metallic fireflies. Aren pulled out a field pike and whispered a chant—his skin shimmered with defensive threads of blue light.
Kael crouched low.
His thoughts scattered like birds.
He remembered Arien Tal-Kael's memories: the forging of the seed, the failure of the alliance, the day silence swallowed the last city. That knowledge hummed now, just beneath the surface of his skin.
I don't have to understand it all, he realized. I just have to trust that it's real.
The first Purist stepped through the ash fog. Her armor bore no insignia, only a single white flame painted over her faceplate. She carried a lance that wasn't made of metal—Kael felt it was carved from someone's mind.
She raised it—and pointed directly at him.
"Carrier located," she said.
"Primary target."
---
They moved like dancers—horribly efficient dancers.
Ten of them advanced as one, no hesitation. Echo disruptors flared on their arms, radiating null fields meant to crush unstable talents.
Kael staggered back.
The Legacy Core shuddered. It wanted to respond—but it needed guidance.
What do I call you? Kael thought. What are you trying to be?
The Core answered not in words, but feeling. Roots. Growth. Choice.
"Multi-Echo Bloom…" he whispered.
He opened his palm.
The Core unraveled like a flower of light and fragments.
And the world changed.
---
Each echo that Kael had ever absorbed—each glimmer, each shimmer of someone else's experience—flashed before his eyes. Arien's voice. The Bloodkin hunter. Even the silent glyphs of the city below.
The Core didn't choose for him.
It asked.
Kael reached inward—and summoned a single memory. Arien's construction glyphs.
The Core translated it.
A lattice of hardlight bloomed in the air, forming a shield that shimmered like crystal and burned like purpose. The first Echo Purist struck—and bounced back in surprise.
Kael exhaled.
He'd just deflected a memory-forged weapon.
Aren whooped. "Well damn, Seed-boy's got fangs!"
---
But the Purists adapted quickly.
Two of them circled, releasing sonic charges that warped gravity. Lira's drones intercepted one, but the second shattered the causeway Kael stood on.
He fell—
—and the Core reacted.
Roots of light coiled from his feet and latched onto the broken concrete. They grew instantly, forming a new platform under him.
He's not falling. He's growing forward, Kael realized.
He ran.
Not with confidence, but with motion.
He collided with a Purist, and in that instant of contact—his seed pulsed again.
Touch-triggered echo scan initiated, the Core whispered.
He saw her.
Her name had been Rel. She was born in a sterilized dome, taught to hate the chaos of unshaped talent. She believed in order. In purity.
And beneath it all—she was afraid.
Afraid of people like him.
Kael didn't strike.
He let her fall, confused, disarmed.
---
The others pressed harder.
Drex emerged from below, slamming his fists together. Earth bent to his will—two of the fastwalkers were swallowed by living stone.
Lira dropped a third with a sniper-burst that disabled her suppressor harness. "Three down!"
But then the leader stepped forward.
Kael saw her clearly now.
Not just her armor. Her presence.
She was a Sentinel. A first-tier command-level Purist, equipped with a soul-anchor.
"You carry the bloom," she said, voice flat. "You will surrender it. Now."
Kael stepped forward, feeling the Core vibrate.
"I don't even know what I'm carrying yet."
"You carry choice," she said bitterly. "We are not meant to choose."
She raised her hand—and the sky cracked.
---
The storm that followed was not weather. It was expression.
Torrents of raw echo energy lashed the ground. Buildings melted into memory. Drex was forced to pull the others into a shield dome. Kael stood alone, the Core flaring bright.
Help me, he thought.
Show me how to grow.
The Core offered him a seed.
Not a memory. Not a weapon.
A path.
He accepted.
---
Kael's talent surged—not as a blast, but as a bloom.
His skin lit with branching veins of echo-light. His shadow split into versions of himself—each formed from a different memory he'd absorbed.
The Bloodkin's tenacity.
Arien's construction skills.
Even a flicker of Drex's stubbornness.
They moved with him.
He charged.
The Sentinel's eyes widened behind her mask.
"Impossible," she hissed. "You're blooming prematurely—!"
Kael's strike landed—not on her body, but her anchor.
The soul-link shattered.
She fell to one knee.
"Finish it," she spat.
Kael stepped back.
"No."
---
The others were retreating.
The Purists, without command, scattered. Kael returned to the group. The Core quieted in his palm.
They stared at him.
Lira broke the silence. "You shouldn't have been able to do that. That was… seed-blooming level. And you're what, a low-tier minor talent?"
Kael nodded, breathing hard. "I was. I'm not sure what I am now."
Drex placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.
"You're a threat."
Kael looked to the horizon.
The ashstorm had cleared.
In the far distance, atop a cragged peak, stood a figure.
Watching.
Waiting.
Lira raised her scope. "New contact."
"Friend?" Aren asked.
She hesitated.
"Not sure."
---